More Halloween Pictures!

Halloween

I know you'll never believe that I have pictures from Halloween already, but here's a preview of what's to come. The boys had a great time trick-or-treating! We took one trip around the block just going on one side of the street with the intention of going back around on the other side. However, Adam announced that he wanted to go home before we went around the second time, and we couldn't talk him into going farther. I think he just wanted to head home to look at his booty...as soon as we got in, he started organizing his treats. He and Andrew also taste tested a few items. Dan and I were laughing, because we remembered trying to race around to houses to collect as much candy as we could. We'd even go home and drop off candy so we could start fresh again. I'm sure he'll grasp that concept soon. Not to say that he didn't have a great time...he was running around and really got the idea of saying, "Trick-or-Treat" at each house and saying, "Thank You"...although the last one was often said as he was turning away to head to the next house. Before we left, he was singing, "Trick-or-Treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat", so I was waiting for him to say that at one of the houses. Andrew also had a good time...he rode in the wagon and then Dan took him up to each of the houses for candy. He tried to eat several pieces of candy through the wrapper, and had great fun waving and saying, "Bye" to people. I think he was ready to keep going when Adam wanted to go home!

Final Camping Trip

Well, I'm sure no one is even looking at my blog anymore since it's been over a month since I last updated. I'm sure you think we've disappeared off the face of the earth...but we're still here. Adam is still loving preschool! Every morning, he wakes up and asks if he's going to preschool that day. One day a couple of weeks ago, Andrew was sick and for some reason Adam thought that was the reason he wasn't going to preschool (it wasn't...it just wasn't his day to go). Anyway, he kept asking every couple of minutes if Andrew was better yet :-). My mom, sister, and nephew Aaron came to visit us also for about a week. I'm sure I'll never get around to posting pictures from that, so I'll have to add the link to Sandra's blog so you can see what she posted about it.

Anyway, the weekend after they left (the first weekend of October), we went camping for the last time this year. For the last 2 years, we've gone to a campground about an hour from us for the Halloween festivities. However, we left it to the last minute this year to book our site, since it looked like it was going to rain all weekend, so the campground was full. I had to call several places to find an open spot, and we ended up trying a campground that was only about a half hour away. We were rather leery to camp so close to the city, but it ended up being really nice. We may switch and go there again next year. The weather was also beautiful (actually very warm for October...high 80's and no rain). We were laughing that we needed to use the air conditioning on the camper more in October than June, July, and August combined.

It was a wonderful trip...the boys decorated pumpkins, they went in the lake (in their clothes, since we forgot swimsuits...who thought you could swim in October???), Andrew went on a wagon ride (Adam was too busy swimming), they competed in a costume contest (where Andrew won 2nd in his age category), and they went trick-or-treating. They also had a site decorating contest, so we enjoyed walking around and looking at everyone's sites (we're too busy chasing after our boys to decorate!!). Here are some pictures from that weekend...

Really Busy!

Since I haven't written anything in about a week and half, it probably looks like we haven't been doing anything, but we've actually been really busy. Adam is loving preschool, and so am I. I was able to go grocery shopping much more smoothly today....I wasn't chasing Adam around the store :-). I also love the fact that he is doing so many different things at school. He keeps telling me that he's not making any friends, but I find that really hard to believe from my Adam. He can usually make friends with anyone! Anyway, we've been busy with AWANA starting at church and birthday parties and going to the zoo. Would you believe I didn't take a single picture when we went to the zoo on Sat. I brought my camera, but I didn't feel like pulling it out. I guess when you have a zoo membership, it's old hat...I do have tons of zoo pictures already this year. I guess you can only scrapbook so many animal pages.

Well, I'm going to add a couple of random pictures from the last couple of weeks. The first picture is a picture of the boys eating raisins. It was funny how I got the picture...they were both sitting on the chair and I pulled out my camera. Of course, Adam then decides to get off. So, I told him that it was fine, because I was going to take pictures of just Andrew (and started doing so). Of course, he then decided to get back up :-). The second picture is of Andrew standing on the coffee table. He has been climbing on EVERYTHING..the couch, the kitchen table, the coffee table. It was so cute when he got up on the coffee table and started dancing. I had to take a picture before I told him, "No" and got him down :-).

1st Day of Preschool

Today was Adam's first day of preschool. He was soooo excited (and so was I). Today was a shortened day where he and I both went in for just an hour. He'll go again on Tuesday for a shortened hour by himself, and then he's going to start at his regular schedule.

As soon as he woke up (at 7:15), he was asking if it was time to go to school yet. I said we had to wait for John and his mom to come over to watch Andrew, and he kept asking if they were there yet. I really like his teachers and the other parents seem nice. Adam already made friends with a little girl while playing. He was so cute when they lined up to go to the play area. He put his hands behind his back, like they've taught him in his class at church. They asked each of the kids to draw a self-portrait, and Adam drew a little stick figure (even though at home, I have a hard time getting him to draw anything!).

I took some pictures, but because he was excited, he was easily distracted (which means he wouldn't look at me). I blurred some of the details in the pictures for privacy.

More Camping Pictures

One of the days that we were camping, we visited another state park that had an "Old Growth" forest - that means that it wasn't cut down during the logging in the late 1800's/early 1900's. When we arrived at the visitor center, there was a guided tour going out in a couple of minutes, so we joined the group. The entire path through this section of the forest was paved to allow for wheelchairs, but it was perfect for the stroller, too. It was really neat to see the old forest and the way the state would have looked without all the logging. Plus, some of the trees were several hundred years old...it was neat to imagine that the tree was around before the U.S. became a country.

There was a logging museum back in the woods that was built by the CCC during the Depression that was very interesting. I had never really thought about the effects of logging in the state. Obviously, we need wood, but they didn't consider the effects of cutting down all the trees in an area. To their credit, they did think that the areas where they logged would then be converted to farmland.

Anyway, we loved this state park...we had lunch down by the playground and drove through the campground. We are planning on camping there next year! I have tons of pictures from this day, so I think I'll just add the forest and logging camp pictures and save the playground pictures for later!
A church in the middle of the "Old Growth" forest

The logging museum. This was a wheel that was invented so they could pull the logs year-round.

Camping Trip

I feel really bad that I've been neglecting the blog for so long. We were gone for about a week camping, and then...I had so many pictures I didn't know where to start in editing them. So, I decided that I would just start with a couple of pictures and post them today and keep adding more pictures as the day/week goes.

We went camping for a week with the boys up north. This is the longest that we've been camping with the boys since Adam was born. We usually go for about 4-5 nights, but this was 7 nights. We had a great time...the area is much different from home, so it really felt like we got away. The boys were wonderful...if not tons of work! Dan and I were exhausted at the end of the day trying to keep up with them! We went on lots of walks to the lake and to see the other campground in the state park. The boys were always a huge dirty mess...but they loved it! We even got a big rainshower one day, and Adam was allowed to run around through the rain and puddles to his hearts content (Andrew was napping or he would have gone also). He's always wanted to do that! I guess I'll have to get him some galoshes :-).

The first set of pictures are just some general play around the campsite pictures. You can see how dusty our site was...and how the boys got so dirty! It rained the second night, so it wasn't so dusty the rest of the week (but it can get muddy awfully quick!). I also included a couple of pictures of the boys doing what Gramma C. has named, "Fish Face". Andrew likes to scream and then go into fish face, and when we try to capture it on camera, Adam has to contribute also. I'm also including a picture of our camper.