Bipedal

Poor lizard is surrounded by creatures that walk on only two measly feet.  Some days I think he thinks he is one of us.

Real Plastic Tree

'Twas 23 days before Christmas when Jason climbed into the freezing abyss that is the attic and dragged out the Christmas decorations.  And that is when the crazy broke loose.  It might have been the peppermint oreo cookies they had for dessert, but I am pretty sure it was the opening of boxes filled with stuff we hadn't seen in 11 months that made the boys lose control.  They were so excited we could barely get them to stop damaging things.  

Ever seen the movie Up?

SQUIRREL!!!

That was them pretty much every few seconds.  But, we did manage to unpack everything without permanently destroying anything except the manger Josh made for a pink rubber eraser wrapped as Jesus.  And that was a loss I was prepared to accept.

It took a lot of "encouragement", but we got the tree up and then the fun part began - DECORATING!  Jason and his OCD usually supervise this part to make sure that the blue and silver balls are evenly distributed.  Then the boys get to add their handmade ornaments and then argue over who gets to hang the Millennium Falcon.  Finally, Ben received the honor of putting on star and then we had ourselves a Christmas tree!

Let the Christmas countdown begin!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a lovely Thanksgiving filled with ham, rainbow jello, cousins, Imaginiff, and (based on where the boys are looking while I am taking this picture) bunny ears.

Fun Run

The place:  FHS

The time: 5:30pm on a misty, rainy night

The event:  Fun Run including 3 races: 800m/1 mile, 400m/800m relay and 800m.

The cast: Michael and 2 of his friends and a cousin; Josh and 2 of his friends and a stranger

The medals:  Gold and bronze, respectively

A Veteran

It is Veterans Day weekend and we were lucky to find ourselves a Veteran for about 24 hours.  It was too quick of a visit, but it did involve Outback Steakhouse and the boys jumping on Uncle Doug so it was good. We are so proud of the two veterans in our family - we just wish they lived closer.  Or maybe we wish that we all lived in Colorado.

Bull Run Mountain Conservancy

I apparently just cannot get enough of taking pictures of these cute kids while I am dragging them on hikes through the fall foliage.  They only seem to mind as they complain the entire time, but afterwards they all report that they had a great time.  Again, it was a little bit chilly and therefore perfect for hiking.  And there was no school (someone save me), so we had to get out of the house.  Although I have the utmost respect for people who choose to homeschool, every parent-teacher conference or teacher work day reinforces the decision to send my kids to school.  

Now that I got that off my chest, back to the cute kids.

The Leaves

We tried.  Really, we did.  We tried, once again, to miss the changing of the leaves.

But gosh darn it if we didn't manage to actually see some Fall foliage today!  Now, just to make sure we didn't get too excited, there were many parts of the park that looked practically dead.  However, we did drive through some lovely areas today.

This time around we started at the most northern edge of the park and stopped off at the Visitor Center for a few minutes and so Ben could squeeze "Marshmallow" the bear's nose.  This was also where Nana purchased a book called Who Pooped in the Park? and a couple of others - more about those later.

Then the boys just sat down to admire the beautiful vista.  No, this picture is not at all staged - why do you ask?

It was lovely.

Enjoying the lovely.

Somewhere along the drive we discovered something interesting.  We discovered that winding roads, reading books and too much sugar from Halloween can all add up to carsickness.  Poor boys.  Josh and Michael weren't doing so hot.  Luckily, we were pretty close to the restaurant so we could get out and eat something not made from high fructose corn syrup or any type of corn syrup.  Some noodles/grilled cheese sandwich/mac and cheese did the trick and everyone was feeling up to scampering around the rocks before we headed home.