Thanksgiving Feast

Alex had a Thanksgiving Feast at his preschool on Tuesday, which turned out to be pretty cute! The kids all dressed up as pilgrims or Indians and, honestly, what is more cute that that?!

Alex was a pilgrim, although Nick pointed out that he kind of looks like a bishop, too.













The kids all sat on the floor "criss-cross applesauce" as they say in preschool. The had each made a place mat that included the ubiquitous hand-print turkey. Alex's was very realistic and included a sun in a blue sky and some grass for the turkey to run on. He's in his realism period...











Alex all seated and ready for the feast to begin--isn't our little pilgrim cute?!













The feast was a preschool dream come true with cheese curls, cookies, cold-cut turkey rolls, potato chips and apple slices...for once Alex ate everything on his plate!

This is the video of Alex singing the two Thanksgiving songs that they had learned for the occasion. Again I have to say, "How cute is this!?"

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!!!