Getting into the Holiday Spirit

We spent last weekend doing a lot of Christmas-y things around here. On Friday night, we took the boys to the Parade of Lights in Downtown Denver. I was told to get there early in order to get a front row seat - so we left shortly after I got home from work. After a quick dinner we set up a spot near the beginning of the parade route with our wagon and blankets. The boys drank hot chocolate while we waited for the parade to begin and Greg bought Ryan a light sword and Luke a lit up Santa thing. Within in a few minutes of the parade finally starting, Ryan had to go to the bathroom. At that point, the crowd was about 20 people deep so I had to carry Ryan over numerous people to get behind the crowd and then we had to wait in line at the 7-Eleven for the bathroom. So unfortunately, Ryan and I missed part of the parade and getting back to our curbside seats was quite a challenge - but overall, the boys loved it and had a lot of fun.


On Saturday we went on our annual Holiday Hay Ride in our neighborhood. This is such a neat thing that the neighborhood has put on for several years and it was our 3rd year for us since moving into our house. The boys were excited to see Santa Claus and did a better job of singing Christmas carols this year than they have in the past.


On Sunday the boys and I went to church and picked up a couple of stockings to fill for needy kids in the Denver area. We're going to have to work with Ryan to understand the true meaning of Christmas. He wanted everything for himself and when I tried to explain to him that the best thing about Christmas is giving gifts to other people, he said "I don't like the best part of Christmas." Fortunately, when we dropped our filled stockings off at the church yesterday, Ryan said "I'm glad we gave them such a nice present." So maybe he was listening after all.


Happy 1st Birthday to Tyler and Liam - the boys had a blast at their birthday party on Saturday.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend with Nana and Grandad. For Thanksgiving day, we went out to dinner at a great French restaurant in downtown Denver for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with a French flair. The boys loved the bread and apple cider the most. On Friday we cooked an abbreviated Thanksgiving meal so we would have leftovers to eat the rest of the weekend.


The boys were super excited to start getting Christmas decorations out on Friday. They had the best time putting the Christmas ornaments on the tree. They had helped last year, but this year they were really into it.


The boys and Nana also made gingerbread houses. Nana was a great sport to take this on - and the boys had so much fun doing it. For some reason, I have no pictures of Grandad - probably because he spent part of the weekend painting the hallway - he volunteered and I greatly appreciate it - it is so nice to have it done.

Tommy's 2nd birthday party was on Saturday. It is amazing to see how much he has grown since last year Tommy requested a football cake - so I attempted to carve a football out of a loaf pan - it ended up rather lopsided, but I love how the football player cupcakes turned out.



We had a nice relaxing weekend - Greg and I went to see Harry Potter (which was wonderful, but Greg was quite confused-he hasn't read any of the books or seen the last 3 movies) and on Sunday we all left Greg at home to watch another Bronco loss and we took the boys to see Tangled. It is always hard to go back to work after a nice break, but we are looking forward to our Christmas break and going to the upcoming TCU game at the Rose Bowl.

This Week's Activities

The boys and I enjoyed our short week of school. Today has been spent hanging around the house, cleaning, getting caught up on laundry and ice skating. I can't remember the last time I've been ice skating and this was the boys' first time. They had a lot of fun and did pretty good. Ryan clung to the wall the whole time, but he wasn't afraid to go on the ice and give it a try. Luke's balance was a little better, so by the end he was able to hold onto one of my hands and skate fairly freely.



A couple of things I learned - next time, bring gloves (I don't know why I didn't think about that) and be there early in order to get the walker thingy for the boys to skate and hold onto at the same time.


Last Sunday, Luke told me he wanted to spend the day doing crafts. The two of us went to Michaels and picked out a few Christmas crafty things for the boys to do that day. They had a great time and I'll have to remember to do that more often.

The boys' school had their annual Stone Soup day this week. I wasn't able to go due to some prior commitments at school, but Greg was able to go (by the way, I'm glad I was at school that day-I was in a classroom going over Explore (college prep test) results with 8th graders when the superintendent of the district came in and observed me talking to the kids about career options and college readiness). I'm not completely sure the point of Stone Soup day, but it has to do with a book that the kids read. The kids make the soup on Monday and then parents are invited on Tuesday to come to the school and learn about the story and eat the soup. The boys were so excited that Greg was able to be there.

We caught Luke tonight drawing in the hallway after bedtime. He had moved into the hallway so he could use the light in our bedroom to finish his book. It is his first book, titled "I Love Dogs" and he couldn't wait until the morning to work on it some more. His perfectionism and high frustration level came out, however, when he realized he had drawn over one of his previous pictures. He was so upset and had to be consoled for quite some time that it was ok and that we could work on fixing it in the morning.

We're looking forward to Nana and Grandad coming tomorrow for Thanksgiving weekend. Ryan could hardly go to sleep tonight in the midst of his excitement and Luke has worked for several days drawing them both pictures and creating room numbers for all of us so Nana and Grandad will know which room is theirs'.

Two Different Personalities

First Snow!


As soon as the boys were born we began to recognize each boys' distinct personality and interest. Greg's most vivid memory of their birth is of Luke coming out screaming - and not a normal baby cry, but an ear piercing scream that reverberates in your head even after it stops. As a baby, Luke was demanding and intense - his newborn scream is the same sound that we hear from him today when he is really upset. For the first year of Luke's life, he only had 2 faces - stoic or a big sly grin. One of the first signs of Luke's acute observation and memory was sometime before his first birthday when we realized that he knew every one of his book's titles. He loved for us to call out a title and he would crawl his big little self (and he was quite big) over, pull it out and bring it to us. Shortly after our move to Colorado (around 18 months old) Luke took a huge interest in letters and numbers. He loved for us to write them on his Magnadoodle and he would tell us the name of the letter. Around that same time his particularness about certain things really came through - he was particular about what he would and would not wear (especially with shoes). This has continued today, he has very definite opinions about certain situations and has become a perfectionist in many areas, as a result, he gets easily frustrated. The first signs of his creativity and love of art emerged shortly after his 2nd birthday when he drew his first car. Our house has now become his personal art gallery and he must go through a ream of paper by himself every couple of months with all of the pictures that he draws. He has now started taping his masterpieces to the walls of the house. His creativity amazes us daily. He has started taking paper and cutting it into various random (or it looks random to us) shapes - after spending a good bit of time making a big mess, he then tapes those pieces of paper together in what turns out to be an obvious preconceived final product.

Luke's paper person that he taped together. Tonight Luke found some straws and said he was going to make straw pictures - he then taped the straws to the paper in various shapes and then taped those new masterpieces to the kitchen wall.

As a baby, Ryan was laid back and happy most of the time, but when he got upset he turned on the over dramatic wail, which he continues to use to this day. As soon as Ryan's personality began to emerge we discovered that he loves to perform for others. Once he was crawling, his favorite activity was to put himself in front of the camera or try and crawl up my leg when I had the video camera. He also loved being mischievous. Soon after the boys were crawling, I caught them both (but led by Ryan) unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper - Ryan's reaction to getting caught was to laugh and laugh about it. He also loved (and still does) to test his limits - one of our first power struggles with him was over playing with the buttons on the DVD player. He knew after the first time that he was not supposed to play with the buttons but he loved nothing more than to push them just to get us to tell him no, and then he would laugh. His silliness has only increased - Ryan loves to be funny and loves to make people laugh, he totally feeds off of it and once he gets going it is hard for him to stop. He is a very cute little boy and he knows it - he performs and I think he is going to be the class clown. Ryan is also much more analytical than Luke. He studies things and enjoys figuring out how to make things work. Last Christmas he got a truck that comes with a screw driver to change the tires - Ryan played with it the first day and worked on how to turn the screw driver to take the tires off and on. Luke didn't realize that the truck even did that until a couple of months ago but he got too frustrated to change its tires. Ryan is fascinated with electronics and anything mechanical, as well - he has a much longer attention span than Luke in most areas.

The above picture is of Ryan at the carved pumpkin display in Lubbock. Some group (I think the boiler makers?) had a display that included a turbine. I didn't even stop to look at it but when I realized Ryan wasn't with me, I found him intensely studying the turbine and the picture showing how it worked. He then asked me to take his picture of him next to it.



One of the best recent examples of their different personalities came up during our last trip to Lubbock. Ryan found a Jacob's Ladder and wanted to learn how to make it work. Nana spent quite a bit of time with him showing him how to hold it so that each wood piece would flip over to make the next piece flip the other direction. He watched what she did and then practiced and practiced and practiced until he could get it right himself. He was very fascinated on how it worked and wanted to understand how to do it himself. After Ryan was done playing with it, Luke (who had been in the room the whole time) asked to play with it. He proceeded to take the Jacob's Ladder and turn it into a prop for his own imaginative play story that he had going on in his head. He wasn't the least bit interested in learning how to use the toy as it was designed, he just wanted to add it to his own personal creative play.

Halloween Sunday

The boys love Halloween and I love seeing how much they get into it each year. I knew that last years' Harry Potter costumes would be the last time that I would be able to select their costumes, so I figured the coordinating costumes had come to an end. I was thrilled when both boys came up with the idea and agreed to be Mario and Luigi for this Halloween (from the Super Mario Brothers Nintendo game). I opted to make their own costumes rather than buying the pre-made version - partly because I thought it would be cheaper (which it was not) and partly because I thought they would turn out much better (which they did). We started our Halloween festivities on Sunday by going to the Wildlife Experience. Uncle Jonny, Aunt Jenny and Thomas joined us for a nice indoor trick-or-treating event. Tommy was a super cute little bee and the boys loved seeing all of the other kids in different costumes.



Both boys fell asleep on our way home.

After a brief stop to show Papa and Grandma the boys' costumes we headed home for neighborhood trick-or-treating. In the past we've only taken the boys to a 3-4 houses and then headed home, but this year we walked around the neighborhood. Ryan had so much fun. He ran from door to door and had to be physically stopped at times from running up to a house that didn't have the porch light on - after every house he asked if we could do another house. Luke had a blast but then got tired and asked to go home once we turned the corner onto our own street. Both boys did a great job of saying "Happy Halloween" and "thank you" at almost every house - but they have now moved on from Halloween and are looking forward to Thanksgiving, because that means Christmas is next.


Pumpkin carving with Daddy.


Have you ever seen 2 cuter little boys with mustaches?


Halloween pictures from the previous years:

2009 - my all time favorite costumes - I had these planned when I found out I was pregnant with 2 boys.

2008

2007

2006 - One of my all time favorite pictures of them.

Who knows what they'll be next Halloween. Luke has said that Ryan will be a bat and he will be a ghost - but then later he said that he would be just plain Luke. They have a whole year to ponder it.

Lubbock Fun and Cousin Love

After our fun weekend in Fort Worth, we headed to Lubbock last Sunday. We had a wonderful dinner on Sunday night with Jane and Charlie and a fun week hanging out with family and relaxing during a week off of school. Greg worked in New Mexico while the boys and I stayed in Lubbock (he didn't have a such a fun week after driving over 3000 miles in 6 days). We were going to leave on Friday, but Greg stayed in NM an extra day so we didn't leave until this morning. The positive of that is we got to go to Jacob and Olivia's Fall Festival last night. The negative was that I didn't have the boys' costumes with me - but we did have new TCU jerseys, so we made impromptu football costumes.

Ryan took the roll of the tough football player very seriously.

My beautiful sister and her beautiful kids. Olivia was a fortune teller (although she wasn't willing to read anyone's palms) and Jacob had the cutest astronaut costume ever.

Probably the biggest hit at the Fall Festival was the endless supply of Silly String.

Jacob's astronaut costume was a huge hit with Ryan and Luke. Ryan was especially enthralled with it and played by himself pretending to be an astronaut for about an hour (he's not always very good with playing by himself and creating his own stories - so I was impressed). I got a cute picture of Ryan in the costume, but he didn't have the visor up. I know what we'll be getting him for Christmas this year.

The boys surprised Jacob on Monday by picking him up from school. He was so excited to see them and immediately embraced them both in a big hug.

Jacob's 6th birthday was on Oct. 4 - but we celebrated a little party for him on Monday.

Ryan was a big fan of the ice cream cake.

Nana made Jacob a quilt for his birthday - he had so much fun looking at each of the panels and telling Conny about the story on each picture.

Right before I took this picture, Olivia had her arms around Luke.

On Sunday night we went to a Jack-o-Lantern thing at a park - there were several hundred carved pumpkins-I really liked these Day of the Dead ones.

Grandad and Luke

The boys and Grandad painted their own pumpkins on Wednesday.




Nana and I took the boys to a pottery place on Tuesday to let the boys paint their own pottery while I made new Christmas plates for myself with Luke's footprint and Ryan's handprint. Ryan picked out a robot to paint and then later wanted to paint something for me - so he picked out a gingerbread ornament.

Luke made a mosiac and also painted a pumpkin.


Nanny and Mr. G came over for lunch on Wednesday - it was so nice to spend time with them both. Nanny hasn't been feeling too great the last couple of times I've been in Lubbock - so I've only been able to see her for a short visit at her house. It was great to see her feeling a little better and spend some time with her Wednesday afternoon.

Mr. G is such a delightful man. He is so good to Nanny and he enjoyed watching the boys play and draw pictures.

I finally got a somewhat decent pumpkin patch picture - after several attempts. Pictures from previous years - 2009 2008 and 2007



Below -the pumpkins each boy picked out to paint.



Not much in Lubbock is better than nightly bedtime stories with Nana and Grandad. My favorite part is that the boys then go to bed in Nana and Grandad's room and I get a night of uninterrupted sleep and I get to sleep in past 7 (I even made it to 9 one morning).


We're home just in time for Halloween tomorrow - we're not doing too much this year - but we are going to take the boys to the Wildlife Experience and then some neighborhood trick or treating.