Halloween 08

Loads of fun trick or treating last night!! The boys started off with a very cool party at a neighbor's house and it was nothing but fun, candy, friends, etc. the rest of the night. Last year they only trick-or-treated 2 courts in our neighborhood (actually, Ethan managed 3 but Elliott was done and ready to eat the candy after two). But this year they totally understood that the more houses you trick-or-treat, the more candy you get! So they did as many as they could.

Elliott was Optimus Prime. Ethan was a Clone Trooper. Brian had this great creative idea to dress as an AIG executive - lots of laughs with that one. And I went as Sarah Palin - thank you to Tracy for most of my costume (and you can't see it in the picture but I carried Elliott's toy rifle around with me, too - very fun!!)

my protectors

Brian was out of town this weekend and that usually means lots of mixed emotions. Missing him a lot, yet glad to have a little time alone once the boys go down for the night. And typically I end up staying up until like 2am doing things like photo editing, organizing, scrapbooking, or sometimes just watching tv - just things I don't normally do at night when he's here. It seems too quiet when he's not here so I try to occupy myself with things to do until I'm just so tired I have to go to bed and then just fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow. That way I don't have to think about every little noise I hear, etc. But this time I didn't need to be anxious about being alone! Why?

For one thing, the boys thought they should "sleep" (in quotes cause there wasn't all that much sleeping) in my bed with me, so there was no being alone and I couldn't hear any noises over all the noise they made moving around all night.

And more importantly, the boys were more than happy to protect me with all of their weapons and ammunition they've collected over the past few months. I'm pretty sure they only fight people named "Grievous" and "Megatron" and "Darth Vader" from what I overhear from their battle dialogue...

And if there just happened to be any bad guys at the pumpkin patch today.......

this cowboy and his gang of good ol' boys would chase them away in their speedy John Deere!

What more protection could a mom possibly need?

fun new decoration

Most of you know that Brian takes the wheel when it comes to Halloween decorations....I've tried unsuccessfully to have the cute jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches, etc. No. It has to be scary. So I haven't even bothered to get anything out this year besides the fall wreath on the door. But when Ethan and I saw this cute haunted house-type ornament display with the Peanuts characters we thought we'd try again. I love it and the boys had the best time putting the ornaments on. Even Brian said he liked it....there's just something about Charlie Brown that you can't not like him!

Ethan's 4th Birthday

Ethan had a very full birthday this year....Erin, Ryan and Eli were here visiting so they got to share birthday pancakes with us, of course he got the butter on the nose, his friends at Sunday School sang to him, he got to pick the lunch place and then had a party that afternoon at the park with lots of friends! Plus he had celebrated with a special snack at school earlier that week...whew! It's fun being 4.

Here are just a few pictures..... (and, yes, that's a Georgia football cake - and, no, he was not coerced into having a Georgia Bulldogs birthday party....he came up with that himself!)

Back to school?

I was just looking through some pictures and came across this from this past summer. It was during the Cisne Reunion and they had opened the high school to the public for a couple of hours so a few of my friends and I walked over to see how it had changed. The funny thing about this picture is that we never had class in this room (apparently they do now). It was the library. We had study hall in there sometimes, but never a class like the chairs are set up for. AND it used to be double the size. Now half of it is another room used as a computer lab (yeah, we maybe had 8 of those monster computers with the black screen and green letters (DOS I think) that the whole school shared). The room was never blue either......just white. It was fun to go back and see how everything had changed and what had not. (For the record, I don't remember any of us ever so eagerly raising our hands to participate in class)

Elliott turns 6!

Yes, he's 6 now. He was up bright and early to let us know that it was his birthday and that he didn't want anyone to butter his nose (we all know that was impossible)! In fact, he drew a picture of ALL the things that he didn't want to happen on his birthday, including NO TEEBALL, NO CHOMPING, NO FACE WHISKERS, NO NOSE-BUTTERING, NO WATCHING COLLEGE FOOTBALL and NO NOISES FROM ETHAN (this last one being the most difficult as any of you who have spent any time with Ethan lately would agree with). So we had birthday pancakes, he took treats to school, he got to eat at McDonald's for lunch and we opened gifts and played this afternoon. I think he had a pretty good day since he was still saying that he couldn't get to sleep at 9:30 tonight!

a little recap....

Here's just bits and pieces of what we've been up to lately. I'll try to be better about keeping this updated!