Halloween on the CMD!

We hosted the second annual Halloween on Chalk Maple Drive this year! We had a great turn out and the weather was awesome, 80 degrees!
Ayden didn't last as the skeleton...the mask broke and he didn't like my fix-it job, so he went back to the power ranger from last year since it still fit! Here he is handing out candy in front of our house. :)
I planned for Gabriel to be a train conductor, but he refused to wear the hat! Oh well. He was pretty much still sick with the cold/cough that I am just now getting over (a week and a half later)! Poor guy, Halloween wasn't much fun for him this year. Guess there is next year when he will understand it better anyhow. :)

Halloween Neighborhood Parade

Neighbor friends: Tyler as the Power Ranger, Quentin as Superman, Lucy as Gymnastics Girl, Bennett as Batman and Ayden as The Skeleton!
Ayden with Tyler and his brother Hunter, the Thomas train!
All the neighbors that came out for the parade! This was the third year that Ayden participated! Crazy! Poor Gabriel was sick that day. :(

Neighborhood Halloween Party!

Our friends Stacy and Andres (goulish lady and biker dude), Gordon and Valerie (German Lederhosen folks) and of course Frankenstein and his Bride! :)
We were trying hard to hold a straight face! Julio didn't quite manage. :) It was a great party! Too bad the other Frankenstein and Bride won the prize for scariest costume! Ahhh, we just looked to good to be scariest! ha,ha!

BOO!

All the kids in Ayden's classroom sang a cute song about Witch's Brew and then the words are, "Tip, toe, tip, toe...BOO!"

Halloween Parade at Preschool!

All the little classmates dressed up for the parade and party!
They sang two songs that they rehersed all week! Ayden practiced at home and on Friday, I got to see the fruits of their efforts! It was too cute. I will post a video of the second song. :)
I had to post a photo of the cake from the preschool Halloween party! Yes, you are reading this correctly...this is a cake! Isn't it amazing! A friend of mine named Wendy who is also a mom of two kids in Ayden's class made this outstanding fondant cake! Of course I was in complete awe! :) Not only was it beautifully done, but she included three different kinds of handmade cake! It was delicious! Ayden had a hard time waiting to eat it until he was through with his lunch!

Spooktacular!

Ayden and his neighbor friend Lucy got to go to the Durham Museum of Life and Science on the Wednesday before Halloween for a great event that included a spooky play complete with real potions and brews! After the play was over, they got to do some hands on activities. See below...

Halloween is Coming!

Tonight (10.27), we had nothing to do for the last hour of the evening before bed and so I saw online that one of my friends was carving a pumpkin with her kids and I thought, "What am I waiting for, Halloween is only a few days away?" So, I braved the mess and let Ayden dig out the guts of the pumpkin with the scoop tool that comes with the "Pumpkin Masters" kit book. I let him choose the design for the pumpkin and I carved it out. We actually hadn't done this in about two years I think, so it was pretty fun to see the results! :) I think Ayden is going to love it in the morning! (He had to go to bed before it was done. ) :)
Just goofing around on the front porch on a rainy Saturday afternoon!

Animal Sounds!

I have especially been enjoying Gabriel's love for making animal sounds. I think it is especially fun since he doesn't have any verbal words yet - so this is a way for me to appreciate his little voice. He has been loving all things "animal" for a few months now. He gets up in the morning and wants to immediately read his books and finds all the animals in the books and shows me he knows his animal sounds after pointing to them. It's pretty cute!

Fall Soccer Season Party!

Ayden was so happy, he said, "Now I have two trophies!"
All the kids with Coach Sean!

18 months!

Gabriel went to the Doctor's for his 18 month check up today about two weeks after the actual day since we didn't want to skip his first art class on the 5th! He went to the last class in the October series today (10.19) and made this pumpkin! At the appointment, I had a bit of a hard time keeping him distracted while they checked his height, weight and all that, but we managed. He was tall and skinny...same as usual and same as Ayden! 50% in weight and 80% in height. He just couldn't wait to get home so that he could do what he'd rather be doing...ride his fire truck! You can barely see it, but he is wearing a Mr. Potato Head sticker that says, "Good Checkup!" He was so excited to find that the doctor's office had this particular sticker since his latest toy obsession is of course the potato head! He is growing up too fast!

At the Pumpkin Patch

We took the hay ride from Hill Ridge Farms' activity area over to their "pumpkin patch."
This was the only way I could get Ayden to pose with the pumpkins...of course to show me how "swong" he is. :)
I wanted a better shot of the two of them smiling, but my camera battery ran out, so this is all I've got! Oh well...they're still cute!

Hill Ridge Farms!

My neighbor Katherine was kind enough to take a shot of all four of us! That sure doesn't happen very often! We drove out to this farm last Saturday (the 10th), which is an hour away, but it was worth it! It drizzled a little bit, but not much and there was so much to do, we had a great time!
The Hay Jump!
"Riding the Hill Ridge Farms Cool Bus" :)
Playing in the corn house

No Training Wheels!!

Today on 10.8, Ayden rode his bike with no training wheels for the very first time! He already thinks he is a pro of course! :) It was one of those milestones for him, we both got pretty excited! :)

Thomas the Train Ride!

Julio, Ayden, Gabriel and our friend Gordon and his boys, Tyler and Hunter all went on a road trip to take a Thomas the Train ride last Saturday. They had fun while I enjoyed some time off. Yah! :)

Green Acres Is The Place To Be!

...Farm living is the life for me! Well, not really, but just down the road from our house is Green Acres farm and they have a bunch of activities featuring the always popular corn maze! We had to partake. :)
Here they are on the hayride!
On top of the hay mountain!
In the bouncy house!
And then we found some pumpkins!

We went with our friends, The Selkirks and somehow managed to find our way through the maze in under an hour! I didn't think we would make it because I swear we kept going in circles. It was a fun night.

Painting Some Pumpkins!

All four of the artists on the sidewalk hard at work!
The littlest Picasso!

I tried to take some shots from a slightly angled perspective...did it work? :)

The Metal Man!

Here is yet another one of the craft projects that Ayden and I worked on last week and by last week, I mean September 28th-October 4th!! Yep, that's right! I am finally caught up on my blog! For months now, I have been posting events that happened about 2 to 3 months from the time of posting. Well, now I am finally up to date!! Feels good. :)

The idea for the metal guy in the photo above came from somewhere along the line in Ayden's creative brain. Most of the time, he thinks of the idea and I go get the parts. I finally made the special trip to Home Depot since I had to buy the screws and such for the face...we just don't keep that kind of stuff in our garage! :) I also had to buy some pineapple juice cans (the legs on the Metal Man). Guess we will need to make some Mai Tai's soon!

Celebrating Cultures Day!

The children in Ayden's classroom paraded to the front of the school dressed in their country's colors or attire...it was really cute! Ayden wore his Puerto Rican shirt that Tata (his Grandma from Puerto Rico sent him.) They all held hands and sang "It's a Small World."

Baby Annika McKay Has Arrived!!

Here she is, Miss Annika Marie McKay!! (not to be confused with Annika Gjovig...yep, same name! :) -our friends and our cousins have great taste in girls names!) She was born on September 13th, weighing 8.5 pounds. I got to meet her right after we returned from Arkansas. We are so happy for our Cousins Frank and Sonja!!

Gifts for Bonnie!

The last part of August and the first half of September, I was pretty much focused (in my free time not spent with the kids) on two projects...Sonja's baby shower and Bonnie's baby shower! I was certainly busy! I did a lot less for Bonnie's shower due to distance from the actual party (I would have loved to do more), but tried to make her some special gifts anyhow. :) I have to show the fruits of my labor in these photos, so please humor me! :) Above is a photo of the memory book that I made for Bonnie and Baby Annika so that all her friends well wishes from the shower could be pasted into it. Of course, I had to decorate it in the same fun color scheme as the shower. It was too much fun getting really girly with all the hot pink!
An example of what the inside of the book looks like. Bonnie will just paste in all the cards from the shower so she can remember her friends well wishes for her and her family at the time of Annika's arrival!
As another gift, I made Bonnie plenty of thank you notes so that she could thank all of her friends for coming.
These two "pillow people" or "corduroy monsters" are two of my little creations that I gave to Bonnie's kids last Christmas. Now, I need to make one for Annika. :)
They are quite wacky! :)