Happy Halloween!

Austin got the idea for his and Andrew's costume when he was looking through a costume magazine we got in the mail. Austin would be the policeman and Andrew would be the criminal. I started hunting for a white or orange sweat suit, but couldn't find one anywhere. Gene came up with the idea of making Andrew an old fashioned bank robber. I made a black mask for him and a money bag (white pillow case stuffed with crumpled newspaper and a $ drawn on the front). It turned out pretty cute! Andrew didn't want to keep his mask on very long, but I did manage to get a picture.






Austin did get his first trick last night at one house. The kids threw snap pops at him and scared him. As the mom, this upset me. I know it's all part of Halloween, but still. Austin didn't want to go to any more houses after that. But he did start planning how he would trick people next year!

Pumpkin patch

I chaperoned Austin's first field trip to the pumpkin patch. I met the bus at Old Baker Farm for our trip. The kids had a blast. They picked cotton, petted a baby goat and rabbit, ran through a hay bale maze, and took a hay ride to the pumpkin patch to find their perfect pumpkin. The day started off pretty chilly but warmed up A LOT. By lunch time, we were helping kids take layers off so they wouldn't be too hot. All in all, the trip was great!

Fall party #2

Today, it was Austin's turn for his fall party. Kindergarten parties are quite different from daycare/preschool parties. At Andrew's, we pretty much watched them eat snack and then left. At Austin's party today, we had 3 activity tables: cookie decorating, slime making, and pumpkin painting. I didn't get to see or visit with Austin much since I was helping the kids decorate cookies.

Here is Austin's cookie creation.

Fall party #1

Today was Andrew's fall party and costume parade at school. The kids came to school dressed in their costumes and paraded to each classroom collecting goodies. The party was in the afternoon at snack time. Andrew was a skeleton for this party.

He loved the mini cupcakes!

And, of course, the cheese puffs!

Gingerbread haunted house

I've never proclaimed to be creative or artistic in any way. But, Austin and I saw this gingerbread haunted house in the store a couple of weeks ago and we just had to buy it. I convinced him to wait until closer to Halloween to do this project. We have two cats that love to nibble on things they shouldn't. Last Sunday, we pulled out all the parts and pieces and the instructions at about 4:00 p.m. I decided it was best for me to read the directions thoroughly first before attempting to put this thing together. So, we decided to wait until yesterday when we had plenty of time to work on it.

I explained to Austin that ours probably wouldn't look as good as the houses on the package. I also told him that we could decorate it however we wanted to. It was our haunted house, so we could do what we wanted with it.

First, you mix the icing of your choice and then use it as glue to hold all the parts of the house together. This was interesting because none of the pieces really fit together as they came in the package. I didn't do any trimming; I'm not a patient person and me trimming gingerbread pieces would probably end up more disastrous than leaving them as they came. So, we managed to get the bottom of the house together and then came the waiting. ONE LONG HOUR for the "glue" to set! We set the timer so we'd know when it beeped it would be ready to put the roof on. We got the roof on and then waited a little bit before mixing the green icing for the slimy roof. The icing was a little too thin but Austin didn't care. He was anxious to put all the decorations on the house. When we were finished, he asked if it was time to eat it!

Here's a picture of what it should have looked like.

Here's how ours turned out. Not bad for our first try. I'm sure our Christmas house will be better!

Brotherly love

Here are some recent pictures of the boys together. Aren't they just so sweet?!?

Austin's artwork

A couple of samples of Austin's recent artwork. This is a mermaid. Notice the two brown spots on her. I'm sure you can guess what those are.

This is supposed to be a spooky, scary house. It looks pretty mean, right?

Again with the bags

I have no idea what's up with Andrew's fascination with plastic sacks. Hmmm....which one to fluff first? So many to pick from.

Pumpkin project

Austin hasn't had many homework assignments yet. So far we've had two big project assignments. The first was around the first of September. It was an All About Me book. We had to answer some questions about Austin and he got to decorate the pages.


The second is due next week. We were to decorate a pumpkin like a character from his favorite nursery rhyme. Austin picked Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater. To refresh your memory:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn't keep her
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well


So, we started thinking about what we could do to decorate our pumpkin. He didn't want to do just one character from the story. He wanted to do the whole story. So, last weekend, we purchased a craft pumpkin, a girl doll, a boy doll, some fake flowers, and hot glue. The doll was a fairy doll and the only boy doll we could find at the dollar store was a wrestler action figure.


Today, we put it all together. Of course, Austin was involved as much as he could be. He couldn't use the glue gun, but he drew and cut out the door and the curtains for the windows. He wrote his name on a piece of paper so the pumpkin would be labeled. And he put all the stuff inside for the wife.


Here is our creation. It's tacky, but it was all his idea. Actually, it turned out pretty cute.

Team spirit

Andrew doesn't mind wearing hats or really anything on his head. He will keep it on a lot longer than Austin will. Here are some cute pics of Andrew wearing Gene's Georgia hat.

Favorite past times

Three things Andrew loves to do:

Try on shoes (mostly Mommy's flip flops)



Fluff pastic sacks (I could never get a picture of his face while fluffing...it's hilarious)

And color

Austin cut his hair

Austin cut his hair today at school. He wasn't even 30 minutes into the school day when the principal called to let me know. Austin said that a friend told him to cut it. All day I was wondering what it looked like. Actually, I can't really tell that he did anything. He said he didn't cut much.