Fall Family Pictures

Thanks Kate and Jess for the great pictures and fun time - it's not an easy task with our crew!

Boo!

Introducing our extremely random 2009 Halloween costumes! We tried to convince the boys to go as a basketball team (hence Bart in the referee shirt - he still went with it) or Kung Fu Panda's furious five (but I couldn't find furious five character costumes and I was not quite crazy enough to make 5 of them - almost, but not quite). So we have Ichiro and Griffey Jr., a Power Ranger Police Dog, a cute little Pumpkin and a Duck. But everyone was all smiles. We had a great night trick-or-treating in the clear, crisp fall weather, and finished off the night with our traditional home-made donuts and cider (no pictures of the grub this year).

Luke and cousing Bauer getting a taste of their first Halloween. Cuteness!

Preschool Party Time

Bo stressed me out a bit with his costume this year. As most 4 year olds do, he changed his mind every other day about what he wanted to be. We finally settled on a cowboy (or so I thought), which we had an adorable costume of. The morning of his preschool party he refused to wear it...and those who know Bo, know that he is one strong-headed kid. I tried all of my usual tactics to convince this stubborn child of mine, and then decided that a sad cowboy wasn't very cute anyways - so I caved - and we managed to find this Power Ranger police dog costume in the bin that fit - and he was THRILLED! Not that you can tell from his pictures at the preschool party. Remember how I said he was stubborn - that goes for everything, including smiling for pictures. I was just glad that he was happy and very grateful that day for older brothers and hand-me down costumes.

Pumpkin Night

Caden became a pro this year with the carving knife...and did quite well on his tombstone design.

Mom and Bo had fun carving Mike Wazouski (Monsters Inc.) together - our pumpkin even won a prize at the church Halloween party!

Tyler did his own jack-o-lantern desing and carving completely solo - and you can tell how proud he was.

A spooky doorstep it will be at our house on Halloween!

Would you smile?

...if you had to eat this mush??
Luke has started on solid foods. I'm a little heartbroken over it to think my baby is already that old.

He caught on quick. Now he goes like a pro.

He gets this concerned look if I take too long in between bites.

It's not so bad, especially when the apples are added! Good job Lukers.

Pumpkin Patch

Me and the 2 "littles" (we have the "bigs" (Cade and Ty) the "middle" (Bo) and the "littles" (Cole and Luke) at our house) joined Bo for his Preschool Pumpkin Patch fieldtrip to Baggenstos farm. It was a gorgeous fall day and went quite well for this outnumbered mom! The boys loved posing for pictures in front of the signs.

Cole wasn't too sure of the tractor hay ride, but he managed to share my lap with Luke and settled into smiling quickly.

The farm moves their pumpkins from the patch they are grown to a nice clean field, perfectly suited for helping little ones find the perfect one. We only had to pick out 1 extra pumpkin this year since we grew 3 others in our garden this summer.

My little pumpkin hunters loving the hundreds and hundreds of beautiful orange pumpkins!