Carving Pumpkins

Thought I'd start out with our Halloween posts by sharing some pictures leading up to trick or treating! We can't forget the pumpkin carving, especially since it was another 1st for Rylan!

So the week of Halloween night we carved our pumpkins we picked with Sonja and Kayla! Oh yes, did I ever mention our trip to the pumpkin patch with them? It was 38 degrees with 35-40 mph winds, and we got our first snow too which caused a white out on our way home! It was FREEZING out. We were shocked that the kids didn't seem to bothered by it! Didn't stop us from doing the fastest pumpkin picking you'd ever seen! After we got that done, we got some carmeled apples and headed to Mc Donalds for lunch! The kids loved seeing each other and had a nice time playing. Rylan absolutely loves Kayla. He gets all excited when he sees her picture or hears her name! And when he knows were going to see her, it's all I can do to keep him settled down. He calls her "Nina, Nina". In Spanish, it means little girl. That's been his name for her since our visits when they both were in Guatemala. Can you see an arranged marriage here? I can! I'm saving a post just for Kayla coming up too. Lots of pictures to share!

Well, the pumpkin carving was going great, that is for about 5 minutes! Just long enough for the kids to make a mess, then run their trucks through it when I wasn't looking, and then thought it wasn't fun anymore once I caught them! So mom got to sit by herself on the kitchen floor for about an hour and finishing. Hmmm, I seem to remember this happening last year with Cameron!?

So, once I was finished this is where I found the boys. They bailed on me and went into the living room to watch cartoons. Don't they look completely enthused to you!? HA! Men in the making I tell ya! By the way, the face Rylan is making is me asking them both to come back and help me clean up. You can just see the "awwww, noooo mom"! Cameron, we'll he was just tuning me out. Go figure!

And here we are all proud to say, is our finished products! Cameron colored the one in the middle. He actually helped me outline the ones that were carved too. My next post will be with Halloween pictures! They boys looked so cute!!!

Ramblings

I have a post that I've been working on since last Friday that's not quite done yet! I've been trying to post video on it and so far no luck. Not because I don't think it will work, but it takes so darn long that I run out of time during lunch. My not so speedy dial-up at home would probably take days to load! So I promise to try again tomorrow.

I'll leave you with a couple Cameron and Rylan stories for now! It's always something interesting at our house:

So Cameron and I are in bed going to sleep and it's really dark (yes, I still let him fall asleep in our bed, then take him to his room!). Rylan was already out. We're laying there in the darkness and Cameron says, mom, I need a tissue. Me, I ask why? He said, because I was picking in my ear and I have wax on my finger. Me (thinking "oh gross")... but I roll over to feel for a tissue on the night stand. I rolled back and said, Cameron here... So he proceeds to say "never mind mom, I don't need it". Me, what do you mean never mind? Where did the ear was go? He says, it fell off my finger. Hmmm, we still haven't recovered it out of our bed!!!!

A couple nights ago I got into bed and Cameron was almost sleeping. Rylan's playpen where he sleeps (oh yes, he's in our room too) is on the other side of our bed next to the night stand. He was quiet as well, so I quick flipped the light out and got into bed. Rylan started rambling... Mamma.... ummm Mamma.... and I could hear the playpen creaking. The kind of sound you hear when it's getting wiggled. Not uncommon for him. Sometimes he actually rolls around and around in it. So I say, Rylan shhhhh! He quiets for a minute then starts back in for what seemed like forever just mumbling away things I couldn't understand until he finally said... ummm Mamma, stuck. I knew there was nothing near him that would "get stuck". Finally I turned on the light to see what he was doing and found him strateling the top bar of the playpen. He was laying on his belly right down the bar with one leg inside the playpen and one leg out! He must have been getting out when I came in the room and shut the light off then got confused at to which way to roll back into bed!!! Do you have any idea how long he was like this? I'm guessing at least 20 minutues! How comfortable could that have been?Once I flipped that light on he rolled over the edge back into bed quickly! It was pretty funny actually. He didn't even complain. My little monkey man!

Thankful Thursday!

Since Cameron got the "Wordless Wednesday", I had to give Rylan what I'd like to call "Thankful Thursday"! This is one of his referral pictures. I saw that face and was instantly in love. I had always thought we had a boy so as long as it was an option to choose a gender, we'd go girl. I suprised myself when I couldn't stop thinking about this photo. I have to admit, that was because I always though 3 kids would be the magic number. That we'd go back for a girl. I was convinced to start another adoption even before Cameron got home! Then after he came home, I thought NO WAY! I can't do two kids. I'm not good at it! Well, 7 months later and the thought enters my mind more times in a day than it probably should. Seriously, someone commit me!

Wordless Wednesday!

Ha! I can finally participate in Wordless Wednesday now that I can show pictures. Do they call it "wordless" because your not supposed to blog? You know me, I always have something to say and I rarely stick to the rules! Anyway, wasn't Cameron just about the cutest thing EVER!

First Experiences!

How about the first haircut! I have to say he did quite well at the first one with some help from a lollypop. However, the 2nd time I attempted to take both kids alone (without John) and my gosh, it was a nightmare! I had to drag Cameron in. Once we got in, Cameron sat fine and Rylan screamed the entire time. I'm sure the other people there getting their hair done were real appreciative!
Ahhh, yes. My niece's preschool graduation! Remember the little girl on t.v named Punky Brewster? Well, here you have her! Except our punky brewster is going to be a Roller Derby Queen! She is one tough cookie. First carnival ride experience at Winona Steamboat Days! He loved it! The only thing he didn't like was the little kiddie dragon rollercoaster. It started up and he immediately started screaming. Thankfully the man stopped it and left him off!Can't forget his 2nd birthday, at home! This child ran non-stop the entire afternoon and evening. We had such a good time and were so glad our family and friends were able to share in it!

And we can't forget the first messy face photo! Well, technically it's not the first... and not the first at our house either. This child eats like cookie monster. He can have one single chocolate chip in his hand and you'd swear he tried eating an entire bag! MESSY!

First Tooth!

We had a major milestone today, Cameron lost his first tooth! I still can't believe it. He was sort of complaining a few weeks ago about one on the bottom being loose. I just thought he might have knocked it loose on something. Today when I picked him up from daycare, he was excited to show me how loose it now was. I about fell over! Aren't kids supposed to be like 10yrs old or something when this happens? My gosh, next he'll be coming with a driver's license!

Anyway, we got home and I started making supper. Me and boys ate, then John got home. Cameron showed him the toothe and John of course asked if she should get the pliers! Cameron went into the living room to play and about 10 minutues later he came back with his tooth in his hand. Unbelievable! My BABY. The one who's first tooth I eagerly watched for! I'm now holding it in my hand. Gosh, someone slow down the clock. I'm not ready for this, I'm really not!

Pictures from Colorado!

Just wanted to share some pictures from our trip to Colorado Springs. We had airlines points to use (we've been saving them for years) and thought we'd better use them before they changed the program on us! We all had free tickets! Anyway, everything went great! The kids loved the plane and were so well behaved on it, the hotel was great, and all the activites we planned went perfectly! The kids could not have been better to be honest! Nothing comes with a meltdown here or there, but really, I was impressed by them. If there's one thing I've learned about my boys, it's that they are at their best when busy.

Ummm, I must mention before I go any further that we did have one problem before the trip really got started. We stayed overnight in St. Paul the night before we left so we could be all refreshed and at the airport early for our 9:30am flight. We got there and discovered a BIG mistake. Word of caution: Read your itinerary closely on any schedule trips to make sure your flying at the right times. There's a big difference between AM and PM flights. We learned that the hard way. Lucky for me and the boys we got on a standy flight just an hour or so after we "thought" our flight was scheduled to leave. John, well, he had to wait in the airport about 9hrs for when the flight was "actually" scheduled to leave because standby was full! This would explain why I got some VERY large charges on the credit card account for the "Cantina" and the "Airport Bar". Needless to say, it was justified and I said not one word! Once we got that major scheduling detail out of the way, all was great!

Here are the boys and I on the Royal Gorge Train. It was great and one of the most fun things we did actually!

Here is John and boys on the suspension bridge above the Royal Gorge! It was amazing! The train we went on was below us in the canyon. It was so breezy and so incredibly high up in the air!

Rylan in this picture is receiving a time out on Pike's Peak Mountain! He was SO mad because I wouldn't let him scale down the mountain at 13,000 ft!!! Mean Mommy!As you can see, Cameron had quite a laugh at locking up his daddy and brother in the jail at Buckskin Joe's! It's an old western town that was really neat to walk through. They even had a little western show complete with a gun fight and hanging! John and Cameron loved it, Rylan cried as soon as the first "gun" and the men were "hollering" at each other. I had to hide out in the candy shop that we were sitting in front of!