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.

First soccer game

Austin had his first soccer game tonight. Actually, the first game was last Friday night. It was a makeup game from the previous Saturday. Austin was sick so we couldn't make that game.

They played at night so we didn't get many pictures. Here are a couple. Austin's in the bright red shirt; the coach forgot to bring his team shirt.

New phrases

It's so funny the things that Austin picks up from people. Of course, being in school, he's picked up all kinds of new words and phrases. Here are a couple of funny ones.

- Austin has 2 teachers, his regular school teacher and his extended day teacher. And both of their names sound pretty similar. So he just says that there are two Mrs. Haswells (his regular teacher's name). The way he tells them apart? The real Mrs. Haswell is "the one with the lipstick." She always has lipstick on no matter the time of day.
- The other day, Austin was putting something away and it fell off the shelf. He said, "my bad."

Sans computer

A few weeks ago our new, less than 4 months old computer started having problems. Luckily, we still have our dinosaur of a computer but it's SO SLOW and takes forever to load a web page. Needless to say, posts have been non-existant. Here are a few updates from around the Fambrough house:

- Andrew got 4 more teeth!
- Andrew's saying more and more words every day and is signing a lot more. He's says color, Austin (and it sounds more like Austin), tree, that, this. He knows the signs for eat, more, please, hat, book, and baby.
- Andrew is SO loving. He hugs and kisses everyone at school before he leaves for the day.
- Austin went on his first field trip yesterday to...WalMart! The kindergarteners went around the store finding and reading environmental print such as cereal boxes and signs.
- Austin has a "best friend." He's not familiar with the terms girlfriend/boyfriend, but the little girl is his "best friend." Their teacher said that they do everything together. They even sat next to each other on the trip to WalMart. Austin likes the blondes. :-)

We haven't started soccer yet. We were supposed to start practice a couple of weeks ago but have been rained out every day. We hope to be able to practice today and have a game this weekend. Austin's really excited about getting started!

12 Days of Christmas

Andrew is starting to really squirm on the changing table. One day, for some reason, I started singing the 12 Days of Christmas. And he loves it! Austin has started joining in on the singing too. Of course, he gets a couple of the lines wrong. he says two turtle ducks and four calling bursts.

Today was the first day of Sunday school and Austin drew this. The moment I read the title of the picture I knew what he was talking about and it's hilarious. Do you think he's a little confused?

No, No Baby Andrew!

I didn't know that the days of Austin barring Andrew from coming into a room or a fort or just generally being around would start so early. Here is Austin's sign blocking Andrew's admittance from his fort. It's a pretty good sign and he even wrote no.

Brotherly love (or something like that)

I don't know why Andrew doesn't look thrilled.

3rd week of school...completed (just barely)

This week was wild. Austin got a tummy bug on Monday. He went back to school on Wednesday only to get sick that afternoon. So, he was out Tuesday and Thursday of this week. He finished the week today and made it through without getting sick!

For the 3 days he was at school this week, he had great days! And he actually napped! Hooray!

Excused absence

I got a call yesterday from the school's nurse. Austin had thrown up...with only 5 minutes left of school. I picked up Andrew and headed to pick up Austin. On our way out of the school, he threw up all over the floor. They called over the intercom for a custodian to come clean up the mess. We got home and Austin just kept getting sick.

Now that he's in real school, we have to deal with absences and excuses. I got a call from the attendence office saying that I needed to send an excuse tomorrow. That's going to take some getting used to.

He's much, much better today and is actually eating and keeping things down. We've cleaned house (an attempt to get rid of the germs and hope that the rest of us get sick), made a fort, had a lunch party, and worked a little on a school project. Hopefully, he'll be back in school tomorrow!