Will's growing up!

The boys got some money at Halloween from my grandma and aunt, so I told them we could go to Target today to spend it. We were looking at toys while we were there to get ideas for Christmas, and Will saw some Silly Bandz on an endcap. He said, "Mom, they have Silly Bandz. Everyone in my class has them, can I get some?" I was so taken aback...everyone in his class has them, can he have some?! He's not even five yet...this isn't supposed to happen yet! Now I know what it was like for my mom in middle school, "Can I have some Guess jeans? All the girls in my class have them."

Only my mom never bought me Guess jeans, and I bought Will the Silly Bandz. ;)

Dress Up

Will loves to come up with crazy costumes from our bin of dress-up clothes. He got me in on it awhile back and chose what I should wear. When we went downstairs to show Daddy, John felt he needed to capture our costumes for posterity. I can't believe i'm going to post a picture of me dressed up like this.

Elephant Appreciation Day at the zoo

September 22nd was Elephant Appreciation Day, so we headed to the zoo after picking Will up from school for all the festivities. They had the elephants' "house" open for viewing and the Phoenix Fire Department was there to hose down the elephants. It was pretty funny to watch. The elephant loved it! We even got to see her go into the pond in the habitat which I'd never seen any of the elephants there do.

Payson

Wow I can't believe I did so many posts yesterday and only got through the month of October! I would have kept going, but I couldn't find our September pictures. I had somehow put them in the June folder...I was glad I finally found them!

We had such a great time going to Payson, AZ (about 90 minutes north of Phoenix) for 4th of July weekend with my mom that she booked the same house for us for Labor Day weekend. Sadly it wasn't as amazing a time because the creek was dried up and the yard of the house was kind of overgrown with weeds. We were all pretty disappointed and almost left early, but we ended up staying and making the most of it. It did end up being fun, just not as fun as the first time. At least this time the burn ban was lifted, so we were able to have a campfire which was really fun. I got the fire started before John--woo hoo! My dad would have been so proud. Will really liked the fire; Miles was already in bed. John won the award for "coolest dad ever" by putting the hose down the slide to create 1) a water slide, and 2) mud pit at the bottom. The kids were a mess but had so much fun!!

Click on the album below to see pictures from the trip.

Payson Trip September 2010

hockey

Our local NHL team sponsors a free hockey clinic for kids ages 4-8. Even though Will can't play hockey because of his kidney issue, we figured it would be fun for him to try and see what he thought of ice skating. All the equipment is included too which is great. His best friend Connor did it at the same time. Will didn't take to hockey or ice skating very quickly. There were four lessons, and he spent the first three sitting on a bucket too scared to get up and try skating. Finally at the last one he got up off the bucket. He did great skating around holding onto a hockey stick held by one of the instructors. Too bad he waited until the last day!!

My Ikea boy

Miles had fun riding around with my mom and me at Ikea while Will played in the kid play area.

Late season swimming

We bought a solar cover for our pool so we'd be able to swim in it after the overnight lows started dipping down (for those of you without a pool, that's how the water starts to cool down). We went swimming John's birthday weekend (his birthday is 10/16) mostly to say we did, but the water was really nice.

Painting Pumpkins

Will has never enjoyed carving pumpkins, so this year I figured we'd just paint them. Miles hadn't ever painted before and had a blast!! He was so pleased with himself getting paint on the paintbrush and then putting it on the pumpkin. Every time he got more paint he'd hold up his brush to show us with a huge smile on his face.

Pumpkin Patch

Will and I had a great time on his class field trip to a local pumpkin patch. I took him to school and got to spend some time in his classroom before we left. I really like his teacher, Ms. Vasquez. She's so loving to the kids and so patient. I rode on the bus with the class, and Will's friend Joey wanted to sit with him, but he said no he was going to sit with his mom. Cue heart melting!! :)

When we got there, the kids got to pick out a pumpkin and decorate it with stickers, then we went on a hay ride around the farm. When we got off the hay ride there was a petting zoo, including a bunch of baby pigs that were only two weeks old! They threw pumpkins to some hogs, and it was so funny to watch them dive into eating the smashed pumpkins. The kids went through a hay maze and played in bounce houses. It was a fun day!

Will and his friend Madison (I think Madison "likes" him)


Will's class


Feeding a goat


Will and his friend Molly in the hay maze (he's quite the ladies man)


The hogs with the pumpkins

A date with my oldest son

Will's class went on a field trip to a pumpkin patch, and I was able to go along as a chaperone. My mom kept Miles for the day, so Will and i made a date day out of it. After the pumpkin patch we had lunch at Taco Bell (his choice), went and saw Toy Story 3 at a dollar theater, had ice cream at Coldstone, and then went to the dollar store. It was so fun getting to spend the day just mommy and Will!

Soccer...go Laveen Sharks!

Will decided he wanted to play soccer this fall, so we signed him up with his friends Josh and Connor. Josh ended up having to change teams, but Will and Connor had fun...most of the time. Their team was the Laveen Sharks and they ended their six week season victorious with an unbeaten record!!

Halloween 2010

I guess it's easier to start at the most current and work my way back. since Halloween was just two days ago, I'll start there. Will was so excited for Halloween this year. Actually he's been excited about it the past two years as well. I still can hear him saying "come on guys, let's go trick or treating!" when he was two!!

Will got to wear his costume to school on Friday. his school doesn't celebrate Halloween, but they do have a festival called Arizona Day. The little kids (preschool, pre-K, and I think kindergarten) get to wear their costumes, trick or treat to the various classrooms (the school goes up to eighth grade), and then have a carnival put on by the fifth graders. the PTA sponsors lunch for all the kids, so he also got to stay for lunch with his friends, which he was so excited about!

Saturday was our church's annual Trunk or Treat event. We signed up to decorate the trunk of our car this year. I spent most of the morning getting all the decorations ready--including making an awesome curtain type thing out of four colors of crepe paper to hide the inside of our car--only to arrive to set up and find out there were massive wind gusts, so my curtain wouldn't stay in place. Our car was definitely the lamest there, but I don't think any of the kids cared--they just wanted candy (and some adults, too, but that's a huge pet peeve of mine, so i won't go down that road). The boys had fun going from car to car and playing the games, and they both liked handing out candy. Silly Miles would go get candy from his own bucket and put into other people's as they came by our car. They said at church Sunday morning that there were roughly 1500 kids that came through!! Amazing, especially since that was double the number they esitmated.

Will in his Mario costume, waiting for Trunk or Treat to start:


Dragon Miles (or Yoshi as Will was calling him):




The past two years we've gone to my friend Laura's for Halloween, but last year it got to be too many people. We split it up into two groups this year and had one group at my house. It was our friends the Bowmans and Syntaxes and their kids, plus my mom and grandma. Jen and I made pizzas for dinner that were a huge hit, then the kiddos went trick or treating. It was Will and his best friend Connor, Miles, and his buddy Michael. They all had so much fun running from house to house, although both my kids kept spilling their candy buckets somehow. It was fun--and it's nice to live in a neighborhood where we feel we don't have to be armed to take our kids out on Halloween!

It's nearly impossible to get a good picture of four excited boys.

Massive updates!!

Hello, poor neglected family blog. I've been in the process of trying to reorganize pictures on my computer, so I haven't updated in awhile. Now I'm stuck in bed with strep throat, so I got the laptop all set up on our wireless network so I can work on some massive updates while I lay here moaning and groaning. Not really--that would hurt my throat too much. but I am whining in my head a lot.