November Activities

Reading other people's blogs and seeing pictures of changing leaves and evidence of real Fall, I have been quite jealous. As you can see from the picture below, it's not cold here. One afternoong the boys were playing in the backyard and I was cleaning out the toy box. I went inside to get dinner ready, noticed they were playing in the water hose, then saw Luke pulling off his clothes and diaper. I went out to see what was going on and the boys informed me that they were going swimming and needed their swimsuits. Properly attired, they then splashed about in their homemade "pool".

Calvin has always loved to read stories before bedtime. Lately I have been letting him stay up with the light on and look at books until he is ready to go to sleep. He loves this, although I'm starting to rethink it. Some nights he will stay up for an hour reading. I go into check on him and he has books spread all over his bedroom floor. Normally when he is done he will lay down and pull his blankets up over him and go to sleep. One night when I went to check on him I found this:

It's like he was going to reach for one more book and just got so tired and passed out in the process.

Another night we took the boys to "Santa's Arrival" at the mall. It was neat, but it was SO crowded. They had coloring activities, milk and cookies, a visit with Mrs. Claus, music, Curious George, Care Bears, and ballet dancers. Unfortunately, the line to see Santa was so long that we didn't even bother. Calvin was upset, but has since been back to the mall to give Santa his "list" (which only consists of 3 items, thankfully!). We did get a picture of the boys with Mrs. Claus though.

Calvin went to a great pirate themed birthday party at the CC science and history museum, complete with a scavenger hunt, and we ended up with these pirate costumes that the boys had a great time with. Could it be next year's Halloween costume?

Calvin had his last soccer game this month. It was really amazing to watch him during the last game and think of the first game he ever played and what a difference there was. He actually got better in just two short months. And although his real love was playing goalie, he did pretty good on the field. I managed to get a video of him almost scoring a goal. He actually did score one shortly after I shot this video. In case you can't tell, Cal is number ten (or the one with with his shirt tucked in and shorts pulled up to his armpits - his doing, not mine!)

Halloween

Halloween was spent at our house again this year and I'm very happy to say that Dave managed to be at home for the first Halloween since Calvin was born! After dinner, both boys were ready to get into their costumes and go trick-or-treating.

Here is my niece Claire, in her first ever Halloween costume. What a cute little pea pod!

Calvin was a brave knight and Luke was a fearsome dragon. Calvin HAD to have the costume that came with a helmet, but of course, he refused to wear it to trick-or-treat. The dinosaur/dragon costume was actually a one piece outfit that Calvin wore for his first Halloween - when he was 7 months old! I was going to sell it, but Luke loved it and just wanted to be a dragon, so I (well, my mom, actually) cut off the legs and made it wearable for a two year old. Luke got into the whole dragon theme and was actually walking up to people and "roaring" instead of "trick-or-treating"... Luckily they all laughed and thought it was funny.

Mimi and the grandkids - all dressed up.

Well, I guess we all got into it this year and had to dress up a bit.

Luke was very excited about getting candy and walked right up to those doors with his bucket.

Some neighbors had this sign in their yard so we posed the boys in front for a picture. Luke stared up into the tree, then pointed and said "Look, its the bobo brothers" (from Diego). I'm really not sure what he was talking about, but it was amusing.

It was a fun night with just enough trick-or-treating for all involved. The boys had buckets full of candy and got to eat quite a few pieces. The next day they wanted more candy. I let them each pick out 5 pieces and told them they could eat them whenever they wanted, but that was it for the day. Of course, they both ate them all right away, but they didn't really ask for more after that. I put their candy up in my room and "out of sight, out of mind" seemed to pay off because they never really asked for it again. And that is what I call a successful Halloween!

Fall Fun

Okay, it's almost Thanksgiving and I figured I'd better get around to my fall activities or they might never get done. In mid-October I got to the take the boys to the fall festival at a local church. There were lots of games, inflatables, and food. There was a puppet show, a hay ride, and a pumpkin patch. We had a great time and stayed for over three hours! Here are the boys picking out some pumpkins.

They also had face painting. What does Calvin ask for? A snake, of course. Not long after she started, the face painter (a church volunteer) asked him if he knew Jesus...

A week later, while Calvin was in school, I got to take Luke to the pumpkin patch all by himself for storytime. Of course, he had to pick out another pumpkin.

He loved this scarecrow and "hung out" with him for about 10 minutes.
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Can you tell he just had a haircut? Yes, we are in our shorts and t-shirts. There's really no such thing as "fall" in south Texas!