Halloween

When you live in the Pacific Northwest, sometimes you have to take Halloween pictures in the rain.  We stopped by the trunk-or-treat tonight and I took a picture while Jason and the boys stood under the door to the trunk of the van.  And then they went trick-or-treating under umbrellas.

Good times.

Lucky for me and Jason, Isaac is at that beautiful age when he likes to go out trick-or-treating, but can't eat a lot of the candy and probably (probably!) won't remember that he has any tomorrow morning.

This year we have Doctor Who (Matt Smith version), Obi-Wan Kenobi (Clone Wars edition), Darth Vader (who we spent much of the evening convincing him that if he struck Michael down Michael would become more powerful than he could possibly imagine), a Minion, and a soldier.

Josh outgrew the plastic pumpkin baskets and, even as I type, is roaming around a neighborhood with his friends with a more mature pillow case gathering all sorts of candy he can't eat.  My other favorite part of Halloween.

Yet Another Gourd Disembowelment

Aunt Rachel came by yesterday for the annual disembowelment, er, carving of the pumpkins.  I don't think Jason was too disappointed to have someone else handle the admittedly very messy procedure.  Plus, Isaac is sick (again) so Jason and I were tag teaming cuddle time on the couch with our clingy, sad boy while the other one worked on getting dinner.  

Each of the boys had their own pumpkin this year so no one got left out of the scraping out of the pumpkin's innards.  Still not their favorite part.

I have a better picture of Michael later on, but I thought this one was hysterical because of the creepy man watching them through the window in the background.

For a kid who is a picky eater, Josh is strangely willing to take all sort of pictures of him pretending to eat gross things.

They did eventually buckle down and clean 'em out.

Then we let them play with knives for a while and look what they made!

I don't know what is scarier, their faces or their pumpkins!

Many thanks to Aunt Rachel for an afternoon of fun!

Fall Festival

We waited until almost the last minute, but we did make it to a Fall Festival yesterday.  Thankfully, it was a mere 10 minutes from our house and the school buses with field trip kids left just as we arrived! (Although I like the fact that my kids go on fun field trips, there is nothing so disheartening as arriving somewhere fun and seeing those big yellow buses parked in front.)  

The boys had an ENTIRE week of half-days (twitch, twitch), but Friday was the only non-rainy day (hello Pacific NW winter weather!).  Our friends had already gone to this festival, but were happy to go again so we could enjoy their company.  Plus, I brought along a teenager to keep Josh occupied.  We have reached the stage where doing an activity that everyone will enjoy has come and gone.  

Our first stop was at a hay maze.  The farm used hay bales inside one of the barns to create a fun maze for the younger crowd.  The middles and their buddies loved it.  Isaac.....well.....Isaac has been in full-on Baby Rage mode on the drive over, then flipped out when I took his jacket off, and it just got worse.  He entered the maze and then changed his mind.  As he was trying to get out, another kid came barreling in and knocked him down.  Normally, that is not a big deal.  But this time his teeth and mouth hit the concrete and soon his mouth was filling with blood.  Admittedly, he had every right to be upset at this point, but on top of everything else...

Do you ever feel like your nerves are pulled taut and the slightest touch could snap them or cause them to spasm.  Isaac can have that effect on me.  I almost packed everyone in the car at that point and went home.  But, the other boys were having a blast and thankfully mouth wounds tend to start healing quickly.  After cleaning him up a bit and giving him his nuk, he calmed down a bit.  He was clingy, but we could both reestablish a reasonable relationship with our sanity.

I sent Josh and his buddy off to the corn maze at this point since their eyes had glazed over, so there aren't many pictures of him from this adventure.

After the hay maze, my boys voted to go over to the hay fort.  They have very fond memories from the Cox Farms fort.  So simple, and yet they could spend hours climbing and jumping.  

Eventually their friends got bored, so we headed over to an activity area with a big slide, rubber duck water slides, bouncing tires and mini tractors.

Really all of that was to kill time until they could get on the jumping pillow.  Can someone please explain to me why we don't have one of these in our backyard?  (Jason??)

This was also the appointed time for the older boys to rejoin us, and then we all headed over to the hay ride.  At this point, Josh and his friend were trapped so I could finally get some photographic evidence that there were indeed participants in the afternoon's activities.

Then I set them loose again and the rest of us headed over to see the animals.  Isaac really enjoyed poking animals in the nose.  This sheep seemed a little put off, but it (he/she?) kept coming back for more.

There were also baby rabbits to be cuddled.  Michael made friends with his little one.

My friend held one for Isaac to pet.  It (he/she? I don't know how to identify the gender of farm animals) was so soft.  Shortly after I took this picture, Isaac got in close to give it a big hug.  A squeezy hug!  Luckily, my friend was there to rescue the beloved bunny and return it home.

The kids all washed their hands as I chased Isaac chasing a chicken.  Luckily, the chicken was smart enough to escape through the gate to safety.  I got Isaac cleaned up (sheep snot and pig snot and goat snot, oh boy!) and we decided to call it a day.

On the way out we measured the boys for something to reference next year.

It was fun. It was stressful. And we'll probably do it again next year.

A Sweet Moment

Some days ::sigh:: some days with Isaac are harder than others.  I say this after watching him throw himself on a soaking wet soccer field and lay there screaming and crying in a fit of tear and snot streaked rage because he couldn't have any of the soccer balls Ben's team was using for practice yesterday.  And he couldn't wait for us to get one out of the coaches bag. Which wouldn't have been so bad if the previous 10 hours hadn't been rough.

Deep breath.

Then I found this on my phone.  Jason and Isaac bonding over what I assume is either Studio C or a Minions clip with Isaac's cute wittle belly button sticking out and Jason wearing my favorite sweatshirt (Go Buffs!).

We've Got a Major in the Family

We had the opportunity today to get on JBLM (Ft. Lewis) for a once-in-her-lifetime experience:  Rachel was promoted to MAJOR.  We are so proud of her and her accomplishments in the army.  Well, and out of the army, too, but today was about the army.

As a side note, those camo uniforms made these pictures extra fun.  She really blends in!

They called her up and when they call you in the army, you run!

Josh volunteered to pin her.  Well, I'll have to verify with her on the terminology, because what he actually did was rip a velcro badge off her uniform and toss it away (tradition) and place the one for a Major (a golden oak leaf) on her uniform.

Then she got a new hat.  Much cooler than her old hat.  Well, actually, pretty similar to her old hat, but this one means people have to call her Major.  Well, military people anyway.  Us Muggles, no, wait, civilians might not know that.

Looks pretty good on her.  Then she took an oath and it was a done deal.  No going back now.  Just kidding - she's worked really hard for this.

Then we chatted and took a few pictures in which she kind of fades into the grass.

After the posed photos, I got some fun ones.  I am not entirely sure how this got started...

...but it ended with tickling.

Then Josh decided he could take Aunt Rachel on.

He chose...poorly.  She may not be much taller than him at this point, but she's still tougher.

We are so excited to live close enough to participate in these kinds of events.  Way to go Aunt Rachel!

Thar She Blew!

And I am finally getting around to adventure #2 of Meleana's trip here.  After seeing whales blow, we thought we'd go see a mountain we hoped actually wouldn't blow...at least not while we were there.  Mount St. Helens looked beautiful and pristine in her newly fallen snow cover.  But, she also had a crown of clouds obscuring our view of the crater.  Lovely nonetheless and apparently a huge improvement from the previous day's weather (clouds so thick you couldn't see the mountain or the valley from Johnston Observatory).  We hit up the same visitor's center as last time and enjoyed really beautiful weather yet again.  I swear she brought it with her.  Especially since a couple of days after she left, we got slammed with a winter rain storm and the remnants of a typhoon will be visiting us this afternoon.

I always love visiting the mountains and fall weather is my happy place.  And hopefully our adventures will convince her to move out here!!!

Whales!

You are about to view pictures from an amazing weekend.  Of course, being there in person was much more impressive, so I have culled my hundreds of pictures down to just a handful of the best (best being a relative term).  

Meleana came for a visit and we had some fun adventures.  When we were planning her time here, I asked what she wanted to do.  Whale watching was on her bucket list, so we found a tour and got tickets.  

Then her family had some health issues and several of us got sick, so we had to reschedule the entire weekend.

Two weeks later and we finally got out to sea on the Mystic Sea tour.

It was a momentous trip so I even got my picture taken.

The beautiful Meleana!

I've not been out on the water in a boat very often in my life.  To ensure that this was a positive experience, I dosed myself with Dramamine in advance and then we were incredibly lucky to have gorgeous weather.  Incredibly lucky since it is October.

It was a long ride out to the whales.  I think they were a little shy.  We chased them clear into Canadian waters.  Apparently whales don't respect international boundaries.  Luckily, we didn't have to adhere to them strictly either.

We sailed past beautiful scenery, and eventually it paid off.

Thar she blows!

I don't remember which is which, but we chased a pair of whales that were feeding for a while and then later a juvenile headed out to sea.  Here are the highlights:

The Dramamine worked beautifully and all was well...except the few times we sailed across our own wake trying to play with a dolphin.  I was a little sad that s/he didn't want to play, but my stomach was happy to move on.

We also caught sight of a few seals sunning themselves.  The suckers are camouflaged, but I promise there is one in this picture.

It was a marvelous experience and I am so glad that Meleana picked this for one of our adventures.

Go Blue Jays!

I would be remiss if I posted about Josh's soccer season and not Ben's, so here we go!

Ben has moved up to the U8 level in league soccer.  That means two things: each team now has a goalie and each team gets individualized jerseys.  In the case of Ben's team, they also changed their name.  Instead of the Yellow Jackets, they are now the Beast Mode Blue Jays.  Ben's contribution to the name is Blue Jays, from which they get their jersey color.  I honestly had no idea where Beast Mode came from and actually assumed that it had something to do with Pokemon.  It actually is a nickname (or something like that) of a Seahawks' player.

These people are serious about the Seahawks.

So it is a mouthful, but definitely unique.  

Unlike the summer, the team in not undefeated.  I was pleased to hear they'd lost (I wasn't at the game that day), because I think kids need to learn how to lose.  Jason said the kids all seemed fine and Ben didn't seem at all bothered when I asked him about it later.  Then they went on to cream the next team 20-3.  It is probably unrelated, but I found it a little amusing.  The head of the league did not.  Our coach tried to have the kids pass to every player on our team before scoring, but at some point there needs to be some sort of mercy rule and the league doesn't have one.  I suspect that will change soon.

In the meantime, Ben continues to have a great time and improve a ton. 

A thing about soccer in the Pacific Northwest:

They play in the sun and...

...they play in the rain.

Here is our happy, soaked soccer player:

It is so fun to watch him grow and learn these new skills.  In the meantime, I should probably learn the rules of soccer so I can shout advice at the team (just kidding).  Seriously, just kidding.  We'll just go and support our team.