Happy Halloween!

Reformation Day 2010

each year, as an alternative to Halloween, our school celebrates Reformation Day and encourages the students to come to school dressed as an animal from God's creation or a Bible character.  we've enjoyed participating the past two years...you can see those pics here and here.

this year is unique because noodle finally had his turn to "officially" participate.  in talking about our costume options, the boys concluded that it would be quite funny to go as abraham and titus from the Bible (and if you don't know us IRL, the boys' real names are abraham and titus, so now you get the joke, right?). 

fortunately, we had our brown jedi robes from burrito's star wars jedi party to use as our basic costume.  i fashioned some head coverings out of some leftover brown material from the making of those jedi robes (see, saving things pays off eventually!), we borrowed an old cane for a staff and we made a scroll and feather pencil for burrito as if he and paul had been corresponding by letter.

here they are before heading to school.

burrito's party was first, and they celebrated by eating a cross cookie and popcorn and then painting pumpkins.  their sweet "adopted senior" jacob came and read them a pumpkin story.  and of course we couldn't resist a class picture.

noodle's party was next and consisted of a variety of snacks, an art project and a game of animal charades.  his group picture was not so easy.  getting a group of 4-5 year olds to be still and smile all at the same time is nearly impossible!

no, this is not a budding romance, though noodle is one of two boys in a class with 8 girls!  noodle sits by this sweet girl, and they are good friends.  check out how much taller she is than him!  ha!

we have some fun halloween plans for this weekend too.  we just love this time of year!

noodle's birthday weekend

we knew noodle's actual birthday would fall on a rather busy weekend.  because of this, we had a little birthday party for him earlier in the month with his favorite friends from church and his cousin.  noodle wanted a party at my favorite birthday place (read lots of sarcasm here):  chuck e. cheese's.  or as my boys call it, chuck e. cheezits!

we took advantage of a day off from school and had his birthday party on a friday morning.  it was perfect because it was not crowded, the kids were totally entertained, and everything felt laid back and easy going.  we also took advantage of some online coupons, and instead of buying the traditional party package, just purchased a couple of pizzas, some drinks, and loads of tokens!  it was way cheaper doing it that way and the kids had just as much fun!

noodle wanted a lego theme party so i concocted a little lego brick cake.  it was fairly easy and made for easy slicing, i just handed them a lego brick!

and of course, there were presents!

on friday, noodle celebrated his birthday with his classmates at school.  i forgot to take any actual pictures of them eating the cookies noodle picked out, but i did manage to snap a pic of the cookies themselves.

we also wanted to make noodle's actual birthday special, despite our crazy schedule on that day.  so to start things off, we had birthday muffins.

we had soccer games so we had planned on bringing birthday cupcakes and apple juice for the team's special snack, but inclement weather ruined that for us.  the whole debacle of soccer and football games is a whole other story that could be a post in and of itself!

however, we didn't let a little rain ruin our party so we headed down to mimi and poppy's house for a family celebration.  we opened presents.  lots of presents!

we had pizza for dinner, noodle's request.  and for birthday dessert, a cookie cake!

noodle, i simply cannot believe that you are already 5 years old!  it seems like it was just yesterday that i was watching the cowboys play football on a lazy sunday afternoon, when my water broke, and i knew you were on the way.  you were due on october 31, halloween, but i was so glad you decided to come early like your brother.  you were so cute and sweet, and we fell in love with you instantly! 

and now you are in pre-k, going to school three days a week and learning so much.  you love school, and you are already such a good reader!  you love sports, and i can see how serious you are when you play soccer.  you are a lover of the wii and the iphone, always wanting to play a game.  you are a game nazi, and you usually win whatever game we are playing, especially sorry.  i love your sweet snuggles, your absent-mindedness and your love for life.  i love how you love Jesus and you are so smart about memorizing scripture or the catechism.  i pray that God would continue to grow you up to fear and love Him with all your heart!

happy 5th birthday noodle, my little pumpkin!

pumpkin patch 2010

well, i hate to think this, much less write this, but this may be the last year for us to visit the local pumpkin patch.  i could go every year for the rest of my life.  i love fall-ish things like this but i fear it is becoming less appealing to my boys who love all things legos and star wars.  good thing we found these guys there!

nonetheless, when i heard my sister wanted to take my little nephew to one, i jumped at the chance to act as tour guide.  it was so fun to relive the fascination of such a place through the eyes of a one year old.  and noodle, who was out of school, was happy to act as tour guide too.

i think the biggest hit, maybe for them both, were the fun wooden cut-outs around the pumpkin patch.  they loved seeing familiar cartoon characters.  my sister and i were photo-op happy and the boys cooperated, most of the time! :)

thanks stacey and cousin porkchop for letting us accompany you to your very first pumpkin patch.  hope you had as much fun as we did!

the picture below makes me hear noodle saying "check ya later dude!"

i'm so behind....

alternatively titled:  porkchop's first birthday, my boys and fall, cafe brazil and other random stuff

school, work and soccer are really kicking my booty right now, so much so that i have not found the time to blog, or even take pictures of events i want to blog.  oh well, nobody's perfect, right?

so this post is a catch-up post that will be totally random and unrelated at times. 

we had a very busy weekend last weekend, partly because the boys had a 5 day weekend off from school.  we celebrated noodle's birthday a little early with friends this year because we wanted to take advantage of being able to celebrate at chuck e. cheese's on a friday.  you know, on a day when there aren't 5000 people crammed inside of there!  it ended up being really nice and fun but i think i am going to save the details and pictures from that celebration and include them next weekend on noodle's actual birthday.

on top of a small birthday celebration, we also attended the school football game, played 2 soccer games, made a late night visit to dallas to see friends and their new baby, went to church, and celebrated another birthday sunday night.  it was a full weekend!  i had to work on monday (as did john, but the boys did not have school), so the boys had a sleepover at mimi's and spent all day monday there getting spoiled!  tuesday was our chance for haircuts and dentist appointments without missing school.  i felt like i needed another 5 day weekend to recover from our 5 day weekend!

i did manage to remember to take a few pictures from our late night trip to dallas.  we fed the boys a larger snack because we knew we would be eating dinner later that night than normal.  burrito couldn't get over the fact that we were eating dinner at 8pm!  we're such party animals!  and because we were in dallas, we couldn't resist the temptation to eat at our favorite late-night place, cafe brazil!

after eating a late night dinner, we headed over to the big half-price books there and didn't leave dallas till around 11pm.  the boys were so pumped to stay up that late!  oh, the simple pleasures of life!

this past thursday brought a significant event...my nephew porkchop's 1st birthday (and no, porkchop is not his real name!).  we met up for dinner and a little family celebration.  it was so fun watching him eat a cookie and open presents.  he's growing up so fast!

and then yesterday we celebrated his birthday with a big party at my parents' house, complete with bounce house and hay ride!  my boys had so much fun.  happy birthday porkchop!

and some other random stuff...i just love listening to the funny things my boys say and lately it's been noodle making me laugh.

he was showing me a book in the bookstore one day and explaining how his teacher at school reads these big books aloud to them.  when he came to the second page, he explained to me that "this is the table of continents."  it cracked me up because burrito has learned the names of the seven continents complete with a song and so instead of saying table of contents, it is now the table of continents!  ha, ha!

also, one night at dinner, john was reading a bible story to the boys and when john asked noodle if he understood what he had just read, noodle had this puzzled look on his face.  recognizing this, john asked him to repeat what he had heard.  noodle sat there for a few seconds and then said, "i know the answer...it's in my head, above my tongue."  he was trying to say that he knew what to say just not how to say it.  it was so funny and cute!

and finally, thanks to the busyness of soccer season, we may not make our annual trip to the pumpkin patch but we did manage to stop at our local farmer's market and get a few shots with the pumpkins.

i love this time of year and it's flying by!!!