Since the Christmas decorations are up, it's about time I put up pictures of Halloween! We went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood, meeting some new neighbors, and that was about all Caleb and Levi wanted to do. John took Ian to the mall after that, where they had trick or treating, and he saw some friends from school and thought that was fun. Caleb liked the candy, after I let him have some that night and said he couldn't have any more, he said, "but there's still three treats in my bucket!"
Caleb was Piglet and Levi was Winnie the Pooh. There are a lot of pictures here but I put on these first two because of how similar their expressions are! I guess they are identical :)
And here is Ian, the ghost. He decided he wanted to be a ghost long before Halloween and never changed his mind.
I put these next two on because I realized Caleb matched his bedroom wall......
and Levi matched the door! I didn't feel like looking through old pictures to find Ian matching our old yellow kitchen wall, but he did when he was a toddler :)
We also worked on cleaning out our yard. There are so many trees right by the house - one had ruined the shingles - and many bushes we want out, like the really thorny one that got Caleb one day and he couldn't move. Plus if we want a garden spot we need some out. Someday I will post pictures of before and after, but this is taking some of it to the recycling place. There is a leaf/outdoor trimmings recycling center, and we hauled many many bags of branches and leaves there, all in the van. I could get 5 tall paper leaf bags in there, trying not to poke Levi too badly.
This is what Ian did in November, even when his brothers were playing practically on his head!
He loves to read, and is reading fairly well. He likes
The Magic Tree House books and
The Magic School Bus books, especially if they're related to space or inside your body.
For some reason they like playing while laying down.....
And this is Ian coming in for the finish in his school's "Turkey Trot." They put everyone on teams (it was voluntary I believe, but the PE teacher signed up all the first graders) with one child per grade per team. The 6th grader on each team was the captain. Then they raced by grade, all the first graders, who are each on different teams, then the second graders, etc. It had snowed and then was melting, I'm surprised more kids didn't slip and fall. He said his team captain did (I only stayed for the first and second graders, Caleb and Levi weren't liking it). They raced around the school yard, a pretty good distance. I'm very proud of Ian for finishing, partway through he started to cry but he kept on running and finished! He was 53 out of what he said were 60 teams. Then the team captain added up the scores of all the team members, and the team with the lowest number won. Each member of the team got a turkey. Ian's team got 202, I don't know what the winning score was.
And finally, here are the cornucopias we made. Well, John didn't make one but the rest of us did. It was pretty fun, they are made with bread sticks and they all did really well with it! Then we made salt dough fruits and vegetables, then painted them. We had a quiet Thanksgiving, with an abbreviated Thanksgiving menu since it was just us and not much food is consumed by the majority of the family members. It was a relaxing and nice holiday.
Still playing "Santa" for most of the month - or two santas, as the case may be, with two nice reindeer. It's amazing how fireman coats look a lot like santa coats, too! Santas with the nice pumpkin in the background - that also finally got cooked!
Caleb started reading the paper. He's very intent. The front page article? The building of a new store, and there was a huge picture of the excavators digging :)
Then, it was warm enough for yard work. John took out two trees in the front.
