Halloween week

After we celebrated Jay's birthday we launched into one of their favorite holidays......... Halloween. I'm surprised Henry's bear costume is still holding up, since he has been Henry the bear for months now. He loves the paws and tries to do most anything (except eat) with his hands tucked inside.



Wednesday we headed over to Hadley, Aidyn, Lennon, and Miss Courtney's house for a morning party complete with a halloween art project, lunch and treats to take home. 3 sets of twins and baby on one couch!!



Sam, Bryn, Henry, Abbey, Aidyn, Hadley and last but not least, Lennon (still known affectionately as Baby Lennon)




They even dressed up for preschool on Thursday with their 3 teachers dressed as the 3 Blind Mice.





They could barely wait to have Friday come so they could do their Trick or treating around the hood. Bryn was so excited when she saw me pull the the Raggedy red hair from last year, so she asked me to dress her as "Raggedy Andy's sister" not Raggedy Ann. I threw together her costume in a matter of minutes before we headed out. She ended up a combination of Little Orphan Annie and Raggedy Ann. Henry loved her smile, so the bear got one too.



After every house Henry would yell, "Let's go to another door!" At one point Bryn said to Henry after watching him struggle to pick up candy with his bear paws, "Henry, how about I pick out two pieces of candy and share with you since your paws are having trouble." He agreed!

What would halloween be without letter pumpkins?

Bryn between licks of her lollipop.

Would you believe out of all this candy they each chose one of those dummy lollipops as their one piece of candy to eat? I should add that Henry ate his in three bites and started trying to smell the candy bars and man handle them enough hoping the wrapper would expose some chocolate. No luck, the candy is now hid after Bryn lost all control and had the world's worst meltdown, which only confirmed our reasons for keeping them away from sugar!!


Henry's after pic!





As I was trying to post the blog this morning, Henry yelled from his room.."Mommy please tie my Raggedy Andy apron" as he stood with his red wig on, holding his striped leggings and apron.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday to the best daddy around. Who else would take them on adventures in "rock canyon", tickle them till they can't breathe, be artistic enough to draw anything and everything they ask him to draw on a magnadoodle, and as Henry said in his card.... "cook us good dinners"

We all love you lots.

This is what I turned around to see this past weekend as I was mowing the lawn. 3 peas in a pod!

Thanks to grandma and grandpa Affeldt for a yummy pre- birthday dinner last night.

Hers and his

Bryn is something else. The second she see me doing anything that involves carrying something at least a 1/4 of her weight, she is a non-stop machine of "Mommy, let me carry it." She is known to have tried hauling in 2 gallons of milk, one in each hand, but quickly had to set one down and heave up the one with both hands. It doesn't even pay to tell her something is too heavy cause she refuses to take any suggestions.

Because our leaves are mostly the messy walnuts leaves we went in search of neighbors' leaf piles to add to our compost bins. We had them stuffed full and of course she demanded to carry one herself. Following are the stages of frustration when she realizes it may be a tad too heavy!

Since daddy is a tie wearing man this year, he's got a fan in Henry. Henry was spying on Jay in the process of getting dressed and went to his bedroom in search of his own tie, albeit a smelly dirty version.

Early risers

I've come to the conclusion that we will probably never sleep in again (by that I mean waking up after 6:30am). Since I have always been a "morning person" myself, it didn't really matter except for those times when we find ourselves hanging out with our kidless friends or those people that have kids that actually sleep in... anyway, this was just a bit too early, even for me.

I heard them chatting this morning on the monitor and rolled over in bed to see the time. It's a record breaker.... 4 am! I got out of bed and saw light peeking out from around their door, and found them sitting in their beds deep in conversation. I tried to convince them it was the wee hours of the night and layed in each bed for a while, not falling asleep myself as I used Horton the elephant as a pillow.

This is from roughly an hour later.......

Transcript:

H: Tinkerbell can run.

H: Bye Tinkerbell.

B:Bye

H: I'm going to my work

B: Bye, OK.

H: Cause I need to give Bruce the Spartan a high five.

B: Henry, I need to go to my work running.

H: (pant, pant, pant) I'm trying to catch up to you.

B: Henry, Henry, don't don't.

pant, scuffle.... H: I fell over the surfboard.

When asked why they were awake so early B said "I needed some exercises!"

and this is when I just gave up............

How early can I call Jay in Atlanta?

This and that

Bryn's new do, thanks to Brianna at SuperCuts!! This pic was taken before the bloody nose that she suffered from jumping on the bed.

Garage sale anyone? I was searching online for some new recipes for dinner tonight while Henry and Bryn played in their room. They asked if they could use my wooden drying rack in our bedroom. I didn't ask why but soon found out. They called me to come into their room to come shop at the "garage sale". They unloaded their beds, took wall hangings down, and found all sorts of toys, hats and what not to hang from my rack. You need some serious cash to shop at this sale. Henry was selling a kitchen towel for "35 bucks".

Now imagine the fun we all head cleaning up this mess while Bryn held a kleenex to her bleeding nose and Henry cried each time I asked him to put something away. He did finally run downstairs to put a car back in the playroom but after about 5 minutes and no Henry I went down to find him laying on the couch with a blanket over him. He figured he would nap in a place that didn't need any cleaning. Nice.

I was digging up our carrots and Henry came over to watch. This year we had a couple varieties, one that was round and squat and other a normal long carrot. He asked me if I could give him some carrots to put in his lunch box for preschool on Tuesday. "Could you give me the fingertip carrots Mommy?"


Guess they do look like finger huh? Here is our version.

Kite chasin'

We decided to let Jay have some time to himself to work on yet another house project. We tore down the old ugly green siding on the ends of the house and bought cedar shakes to match the garage. Jay wanted to get something done while the weather was gorgeous and we had a weekend at home. I invited our friends to join us at the Kite Fly For Peace at a park in town so we could leave daddy alone for a couple hours. All four kids loved the show as did us moms. The coolest part was the candy drop from one of the kites. Kids covered their heads as candy poured down and they all scrambled for the treats. Bryn even brought a piece home for Jay for a job well done.

Run for the candy!!!


Here is Jay up on the porch roof hammering away.

We did learn another interesting fact about our kids. They take after Jay in the sleeping through anything department. We have never kept the house quiet when they sleep, even when they were little, so it's not unusual for them to sleep with noise but this was unreal.

For those that don't know our house, Henry and Bryn's bedroom is the room you see with the two windows. Their beds are actually pushed up against the wall and we were basically pounding the heck out of their wall as they slept away. I had to go wake them up and when I walked into their room Jay was still going at it and it was loud. I asked Bryn and Henry how they managed to sleep (there is no way I could have). Bryn said "Mommy I just put my ear right here on my pillow and it didn't sound as loud."

Weekend in Suamico

Of course everything Halloweenie that my mom put up for decorations was a hit with these two. I don't think they missed a single jack-o-lantern at their house. I will call it a success if we get pumpkins carved before the big day. While Henry was in the bathroom he noticed a cute pumpkin hand towel hanging by the bath. Later on, while I was busy with guests, he ran inside grabbed it and the two of them proceeded to cover it in ashes from the stove and rocks from around the garage. According to Bryn, they were "making a sidewalk and concrete". They were covered in soot and so was the new towel. Sorry Grandma. Thank goodness for spray and wash.....

Carrying the wood to the sauna. One piece is surely not enough for Bryn.

Pre-sauna

In true Finnish spirit, they climbed up to the top bench when the temp got to about 100 degees and sweated for about 5 minutes before heading back inside. Jay and I headed out after they were in bed when it was a steamy 120 degrees. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

The red "after sauna" face!!

What deprived children we have. Can you believe they had never had a donut? Well, grandma and grandpa decided we needed to change that and fry us up some donuts for breakfast. Here they are at work making the holes.

The climber

Bryn recently started climbing the Magnolia tree in the backyard. Lately they can spend hours playing in the dirt pit beneath the branches, pretending to make pies, coffee or whatever the special is for the day. I was inside the house a recent Monday and looked out to check on them but I didn't see Bryn. I ran out on the deck to find her pink and orange outfit peeking through the leaves of the tree.

She has only fallen out once, that I know of, but she was softened slightly by Finn who was laying in one of his holes.
She also was the first to climb a pretty unstable wood pile and play on top of the stack of wood slices.

This Monday while I was picking more basil for some pesto, I found her scaling Finn's house trying to get up to the canoe on top! Watch out world, here she comes.

Lately our Wednesdays start out with a trip to the Hilldale Farmers Market. Ever since I brought home the load of fall/winter clothes (thanks to the multiples resale) complete with their Halloween costumes, they usually go on errands dressed up as someone or something. A few weeks ago they both decided to go as chefs but of course I forgot the camera. This past Wednesday Henry wanted to be a baker and Bryn was... well ...Bryn.

Henry still doesn't get why everyone at the market knows his name when he doesn't know theirs. It's about the only time he's at a loss for words.


I needed to stop by Sentry to get some milk ( I swear we go through at least 4 gallons a week) , and Henry was the hit of the store. Nancy who works in the bakery came over and asked him if he would mind helping them out with some bread making. He thought that sounded good. I felt a little odd taking pictures in a grocery store but I couldn't pass this one up!! Enjoy.

H and B's first preschool field trip...........

...........................on a school bus no doubt (another first).

The above pic was taken a soon as the school bus started moving. They were SO excited. I took the morning off from work and played chaperone with the Over in the Meadow preschool class.
We ended up at the Eplegaarden Orchard for some apple picking.

Leading up the the trip they spent the week doing all sorts of apple projects, reading books about apples and doing some taste tests. On a board near their reading circle was a graph with each child's name and then across the top were 4 types of apples. Each apple had a different color apple sticker and the heading was "What type of apples we like". While some kids didn't have a single sticker next to their name(meaning they didn't like any of them), B and H had theirs full. Shocker,huh?

Getting instructions from the owner such as; no climbing the trees, no eating apples that had fallen on the ground and directions how to snap the apple from the branch. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to see the majority of the 3 year olds listening quietly and paying attention.

Once she let us go, Henry grabbed one hand and Bryn had the other as we hiked up to find our allotment of two apples per kid.




Miss Sally, Miss Rachel and Miss April keep busy with this bunch.

We had some fun last weekend when we finally got together with our friends Amanda and Billy and their kids Cooper and Liam. Cooper quickly got to work scaling the granite structure that wraps around the capitol so Bryn and Henry had to follow in pursuit. Don't leave little Liam out, he was in constant motion as we grownups tried keeping an eye on them all.

The two pics above were taken on Amanda and Billy's new camera that I am coveting at the moment.

Now that Amanda no longer graces us with her presence at the UW ID clinic, we rarely get to catch up. So, it was a treat to see the whole fam and our long lost sleepover guest.


It was flower picking for the kids on Sunday before they took of for home.


Henry was intent on delivering Liam a black eyed Susan but he was a just a little too busy to stop and smell this flower.


Thanks for driving over guys!!

Sorry Henry......

This was just before he asked for some privacy and the door was shut.

Pic from earlier this summer but I had to post it now since it fits with the story below.

This week while we were munching away on lunch at the kitchen table and listening to some oldies on the ipod stereo, Bryn announced this; "Mommy, when I get bigger I will marry Henry and we can dance to polka dot music together." She then went on to list all the people she knew that are married like her grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles and so on. Henry just looked at her and smiled. Me too.

Both kids enjoy perusing the dress up basket every now and again to find some clothes that they can play in. Henry gets into it as much as his sister and it's hilarious to see him as he does his own sort of rough karate like dance in his frilly outfit.

We have tried to avoid the whole "princess" concept in our house just as we tend to shy away from the dark and seemingly evil toys that are pushed on little boys. When asked what they pretending to be in their fancy dresses, Bryn said she was a ballerina and Henry said he was a fireman in a fireman's dress. Wonder if he's on to something folks........

OK, looking at Bryn adjusting and re-adjusting Henry's dress reminds me of a bridesmaid futzing with the bride's wedding gown. And of course, she is SO serious, making sure he looks just so. Didn't matter that he kept busting through the velcro back on his green satin fireman's top.

Getting some air on.

As a side note..... Henry and Bryn had their first official school pics taken this week at preschool. When I told them that we needed to find them each an outfit to wear Henry said "Mommy we need to find me a handsome dress to wear for my picture." I asked if a handsome shirt would do and he said it would as long as it was yellow!