So I just packed away Halloween decorations, leaving some of the more “fallish” items in place, and added a few others for this Thanksgiving month. However, I feel like I’m already thinking and planning ahead to December (which is usually not at all like me since I’m a November baby and get irritated when people seem to skip right over this time).

First, Brian got an email last week about a little boy who has terminal cancer. His family is celebrating Christmas early this year. He loves Christmas cards so his family sent around a message urging people to send them. I got the same email from another friend later in the week which makes me happy – l read that he has already received thousands of cards!! Last Thursday night, Brian and I spent some time making one with the boys. (pictures below)

Second, I have been beyond perplexed for about a month now every time I think about what to get the boys this year. I’ve spent hours and hours pouring through toy catalogs and on-line sites trying to sort it all out. We want to be on a strict budget mostly because they don’t NEED to get a million things. I want the few items that we pick out to be meaningful and special to them. So, I made my choices and ordered everything! I didn’t even leave the house, but I do have to admit that my major purchase DID come from Target! May I reiterate: I have a Target problem!

Third, I just spent the morning trying to get my three boys to stay still, smile and look cute simultaneously in the hopes of getting a picture good enough for our Holiday card. Our usual tradition is to take a family picture at Thanksgiving, but it seems like I then take a couple weeks after to get my act together, order, wait for the order to arrive, address etc. and then I’m “late”! I had stopped by Carter’s last week to get Aiden one of his Christmas wishes, “basketball pajamas that actually fit me.” This was a request we got after I had to take away his old ones, which were WAY too short, and reassign them to Brady’s drawer. Anyway, while I was shopping at Carter’s, I saw some very cute Christmas PJs. I started poking around and the ones I liked looked to be well in stock…until I began checking the sizes. Out of 5 piles of these pajamas, I only found 1 size 4T! So…I grabbed a 5T, the 4T and a 2T. After the boys woke up this morning, I put them in the holiday jammies and had FOUR different photo sessions with them…spread out amongst playing, eating and general hanging out. I took over 160 pictures. Not ONE is that great, but I was dying laughing while I reviewed them – 3 boys together are funny!!! I got enough decent ones to make a card though so – CHECK! I also uploaded them to Costco.com and made about 5 different ones for Brian to review and pick!

At this rate people, I will have my act together this year…I think….

Below is the card we made for Noah Biorkman. I made the mistake of letting the boys choose Christmas pasta for decorations. I need to find a padded envelope! It was hard to trace Brady’s hands so I painted them and cut out the prints…but not before I realized I used a different color of green paper. Oh well. Aiden’s are in the middle and Logan’s on the bottom. Aiden wanted to draw “the stem”…that’s why it’s blue!

Sadly, I think the family celebrated this weekend, but we’re still sending our card along with a dollar that will be donated to the Michigan neuroblastoma research center and the Michigan Make A Wish Chapter. Here is the address if anyone else is interested!

Noah Biorkman 1141 Fountian Viewcircle South Lyon,Mi 48178

Since he’s getting so many, I wrote down what the boys told me to write…short and sweet. Oh and yes, Brady won’t be 2 for another month, but it’s getting annoying to say he’s 23 months old.

Here are the best (hahahahaha, I laugh hysterically) of the pictures I took today. I am posting a bunch of them because they seriously made me crack up. Click on “slide show” for the full effect (or if you want to feel my pain as I tried to take these pictures!)

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Last year, right around this time, Memaw and Grandpa took the boys to the library to check out some books. About a month ago, they did the same. The boys came home with the following: “Smiley Shark”, “Big Fish Little Fish”, “Hooray for Fish” (are we seeing a pattern here?) and a Star Wars book. One night, as we were reading “Hooray for Fish” for the umpteenth time in his room, Aiden started “reading” along. I had him try the whole book from the beginning. I was impressed that he knew all the words (had memorized the words that is..not that he can actually read them). Last year, I  video taped him “reading” the book “Skippy John Jones: Color Crazy”aaaaaaaaaaaa so I decided to tape this one too. The books were due back on Tuesday so I made this video quickly before we had to take them back.

I wanted to include a link to the Skippy John Jones post, but back then I didn’t know how to do embedded videos so there is only a link to youtube there anyway. Instead, I’m going to post both videos now. First: Aiden in 2008 “reading” Skippy (2 years and 3 months old) and then this year reading Hooray for Fish (which is quite hard to hear I might add…he was speaking quickly and slurring the words a bit). Logan helps finish the book and notice how Brady comes in and yells at me for pointing the camera to him. He’s got the paparazzi move down pat! Oh and I now remember why I taped the Skippy book…I thought it was so cute that 1. Aiden thought his name was “Skippy John Jones Color Crazy” and 2. He repeats to Skippy what he had, at that point, been told MANY MANY times “you only color on paper!”

Sorry for the delay on the Halloween pics (mom’s camera and the computer are not seeing eye-to-eye and I had some transfer problems). So…Halloween was a great success this year. Kristin and Joel hosted the “before” party and The Dietz family took the “after” party. After naps and some pictures at the house, we headed out with our three little super heroes around 3:15. The kids played, decorated pumpkins and had a little dinner before we hit the candy trail. After we made the usual path through our subdivision, we all gathered together for more playtime, more sweet treats and a taco spread for the adults. Perfect!!

I have to say that as of this posting, the kids have already forgotten about their candy bags…mom and dad, unfortunately, have not ;)

Lizard Boy, Rocket Boy and Fly Boy – ready to go! Mission objective: procure sweet treats (ah…looks like they’ve already raided the home candy bowl!)

By the way, we have some terrible trick or CHEATERS in our neighborhood! We left our candy bowl on the porch with a sign saying please just take 2 pieces. Of course, just like last year, it was totally emptied by 4pm (as reported by a neighbor who stopped by to find an empty bowl on our porch, Anne & Jeff’s porch and on Pete and Susan’s porch). They even took my sign!! <—which I made all cute on the computer too! In my head, they are Jr. High boys…meanies!

Back to the nice stuff….here are the back of the capes on all three boys

Rolling down the street to the Epstein party! We took the wagon around during actual trick-or-treating and, predictably, not one of the boys used it. Chad pulled it for us as it carried a bunch of coats and other “stuff”

“YEAH!”

Susan and Mackenzie dressed as mommy and daughter witches (Mackenzie’s request!) 

Here, the kids decorate pumpkins. Logan did his in about 3 minutes while Aiden was the last kid left at the table!

Susan and Holli

Brady snagged his first piece of candy as we left the Epstein house! “I am Fly Boy…I am off to find friends for this lonely piece of chocolate!”

The neighborhood gang.

“I am Rocket Boy….I will destroy your attempts to take good pictures by blocking everyone with my fantastic cape!” I forgot to turn the camera around this year and take pictures of all the parents, armed with various recording devices (cameras, phones, video equipment)

“I am Fly Boy…I refuse to stand still for this picture-taking non-sense!”

“cheese”

“are we done yet?!”

“enough with this mask!”

I think this is the last time I saw Logan. He was quick…and I was on Brady duty…who was very definitely NOT quick!

See…here comes Bray and the other kiddos, save for Aiden, have come and gone!

“I think there is more candy this way!” The feet far in the distance are the dads…who always bring up the rear of our trick-or-treat parade. Bear refused to be carried though and he was having such a blast that I just let him do his own thing!

This is Aiden saying, “mommy! I got a BLUE LOLLI-POP!!” For me, the French phrase “joie de vivre” just pops into my head for this picture.  For those of you who did not take French, it means “joy of living”. What could be more joyful than the excitement a little boy takes from getting a BLUE lolli-pop I ask!? :)

“and I’m off!”

At the after party: Susan made the kids these amazing which-hat cupcakes and alien cookies – so cool!

The black part of the cupcake is a frosting-coated ice cream cone.

One of the few things that will actually get Brady to give up his much-loved paci…cake!

I was going to do a separate post on this, but here is Logan with his very first ever homework assignment…candy counting. Logan, Aiden and I worked on this together Sunday morning.

We counted, grouped, sorted and um…ate the candy stash.

Here is the pumpkin Aiden decorated at the Halloween party.

Here are Logan’s pumpkins. The one on the left is from the party and the one on the right is from school.

Today was the first run the super hero costumes…at least for the big boys. Logan had his preschool Halloween party and Aiden decided to attend the school parade in costume as well.

Before we left the house, Logan practiced his “Rocket Boy” moves (which are somewhere between karate and strong man poses)

If I were a bad guy, I would be very afraid! By the way, two of the many many words Brady has suddenly added to his repertoire are “bad guy” (seriously…that kid went from talking very little to at least identifying almost everything! pretty cool)

I had totally different visions for the boys’ capes, but this was the best I could come up with aside from sewing totally new ones. It helps get the “I made up my own super hero” message across.  Aiden in (most) of his costume. I have to go get longer blank pants for him tomorrow.    I love the flying cape effect!

Action shot!

Here comes the parade! We were standing outside of the school. I loved the teacher’s costume from the 3-year-olds class – she was an ice cream cone with sprinkles.

Here comes the pre-K class with Logan near the front waving to us

They walked around a few times

Aiden insisted I take some shots of him too (then he stole my camera!)

Me and Bear (there were more…I deleted like 20 I think)

The teacher went down the line and “introduced” all the different kids in their costumes. She did a great job with Logan who had apparently already told her QUITE a bit about Rocket Boy. Logan reported to daddy that someone in his class looked at his costume and exclaimed, “what the heck!?” One of the moms, who I have known for some time, asked me what my boys were dressed as. When I said “they made up their own super heroes” several people in line watching the parade said “oh” (as in I was also wondering) and then “that’s very imaginative!”

This is Logan and one of his best friends from school, Dylan.

I helped plan the class party so I got to attend and…take MORE pictures :) Here is Logan doing one of the crafts: pumpkin painting

Logan waves (lower left) as I take a shot of the room

One of the many games the kids played was pin the nose on the pumpkin (there was some debate amongst the moms and teachers regarding if they could see through the blindfold because most of them were right on the money!)

Snack time! These kiddos don’t get a snack every day because school is only 2 hours and 15 minutes long. The administrators have elected not to use up 20 minutes eating every day (good, in my opinion). So this was a really special treat for them.

And finally…some stories.

After school, I picked up the little guys who were hanging with grandpa and we headed over to the park where we meet once a week with our "old” playgroup friends to work out some energy and have lunch. Of the usual suspects (three families who go most weeks), we are only missing Alex from this picture. He was off for a hearing and vision screening, but his big brother Adam (top in orange) stayed to play. Aiden wacked Brady at some point during the park outing so I asked him to apologize. This led to a big group brother hug…which was super cute until Logan let go and Aiden toppled over on Brady knocking him to the ground…which was probably more painful than the original injustice Aiden was currently apologizing for. Oh well…I tried.

We just installed Windows 7 on our home computer and it’s got a blog interface. I am so excited! I can now upload more than 5 pictures at a time and I don’t have to do them in the reverse order!

This is my test. I just pulled up a random file on my computer and picked a bunch of pictures. These are from 2001…the night Brian proposed on the Odyssey (a dinner cruise boat out of Navy Pier in Chicago) and the night of our engagement party at his old apartment on Addison. I find it amusing that we got engaged on a boat named the Odyssey and now I drive a Honda Odyssey mini van…oh the circles of life :)

I also created a photo album instead of posting the pictures individually…and now I feel really old cause we look like babies in these pictures!

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I'm not sure if I've addressed our Halloween costumes this year (not the camping ones...the ones the boys will wear to school and out trick or treating). We went through a few ideas, but Logan had sort of settled on Super Man while Aiden was still not really um...playing the game and picking anything. Finally one day, inspired by his love of lizards, he said he wanted to dress as "lizard boy". I remember distinctly that we were climbing into the van, which was parked in Anne's driveway after playgroup, when he made this pronouncement. We were on our way to get Logan from school. I was confused though because we had previously discussed how maybe he could dress up as a lizard keeper...like a zoo keeper with a lizard cage and a safari hat etc. When he said lizard boy, I asked him if that was: a) a boy who is also part lizard b) a boy who can talk to lizards or c) a super hero? He declared most defiantly: a super hero!

We spent the drive to Logan's school discussing Lizard Boy - his costume, his powers, his weapons etc. When we had Logan in the car, I told him about Aiden's costume idea. Logan was excited to hear the news that they would be super heros together...he, Super Man and Aiden, Lizard Boy! When we got home, I started searching on the internet for generic capes (found: none), anything remotely related to "lizard boy" (found: none). Then we searched for and found a good Super Man costume. I explained to Logan that I would order his costume, buuuuut I would have to help Aiden make his costume and invent stuff about Lizard Boy. I was 1/2 informing and 1/2 hoping that Logan would jump on this creative opportunity and invent his OWN superhero. He looked at me and said, "well...I could make MY own super hero too, right?...like...um.....rocket boy!?" Awesome!

So...we've spent the past month discussing all the different facts about Lizard Boy and Rocket Boy. For example, Lizard Boy has an secret underwater cave (even though we have since learned that most lizards live in hot, DRY places...there are some water ones too though) and Rocket Boy was born on...um...Pluto! Lizard boy shoots slime balls and Rocket Boy has little rockets on his belt that he throws at the bad guys. The rockets open up into nets which trap the bad guys (I'm opposed to actually "killing" bad guys...I like the boys to talk about them being captured instead). We obviously needed to include Brady, but he's not really at a stage where he's passionate about anything. He does point excitedly to the sky and exclaim "plane mama!" every time one flies over AND he's quite fast...especially when I'm chasing him (to do something like save him from running into a parking lot for example!) We decided to make him Fly Boy. After much pondering, I finally came up with a costume plan. Step one was to make shirts...which I found at my super favorite new site: spreadshirt.com (check it out!) You can make anything and it's not at all expensive! I made a green shirt with a rocket, a blue shirt with a lizard and a red shirt with a fighter jet on it. These will go over long-sleeved black shirts and will be worn with black sweat pants. Step 2: capes! Logan and Aiden have capes that my good friend Lisa's mom made. Problem: they say "Super Logan" and "Super Aiden" on them. Solution: cover them with little signs that say Rocket and Lizard Boy! Problem: Brady has no cape. Solution: I sewed him one using Aiden's as a pattern. I also made them belts, cuffs and masks using AJ's Robin mask as a template.

Since the boys have taken over every available space in our house, my work area is...once again...the island in the kitchen! Here is my giant mess:
These are the same stencils I used for the "Crayola" on the crayon costumes. There are 4 letters to a square in the package so I cut out the letters I need, tape them together and trim to make one giant stencil.
Here are the masks I made using 2 pieces of sticky-backed felt (no sewing required!) and elastic for the bands (sewing required if you're lazy like me).

I used fabric paint to put the stencils on more sticky-backed felt and then used that to cover the words "Super Logan" (barely seen in orange above my little Rocket Boy sign) on the back of Logan's cape. Aiden's will be the same.

I know this might sound kind of silly, but what I really want to do is this: finish all the little costume pieces, gather everything together for each boy, put them in 3 boxes with color coordinted ribbons on them (green, blue, red) and leave them on the table for Halloween morning with a note from "the commissioner" <--isn't he always the go-to for the super heros?! haha.

So after all this brainstorming, costume making etc. I stumbled upon SUCH an adorable costume idea. I hope my boys still love scuba divers next year because I would LOVE to make these for them and I SO know that they would love to wear these! Brian even suggested making them as a Christmas gift. I am entertaining the idea of doing that OR of taking the materials for these to GG and GGpa's house for Christmas so that the boys can 1. have a craft to do that 2. they will then play with while we are there.
how cute is that?!!

So...one final thought: in the file directory on my laptop (not our home computer, but the one I use for work and the one I usually use to blog), I have folders and then random pictures. One of the random pics that I ALWAYS see when I upload for my posts is one of Logan on Halloween in 2005 (he was 7 months old). I think I was like DAYS pregnant with Aiden during this time. Here is my very first baby and his very first Halloween: (I think the outfit says "my lil pumpkin).