Trick or Treating

Tonight was Beggar's Night (I know, we Iowans are odd), so the kids and I jumped in the car and went over to our old neighborhood to Trick or Treat. We had a great time seeing all of our old friends! Grace refused to wear her Little Mermaid wig t or t'ing, but I forced her to wear it for a picture beforehand. It's a pretty rare Halloween that you get to wear a sleeveless costume...it was 70 degrees here today!! Beautiful!

Matt is Ozzy Osbourne in case you were wondering :). He was going to be Slash from Guns N' Roses, but we couldn't find a top hat, so he morphed into Ozzy.

More Halloween Goodness!

We, oh I mean the kids :), always look forward to Aunt Jensine's annual Halloween box. And it arrived today, to the ooh's and aah's of everyone! Thank you so much Aunt Jensine and Uncle Fred, it was yummy and fun as usual!! The witch bag was stuffed with candy and fun things...Grace has laid claim to the bag for trick-or-treating tomorrow night :).

Aunt Linda is the best!

A visit from Aunt Linda is so much fun. She is the funnest Aunt, and always has interesting projects for the kids to do. We have *really* enjoyed having her so close (well 3 hrs. to Minneapolis is much closer than Alaska!) and getting to see her every few weeks or so. Today she set Ava and Grace up with a monster making kit, WHILE making a papier-mache Wall-E robot pinata with Ben for his bday party. MAKING a pinata!! How cool is that! I need her to live with me and be my nanny :).

Here are the girls with their monsters:

And Linda and Ben putting together their pinata:

Thanks for doing fun projects with us Aunt Linda!!

Lucy, aka Bossy Bosserman

Lucy is so competitive and will not let Tucker get within two inches of whatever she wants. If she hears Tuckers name being called, she'll sprint across the backyard to see what Tucker is getting. Today Tucker had her chewing bone. She sat patiently (rare for her...usually she'll just bite his ear and take it away from him) and waited, and when Tucker was distracted she snagged that thing right away from him. Tucker=60 lbs, Lucy=12 lbs. Tucker=wimp, Lucy=bully

Waiting....Waiting.....YES! It's MINE!Then she proceeded to roll all over the bone on her back in some weird cat-like ritual. We swear she's a cat in dog fur LOL.

This was cute

Ben brought home this paper from school that says "My Great _____". He had to fill out what he thought was great. He wrote "My Great Grandpa". And at the bottom wrote"My Great Grandpa is special to me, because he was named after a president." He's very proud of the fact that his middle name is Wilson, after Grandpa Stewart's middle name. And that they are both named for a president. Grandpa would be proud!

Thanks Grandpa Jim!!

The kids love their Halloween cards, cash rocks! Hope you're having fun with Aunt Jensine and Uncle Fred!

Pumpkin carving

We carved our pumpkins last night, with Grandma Cathy's help! They turned out cute...
I know they are hard to see...I tried w/out the flash and it was blurry. Matt's is in front of him, Tyler's is in front of Grace, Ben's is on the right on the front step, and Grace's is on the left front step.

Grace's is Ariel (The Little Mermaid)...it's from a pattern her friend Ava gave her. It looks more like Jane Jetson, but we can pretend :).

You've been DOT'ed

Poor Tyler. He wrapped up 6 weeks of Driver's Ed today, with his final driving test. He passed his class test a couple of weeks ago, and just needed to complete the driving test. He actually passed the driving test, but (in teen lingo) 'got DOT'ed', which means he performed an unsafe action and has to do the driving test at the Dept of Transportation when he goes in for his license in February. I'm sure he'll do fine....I think he was nervous today. What was the unsafe action you say? Oh, he blew through a stop sign and his driver's ed instructor had to slam on the auxilliary brake. Oops. He was pretty upset with himself, but I know he'll do fine in February. Here's the ominous RED STAMP:

The leaf skirt

Grace collected leaves, poked holes in them with a pencil, and threaded them onto a piece of string to make herself a leaf skirt :). Oh the Project Runway possibilities are endless!!

Another beautiful weekend!

Not sure what we've done to deserve such great weekends! The weather was so nice today....70 degrees and sunny. I think this is about it for this year though...it's going to cool off and rain next week. We went to our new favorite park again, and took Ben's friend Jeff with us. Ben was really crabby...he and Matt don't get along very well, and weekends are particularly brutal. At one point I heard Ben ask Jeff if his parents would adopt him. Jeff said "No, they like having an only child" :). Here's how Ben spent most of his time at the park:Ben and Jeff (looking right into the sun!):

The fun bouncy things...you hold on to the handles and bounce yourself up and down:

Seriously?

How hard is it to get a decent picture where all 4 kids FOLLOW DIRECTIONS and look at me? Apparently harder than I thought. This is just a few of about 45 pictures that didn't turn out. I got *maybe* 2 that will work for christmas cards.

Ben's new bed

I am at my wit's end with Ben and his sleeping as of late. This has been his permanent bed for the past 2 weeks....the bench in my room. He has been having terrible nightmares, and absolutely refuses to sleep in his bed. He thinks something bad is going to happen to Rich and I during the night. I have been trying very hard to get him to go to bed in his own bed, but after listening to him bawl and beg to come downstairs for an hour and a half, I finally just let him come down and sleep in here AGAIN! I don't know what to do. I don't want him to be majorly scared and stressed to sleep, but I don't want this to become a permanent habit either. WHAT DO I DO???? Supernanny, come to my rescue!

For Uncle Joel

Did you see these? I found them at Hy-Vee....they had Franken Berry too!

Doing the lens happy dance!!

I got my good lens back today, woohoo!!! And it works again! I was so excited I drug the kids back to the park to test it out. Luckily for them (and you!) it started sprinkling right when we got there, so I only got a few pics. Notice Matt's haircut....it's a #1, so as close to his scalp as possible without actually being bald. That'll teach him to self-cut his hair.

Sorry Grandpa Jim

Not to rub it in or anything, but it is 80 degrees here today! Ok, really it's too hot in my opinion....fall needs to be 20 or so degrees cooler. But poor Grandpa Jim is getting SNOW over in Western ND today! Yes, 2-4 inches by tomorrow, no joke! We are thinking of you northerners....Joel & Heidi I hope you guys don't get the big storm!

Ava and Grace in the backyard today in bare feet, t-shirts, shorts...popsicles in hand!

Those no good'ers

Some little twit stole the Obama sign from our yard two nights ago. I tried to blame Joel, but he swears it wasn't him. So when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, right? Tyler pieced together this mosaic out of the signs & stickers we had left from the caucus....not bad! We showed those poor losers!
The front:

Back:

Window:

Oh Matt

Really??!! No, you are not Mr. Impulsive Ben W. Kinney, who yesterday without his ADD meds toasted all 6 foil packages (that's 12 Pop-Tarts in all) of Pop-Tarts just because! You are not your brother Ben, who wanted to look at my wedding rings 'in the sunlight', and discarded them in the grass so I had to spend 30 minutes of my afternoon sifting through blades of grass! You know what happens when you put the scissors up against your hair, right?! RIGHT???

Beautiful fall day

What a gorgeous day. I wish I could freeze this time of year, it's just beautiful with all of the leaves changing color. I made Grace put a corduroy coat and brown pants on so I could get some pics of her in the leaves, even though it was 73 degrees outside today. Shorts and a tshirt and flip flops just didn't scream "fall" to me. Ben was feeling better this afternoon, so he went to Marshalltown with his friend Jeff, Tyler is at his friend Andy's, and Matt was playing football with the neighborhood boys, so Grace was the only victim I could find. We went up to a local park with great trees.

Poor Benny

Has strep throat! Why is it that my family always gets strep in the fall? Last year Grace had it in October, which led to a downhill slide of everyone having it....me three times! I hope Ben starts and ends it. He's been miserable...fever of 103, headache, sore throat.

Stealth and Sleek

Like a ninja in the night :).

Tyler's watercolor

Tyler painted a really pretty watercolor for his drawing class. It's of West Rainy Butte....one of the big butte's you can see from my dad's house in North Dakota. He did a really good job!

Edited to add the actual picture he painted it from!