Happy Halloween!

This year Alex dressed up as Mickey Mouse and Andrew was a pumpkin--cutie pies both!


Alex is really into Mickey Mouse right now so he decided he wanted to be him for Halloween. The ears on the costume even squeaked!










These are all our neighborhood friends all dressed up before the trick-or-treating began.

Both the boys before we headed out. This is one of the few pictures of Andrew posing--he was running around like a wild man! He loved the trick or treating!

Checking out the loot...Andrew loves Smarties now. He actually found a roll of them yesterday that Alex had rejected. I hear from the other room "Mmmmm! Mmmmm!!!" and the crackle of the wrapper. I went in to see what he was doing and he smiled at me with about 10 Smarties in his mouth!

Pumpkin Carving

OK, so I'm (again) a little behind on posting the Halloween festivities but, oh well. Better late than never, right? (Those of you who know me well know that being late is the bane of my existence and this is killing me. Again, I will plead "Oh well" and act like I don't care! :) )

ANYWAY, we carved our two pumpkins the night before Halloween, one white and one orange. Alex was particularly excited about the pumpkin goo, which he learned on a field trip was called "pulp." Of course, when he says it, it comes out sounding more like "poop," which you'll hear in the video. Very funny when he says pumpkin pulp (poop).

Here is Alex assisting me in taking out the pumpkin innards. Andrew looked on with great interest and even sampled the pulp, as you can see in this picture. He spit it out right away. Nice.

Here is the master pumpkin-carver with his creations all lit up. And he's even smiling a real smile and looking at the camera--it's a Halloween miracle!

Our sweet Andrew

Our sweet Andrew turned 18 months on the 10th, if you can believe that! He just had is well child checkup and weighed 30 pounds, which is the 95th percentile and was greater than the 100th percentile for height! He is in 3T clothes already, too. Biggie boy!!!

He's a very good eater and is already eating all the same foods as the rest of the family. He is also a huge fan of milk and runs around 90% of the day asking for "Mik? Mik?" He leaves the "L" out of milk, which is pretty cute, at least the first 200 times!

He is also very coordinated and runs, goes up and down steps and throws a ball very well. His favorite sport currently seems to be basketball and he loves to put the ball through the hoop and say "two points!" (or something like that!) He also is a big Colts fan and is quoted saying "Go Colts!" anytime he sees anything with a Colts horseshoe on it.

IKEA, Land of Happy Money-Spenders!

On October 4th, Allison and I took a day pilgrimage to IKEA in Cincinnati. This was my first trip there and oh what a great place it is! As Allison said in her blog, I have never seen so many people so happy to spend so much money! People are just giddy pulling around these giant carts full of Swedish furniture and decor! If you haven't gone, I can truly recommend, even if its just for the people watching! Its an experience, for sure.




This is us just as we arrived (we're in the lower right corner--not so good with the timer on the camera yet!). The parking lot there is enormous and reminds me a bit of an amusement park--there are numbers to remind you of where you parked and everything! People come from all over to pay their respects to The Great IKEA god and there were license plates from many states.






We brought Katie along with us for the girls day out and she is already a shopping pro! We were there for 6 hours (yes, I said SIX HOURS!) and she was an angel the whole time. And she even slept for the car ride there and home. This picture was taken in the little cafe they have for your convenience. Being a Swedish company, they serve delicious Swedish meatball as well as ligenberries, although I have no idea what those are. They tasted good, though!




Allison and I each bought huge toy organizers which now grace our respective playrooms. I got a few other (OK a lot of other!) items for the home and even managed to buy some yummy cinnamon rolls for the boys back home. Yea IKEA!!!

Fall Festival

Well, we've been so busy these past few weeks making family memories that I haven't had any time to share them! So over the next few days I intend to catch everyone up on our fun fall!

Last Saturday our church had a fall festival that was a ton of fun. Alex was on the verge of catching a cold so he wasn't quite his normal self but other than that, we all had a blast.

Here is a family photo that we had taken. Alex is doing his usual picture thing and not smiling but he is at least looking at the camera. AND its a rare photo with me in it! It's kind of like when you see a picture that is supposed to be Bigfoot..is that really Amy or is it just someone dressed up like her??! Wait...did I just compare myself to Bigfoot??? Humm...

Andrew's favorite part of the festival was the mini-bounce house. He would bounce twice and then get out--no small undertaking!--and then get back in and repeat this 50 times. He got the biggest kick out of it, though, so who am I to judge?!

A few of my friends from MOPS joined us with their kids at the festival and they all had a great time with all the fall activities. The mini-maze (think a corn maze without the corn and much simpler) was a huge hit with the preschool crowd. This is a picture of Alex and Katie racing through the maze.

Just as the sun was setting we got to go on a nice long hayride through the lovely autumn countryside.












The thumb sucking brothers...









That evening the band that normally plays for Sunday services played and Andrew was a maniac dancing right in front of the amps! The video I have of it is super dark so I can't upload it here but our little man was dancing like a fool! We were afraid he would go deaf because the music was so loud right in front of the speakers but he appears to be fine. Next week, I'm sure he'll be stage diving at some concert...