Some Pre-Halloween pics

Some pics of my cuties! From my phone, so not the best quality. 

 We went to our club last night for their Halloween event. My parents came along too which was fun. They had a wonderful buffet, haunted house, pumpkin painting, and more. The kids had fun! They had two dinners....the 5:30pm was for little ones and the 7:30pm was for bigger kids. They added more scary stuff to the haunted house for the later seating. Above is Jack on his way with his Elmo bucket! 

 Jack and "Peepaw" as he calls him. No clue where that came from. Or he just calls him "Tom" which is funny too. I think it's just easy for him to say. If you point a camera at him he turns on this smile and it's so cute! I love this picture :)

 Pirate Hunter eating his dessert. 

 Trying to scare Nana with his "Rrrrrrr" pirate noises. 

 My mom and dad...it was fun to have them come (and to have the help too--ha!)

 Eating dessert :)

This is random, but Hunter likes an audience to read to. It was SO CUTE the other night he said "can Chopper lay on my bed so I can read my story one more time?"....love it! This was at 6am yesterday morning....everyone up and in Hunter's bed reading while I took a quick shower. 

Happy Halloween. Hoping the rain holds off so we can go out tonight with another family and go trick-or-treating!! 

 

Iphone photo dump from the weekend

Our weekend was exhausting, so I have no energy to blog, but have lots of pictures from my phone :)

 We took the kids to "Trunk or Treat" at St. Paul's yesterday. It was cold, but awesome b/c it was not crowded, I saw lots of MOPS friends, and we were in and out in 30 minutes with lots of candy--ha! Hunter got lots of compliments on his costume. 

 Jack was so cute too....he didn't have his mask on, but those pics are on my phone. He was so funny choosing his candy! 

 I was desperate to wear the kids out while Nick was out of town. At soccer and basketball they play this game called "the shark and the minnow" and "farmer and the fox"....we played that till they were sweating. They are not dead for real, just dead tired. Success!!  

 Ok, seriously, is this not the cutest little soccer player EVER? Ha! Of course on the last day he had the most fun and participated more than any other time. It starts a new session again next week though :)

 Going to get his trophy and certificate :)

 He was so proud of himself and of course I was proud too! 

 

 Afterwards Hunter, Jack, and Tyler (cousin) all sat with their trophies for a group picture....so cute! 

 After basketball/soccer on Saturday the kids played out in the cold with the "birthday tractor" as Hunter calls it. Jack never used to want to ride it, but now he likes it! 

 They enjoy chasing me the most and trying to run me over. I'm just happy they are playing together! 

Hope you had a good weekend. Ours was ok, busy, exhausting, and I hate going to work Monday feeling more tired than I did on Friday afternoon!! 

Quick Takes

1) We got the kids school pictures finally. I think they turned out ok. Hunter's grin is fitting---very devilish and that is him lately. Jack looks cute! The quality is not good b/c I took pics of the pics with my cell phone. 

2) Nick is out of town and it stinks!! We decided to get carry out from Olga's last night and have a picnic. I asked Hunter where he wanted to have a picnic and he said the front porch. So the front porch it was. They had a great time. I felt a little goofy, but whatever. 

3) Last night  I was exhausted. I ran all day long and my feet and back hurt. I was ready for bed early and the kids were too. Confession: sometimes a 30 minute tv induced coma is not a bad thing. See below. We also baked mini-cupcakes which were a hit. Just to have 30 minutes of peace before bed was nice!

 4) This morning we made smoothies. They always play this game to see who can make the biggest "smoothie mustache". 

5) Yesterday we met my friend and photographer at Cobblestone for pictures of the boys. What a day for pictures--80 degrees!! Julie came along to help me change clothes, etc. Julie and Jack are below. I have next to NO pictures of her with the kids. I think this was a cute one.
I am beyond excited to see the pictures. I don't know how I"ll choose b/c I know they are going to look awesome....Jack with his cheesy smile and Hunter was doing the fake smile thing, but it is what it is. Can't wait!! I'm sure they will be our Christmas cards this year! 

 6) All in all yesterday was good. The boys were decent for pictures. They had a fun picnic, went to bed early, and I crashed early too. Tonight I'm going to dinner with a friend and tomorrow night we have a Halloween party. Nick has been gone a lot and I'm getting mad...he's been to Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, and is in Arizona now...all in the last month. I think I'm a married single mom and he doesn't get how hard it is! 

Have a great weekend!! 

EXCITING STUFF!

I mentioned a couple of months ago that the boys were asked to be in My Urban Toddler's fall clothing catalog. Well, the owner texted me and told me the catalog was in yesterday, so OF COURSE I drove to the store today to pick up some copies. I had asked a few friends to keep an eye out for them in the mail, but since they were sitting out at the store, I snagged 4 copies--ha! Nana had requested one and I wanted a few for us :) 

  Cover of the catalog

Jack doesn't look so great here, but oh well :) Hunter did great not giving his "fake" smile...I was proud of him! Hunter's sweatshirt was $60 and Jack's shirt $32. Not sure I can afford their clothes--LOL. I'm just cheap b/c they grow like weeds and ruin everything! However, as a side note, I did finally invest in nice tennis shoes for the kids. I ordered these adorable adidas ones for Jack and some grey/orange New Balance for Hunter from Zappos. They were $40 or so each which is a lot if you ask me, but not seeing Hunter in ugly tennis shoes and Jack getting quite possibly his second new pair of shoes (instead of hand-me-downs) has drastically improved my quality of life. Pathetic, but true. It was embarrassing. I never knew a cute pair of tennis shoes would improve 

 This was a full page--the only full page picture in the catalog and one of the best! 

 Another of Hunter modeling this shirts ($54 in case you wanted to know-ha!)

The most exciting thing about today....Hunter can read!!! He has been sounding out words and word building since last year, but he is really doing awesome now!! He got to bring home his first book from school yesterday. They send home a book, large envelope, and signature sheet that we say we listened to him read. He read it to Julie, Hannah, Nick and me. This morning he was SO excited to have daddy and mommy listen to him read the whole book while Jack was still asleep. Nick and I were SO proud of him!!! I hope he loves to read as much as we do. I have not been so proud of him in a long time and it's so cool to see how excited and proud he is! Guess what Nick said? "Well, this makes the tuition bill worth it. That principal told me he'd be reading like a second grader in kindergarten" ha! 

I can't wait for him to bring home more books and read to us all the time!! 

Wiard's Orchard

A couple of weekends ago we went to Wiard's Orchard. My good friend Hillary gave us passes...she works there with her family :) It's actually funny b/c when I first became friends with her I didn't put it together until someone else pointed out "Her last name is Wiard"...do you get it? Duh. Anyway, her hubby is on daddy duty ALL FALL LONG since she works a lot during the season. We met up with Frank and their kids to play for a bit. It was LOTS of fun! Hunter actually had a field trip there and his teacher said he was the "class leader" on the hayride telling all the kids what was coming up next. They all thought Hunter was so cool for knowing everything and I'm sure Hunter felt cool for knowing everything--ha! Although he said the best part of the field trip was riding the bus (supposedly the best day of his life too). 

 I'm proud that my kids are willing to try fun and sometimes scary things! They are always up for anything--Jack just wants to be like Hunter and Hunter will do anything! The kid is going to be a tubing maniac next summer on my parent's new pontoon boat--which goes super fast!! I'm worried just thinking about it!! 

 Playing on this treehouse thing. Gotta love the smile! 

We took the fire truck ride too. The kids loved the dog and the siren the best! 

Thanks Hillary :) I think I can repay her by holding Gabby at our MOPS meetings :)

 

Random cuteness from my boys

I live with four boys. A husband, two kids, and the dog. I need a girl--ha! We went to the mall on Sunday just to get out of the house. We didn't want to leave the dog alone since he came home Saturday morning and was still not doing that great, but we were a little stir crazy, so we just went out for a bit. Here are my boys drinking their smoothies. No one wanted to sit with me--not even mama's boy Jack :( 

They are a handsome bunch if I do say so myself! 

 Chopper came with me to work Monday and Tuesday. This is crazy, but Monday when he came in he went and sat next to my cousin, Connie who works here. She said "he can be my guard dog". I said that was a good idea in case this creepy client Mr. Smith (not his real name of course) comes in. He's 64 and asked her out--she's under 30. Yuck. She comes and hangs out hiding from him any time he comes in! I said Chopper could attack him. CRAZY PART? That client actually came in the next day!!! I could not believe it--we were not expecting him and it was a huge coincidence b/c it's not like he comes in often or anything. AND Chopper did NOT like him. He barked and growled at him. Dogs have a sense about things and I could tell Chopper did not like this guy...I knew he was weird and my dog confirmed it. I think I'm also psychic. 

 Halloween costume preview...our handsome little astronaut!!! I know I am biased, but Jack gets cuter by the day. He has this new cheesy smile he does every time I have the camera. Nick has pictures at the same age looking the same why--huge smile and eyes squinting. 

 We went out to dinner to celebrate my mom's bday last Friday night and everyone came back to our house after to play cards. Jack giving Gigi kisses before I took him up to bed. 

 I randomly pulled out the camera last weekend to take some pics of Jack. He's riding this thing around the house with no pants on b/c we are trying hard to work on using the potty. The kid is just not motivated to use the potty, but he only wears underwear at "school", so we were working more on it this weekend. 

 Seriously, if his face were not so dirty, he would be the cutest ever! I just love his smile, teeth, chubby cheeks, etc. I love this kid!!! 

 The super cheese...

 Smiling so big he can't keep his eyes open :)

Silly guy--I just love him so much and can't get enough of him. He's the sweetest...and knock on wood, but he's almost three with no case of the terrible two's! The worst thing he does is calls Hunter a "baby" and you'd think it was a swear word. He yells it at him like it's so mean...and it does make Hunter mad. Other than that, he's just the sweetest unless he's listening to his brother and doing things he shouldn't...but he's just trying to be like his older brother.