Another Booger Story

Driving home from my mom's house this afternoon, I hear Calvin say "Don't pick your boogers Luke." I look in the rearview mirror. Sure enough, Luke has his finger UP his nose. Calvin, again, "Luke, don't pick your boogers." Then Luke says "I'm not picking my boogers Calvin." I look back again - his finger is still in his nose. Calvin appears to be getting disgusted (can't imagine why, he's certainly picked enough boogers in his life...) and says in a very loud tone "Stop picking your boogers!!" To which Luke replies "I'm NOT! I'm just poking my boogers!"

Happy Birthday Gunner!

This is for my nephew, who turns 3 years old today. Happy Birthday Gunner! (And I'm not really sure what that last line of the song is...)

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!

Pumpkin Carving

Dave came home from Lowe's with a gigantic pumpkin last weekend and was very excited to carve it with the boys.
The boys, of course, were excited to help as well.

They were very intrigued by what was inside the pumpkin. However, neither one would reach inside to get the seeds out. I figured Calvin would be that way because he has never wanted to feel the inside of the pumpkin, but I was sure Luke would give it a try. Nope.

Okay, so really, the boys just watched as we de-pulped the pumpkin and Dave drew the face on. After that they were off to play while Dave painstakingly finished his intricate design. The finished product.

Now, had Dave asked, I would have told him it was very silly to carve a pumpkin 3 weeks before Halloween. But he was set on it and sure enough, after 6 days in the hot Texas sun (three days of a heat index in the 100's!), our pumpkin is sporting some fabulous mold. Oh well, we did enjoy some roasted pumpkin seeds. I guess we get to do this all over again!

Sea World Trip

Once again, thanks to the military, we enjoyed a nice weekend in San Antonio last weekend on one of Dave's cross country's. The boys and I drove up to San Antonio on Friday evening, picked Dave up at the airport, then headed to our hotel on the Riverwalk. We were kind of late getting in, so we checked in to the hotel and headed right out to eat. We took the boys to the Rainforest Cafe (Calvin's suggestion - he actually remembered it from last year when we were here). They enjoyed it, but Luke clung to me whenever the thunder started.

Saturday morning we got up and headed to Sea World early. Here is our before the park picture. I read somewhere to take a picture of your kids before going to a place like this - that way if they get lost, you have a photo of them in the clothes they are wearing.

I felt like the boys were at a great age to really enjoy all of the things Sea World had to offer. Our first stop was feeding the dolphins. This was probably my favorite part of the day. You buy a tray of fish, and the dolphins come right up to you to eat. You can touch them as you feed them. I had never felt a dolphin before and I thought it was really neat. I probably could have stayed there an hour and not got tired of it. Calvin, on the other hand, was too scared and wouldn't try feeding them.

That's me, with the boys watching.

After feeding the dolphins and seeing the shark tanks, we headed to the water park portion of Sea World. We lucked out, as this was the last weekend the water park was open. A cold front came through the week before, but temperatures were back up in the 90's by Saturday. Some of the water was really cold, but the boys didn't seem to mind. There was a splash park with lots of squirters and dump buckets, a wave pool, a lazy river, and several water slides. Calvin got to go down two different slides, but Luke was too little for those. Dave and I took turns watching the boys so we could have a chance to go down the slides as well. I am scared of and will not go on roller coasters, but I really like water slides, so this was alot of fun.

After snacktime and getting changed, we headed to the Shamu show. Both of the boys were pretty impressed with this one.

Next we picked up some frozen lemonades, then went to see the penguins. They have an exhibit with a conveyer belt going by that you ride on as you watch the penguins (we rode several times). It was even snowing in the penguin exhibit. After the penguins we went to the Sea Lion show - a "mystery" featuring three sea lions and a gigantic walrus, then went to feed the sea lions.

Calvin actually gave this one a try, since the sea lions were far below us and he just had to drop the food down to them. Next we hit the kids area, which has games and rides just for the little ones. Calvin and I rode the Shamu Express, a kiddie roller coaster that he had been dying to go on all day. Then the boys (and Dave) went and crawled all around on this giant rope play area (I am really lacking in pictures).

Our final stop of the day was the "Viva" show. This was a really neat performance combining divers, synchronized swimmers, beluga whales, and dolphins. Its almost like a circus in the pool. We all liked this one as well, but were worn out after a long day.

We got to Sea World at 10 in the morning and left at 6:30. After grabbing some dinner at Pizza

Hut, we headed back to our room, where I expected the boys to crash out. Instead, they were up for some playtime and a late night snack. Notice their red cheeks and noses. They had on sunscreen, but I guess I didn't get that area too well.

And a video recap of the day. As you can see, Calvin liked everything and Luke, well...