October Favorites

Here they are: some of my favorite October Project Life photos.

 

Rick put a new lock on the back door and Kyle was having the best time locking and unlocking it over and over. His smile was so cute and his laugh so irresistible that I let him get away with it for a few minutes, but then I had to put an end to that game before he ended up breaking the lock or something silly.

Kyle loves throwing things...he just doesn't realize that some things don't bounce like balls.

About the piggy bank, sorry Dad.

The best workout buddy ever!

On a trip to the grocery store earlier in the month, Kyle was transfixed by the giant blowup spider with glowing eyeballs.  I actually had to snap him out of a trance to get him to come along with me. Kyle....Let's Go!!

A weekend trip to Kid's Castle. Kyle is big enough now to go up with dad and brother on the equipment and come down the slides. Fun!

A quick snapshot of Tyler at Sharky's Pizza. I'm loving the sudden cooperation when I ask to take his picture. I'd better snap them up while I can before he decides that me taking pictures of him is too embarrassing.

Speaking of cooperation, this is probably the best Halloween picture I've ever taken of Tyler. No annoyed face or anything.

Over the weekend I tried to rake the leaves into a pile for the boys to play in, but no sooner did I get a small mound formed then it started to pour down rain. Booo! I had to send the boys inside while I quickly threw the leaves into the garbage bin.

And then Tyler tried to, I'm don't know, catch rain on his tongue like snowflakes??

Lastly, the two cats love to lounge in the upstairs guest/craft room especially now that we removed the safety gates on the staircase. I even laid out a blanket on the foot of the bed that they could use, but no, they're both apparently too good for my silly little blanket.

Happy Halloween

For Halloween this year we decorated the house a little more than normal since we had some extra supplies left over from the trunk or treat. So we put some cobwebs on the windows and put the misting skull and jack-o-lantern by the front door.

 

We also had six pumpkins to carve this year and since our cartoon character designs have been the most popular in the past, I thought we should just stick with those. We did three minion pumpkins from the Despicable Me movie.

And three Sesame Street pumpkins. Cute, but both the Elmo and Cookie Monster pumpkins were so unstable that I had to prop pieces up with toothpicks.

 

I made an early dinner of taco salad and had the boys dressed and ready to go trick-or-treating by 5:45. At first I was going to have Kyle stay home since he's been sick with a cold, but I ended up letting him go to 10 or so houses on our block.

It was seriously so cute seeing Kyle run up to each house with his big brother, saying trick-or-treat, thank you and the whole bit. I loved it!

The boys loaded up on candy, but it's still a school night so it's time to start getting ready for bed and Tyler still needs to practice for his big spelling test tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!

Contest Winner

We got the call from the grocery store yesterday....Tyler won the Halloween coloring contest for his age group (8-10). Yay! Wait...is the prize the same as last time, because that was a giant sugar bomb.

Indeed, it was the same prize: a 2-liter bottle of soda and a gallon of ice cream. Wowzers!

Trunk or Treat

Tonight was Trunk or Treat at Tyler's school so I fixed an early dinner and then the boys got dressed up and ready to go.

 

Tyler wanted to be a pirate this year so I just took the easy route and bought him a premade costume. I had planned to make an owl costume for Kyle, but then happened to come across a parrot  on clearance at Old Navy. It was meant to be.

Yay! The boys look so good! Never mind Tyler's running shoes or Kyle's slightly too small hat.

Not only was this our first year taking Tyler to Trunk or Treat, it was our first year participating in the event. We decorated our trunk with spiderwebs, lighted gauze, skeletons, pumpkins and a misting skull. Not too bad for our first try.

The neighbor to our right had their whole family dressed up as Star Wars characters: Chewbacca, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and little baby Yoda. They were a huge hit. HUGE.

The event started right at 6:00 and there was a constant stream of action for at least 30 mintues. So many kids! Way more than we were expecting.

They just kept coming and coming. It was a never ending line.

Phew! We made it through our first Trunk or Treat and only ran out of candy in the last 10 minutes. All in all it was a really good night!

Thompson's Farm

For the second year in a row we headed over to Thompson's Farm in Naches to pick out our pumpkins for Halloween. After our first trip we came to discover that it's WAY more expensive to go pick your own pumpkins rather than just buy them at the grocery store, but while the kids are still young we figured it's worth the expense to let them go and have the experience.

 

And we decided beforehand that we'd let the boys each pick out one medium sized pumpkin and that would be it. That way we wouldn't end up forking over $50 for pumpkins and we could spend our time doing some of the other activities on the farm like feeding the animals, the hay ride, corn maze or picking apples.

Kyle thinks he's so big that he wanted to carry his pumpkin all by himself. Actually he was filling the wheelbarrow with every pumpkin he could lift so we ended up having to put a bunch of them back in the field.

 

It recently occured to me that Tyler has finally grown out of that awkward smile phase he was going through where he would never actually look at the camera when I was taking his picture or he would just give me an odd smile. But unfortunately Kyle seems to have picked up right where Tyler left off because he suddenly hates when I take his picture, shouting NO...NO every time I point the camera in his direction and gives me a grumper's face.

Anyway, it didn't take too long to fill our wheelbarrow since there were so many good pumpkins to choose from. In fact Rick seemed to have forgotton all about our plan to stick with just two pumpkins.

So we paid for the pumpkins, brought them out to the car and then headed straight to the concession stand. Pumpkin doughnuts please.

Then we went to visit the chickens and the goats. Kyle offered up his mini pumpkin to the goat who started to bite at it through the fence, but then he pulled it back and kept it for himself.

Next Rick and Tyler joined forces at the walnut gun where you could win a free food item (doughnut or popcorn) if you could hit the target. Three tries, but no hit. No big deal. It was just for fun and we'd already eaten doughnuts anyway. Still, Tyler took the loss so hard that he had to go to the car for a time out just to recover.

Then we picked some apples.

And tried our best at the corn maze.

After going around and around in circles we finally went back out the entrance and called it a day.

Goodbye Fluffy

Our poor little Fluffy Bear died over the weekend. We only had him for around 4 months, so his death was unexpected and sad for the whole family.

 

The short story is that he got sick and never recovered, despite the fact that I took him to the vet and had given him medication for his illness. 

 

The vet never did diagnose him with 100% certainty, but she did prescribe a medicine to treat mites. The problem is that hamsters are considered an exotic pet and there are NO vets in our area that deal with exotic animals. We ended up taking Fluffy to our regular vet and she gave him Revolution, which is a standard flea treatment for dogs and cats. Instead of giving him an entire dose, she simply gave him one drop on his back and told us to reapply every 30 days until the product was gone, which would have probably lasted for 4-5 months. Well, he seemed to get somewhat better after the first application...he was itching less anyway, but then when I gave him the second application, he literally dropped dead the next day.

It's sad. I miss the little guy. A part of me wants to run right out and buy a new hamster to fill the void, but that's probably not the best idea. He was actually a lot more work to take care of than any of us were expecting and Tyler proved that he's not ready to care for his own pet. He let his responsibilities slide and I was the one who ended up taking care of the little guy. I'd do it all again though, if we could have him back. It just wasn't meant to be. ♥♥We love you Fluffy♥♥

Haircuts

The other day I asked Tyler if he remembered that time I took him to the salon to get his hair cut and he said, "Mom, I've never gone to the salon to get my hair cut".

 

That's almost a true statement. He's only been one time to get his hair cut professionally and he was less that a year old at the time, so I guess I shouldn't expect him to remember it. I've been cutting his hair ever since and that's really all he knows.

The same story goes for Kyle Bear. I took him to a barber shop up the street right around his first birthday and that's it, I've been cutting his hair ever since.

With Kyle there isn't really another option. He's extremely shy and nearly cries every time a stranger talks to him, so having a stranger cut his hair isn't going to happen again any time soon.

And for now our system of home haircuts is working out fine. My technique has improved over the years, so it doesn't take all that long, the boys don't complain much and they still come out looking handsome. No need to take them to the salon or barber shop just yet...I think I'll wait until they get a little bit older.

Two Boys, One Sweater

There's a 6 year age gap between Tyler and Kyle, so by the time Kyle was born we really didn't have anything left from Tyler's baby/toddler years. We'd already given away all his baby toys and clothes. We only kept a few things that had sentimental value, one of which was the UCLA Bruins sweatshirt that Tyler got from his Aunt Anni on his second birthday.

 

At this point we'd only been living in Yakima for just over 6 months and it was Anni's first year at UCLA. It's so funny looking back at this picture because as time goes by, I have fewer and fewer memories of Tyler at this age. It seems so long ago!

And now look at Kyle Bear...he fits into his big brother's old sweater perfectly.

The temperatures really cooled off around here toward the end of September so he's been getting a lot of use out of it. And doesn't he look handsome!