Harvest Festival

Last night we attended the Harvest Festival at Clifford's school. We had a blast taking the kids around to the different booths to play games, have their face painted, eat pizza, and paint their own small pumpkin. I volunteered Pete thru the PTA to help out a few of the booths during the two hours we were there. He was very popular with his costume. Parents even asked for him to pose with their kids for pictures. At the end of the festival, we headed home to watch a family halloween movie and let the boys eat a few pieces of candy. It was an awesome start to our busy Halloween weekend we have ahead of us!













One of Clifford's classmates. I don't remember her name. Her family actually moved in to our old apartment. Super sweet girl! She wanted a 'silly face' pic taken with Clifford
Clifford and Kevin, one of his best buds at school

Pumpkin Carving!!

I finally got around to carving our pumpkins yesterday for the boys. For some reason I thought I would tackle this task alone while Pete was at work. About 2.5 hours later, I was done cleaning, stenciling and carving two pumpkins! (this was also while having to deal with to whiny, fighting boys) But it's done and the pumpkins turned out awesome. Clifford wanted a bat and Kristjan wanted the pumpkin face with kitty cat. I even dried pumpkin seeds for the first time. I think they turned out ok, although I'm not too thrilled with the flavor of seasoning I used. After dinner, we sat on the couch together as a family, with the lights off and pumpkins lit, while we watched "Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin".

Pumpkin Patch

It's that time of year again to go pick out pumpkins at the pumpkin patch. The boys and I are always excited to do this, whereas I have to drag Pete along for this event (he'd rather just skip the drive out to the country and buy our pumpkins at the grocery store). We weren't too impressed with the farm we went to last year, so I did some research to find a new one to visit. Last Friday we headed out to visit "Bob's Corn and Pumpkin Farm". From what I read online it sounded like it would be fun; unfortunately, this new farm wasn't. The highlight of this trip was taking the boys on a hayride. The major bummer of this trip to the pumpkin patch was there weren't any pumpkins to pick!!! All the ones that were left were green. So we left empty handed and decided to go ahead and buy our pumpkins at the grocery store. Sounds easy, right? Nope. We had to go to three different grocery stores before we could find a decent pumpkin to buy!!

PJ Day

Wednesday was PJ day at preschool for Kristjan. Kids come in their favorite pj's instead of halloween costumes, they decorate a pumpkin, and the teachers make them delicious pancakes for snack time. Towards the end of class, the kids go 'trick or treating' around the building.

Kristjan in his 'superman' pj's
"Trick or Treat!"
Kristjan and Chloe
Kristjan with his decorated pumpkins

Parent-Teacher Conference

Last night Pete and I went to Clifford's first-ever parent-teacher conference. I was a little nervous since I wasn't sure how he's been doing in kindergarten, but I figured if there were any issues we would have already had a phone call from the teacher, right??? The conference went smoothly. There's a few things we need to work with Clifford on at home, such as recognizing lower/upper case letters, the sounds letters make, making triangles and practice counting to 100. Mrs. Castelle showed us his writing journals, which his drawings were impressive (they draw a picture, then write about it). When she went on to describe his personality in class, she only had great things to say about him. She thinks he's a wonderful child, very sweet and very smart. He's very popular in his class; everyone always wants to be his partner. They do a 'reward' system in the class, where the students nominate someone else who they think deserves it. I guess Clifford is always selected by other students, and the teacher has to try to get the students to think of someone else as well. She said Clifford is always willing to help other students, even if he wasn't asked to. Oh, and she also said Clifford can be a bit of a 'chatter box' in class. Haha.

Weekend Adventure

Last weekend wasn't super hectic for us, but it was still a busy one. We started Saturday off by heading down to Burien to visit with our friends Gordon and Michelle. The boys helped Michelle fix french toast while Pete and Gordon played around with stilts (Gordon rented a pair to use next weekend when we all go out together for Freak Night). After breakfast we went outside to carve pumpkins. We managed to carve four pumpkins before the rain started back up and we had to stop.

Men with their crazy toys


Clifford and Kristjan helping Michelle with the eggs
The boys love playing around with Gordon
Pumpkin carving time!
Kristjan kept saying it was 'stinky' as he cleaned his pumpkin out





After a few more hours of hanging out, we headed out to meet Jessica and her boys at the Seattle REI store. Jessica had her ten year high school reunion, so Pete and I watched the boys overnight for her. The evening was actually quite pleasant; not at all crazy as it usually is with 5 boys under one roof. Pete spoiled us with pizza for dinner, and the boys watched a movie. I was extremely happy because the baby only woke up once during the night, and then ended up sleeping in until 9am! The boys rough housed and ran around the house until Jessica showed up to pick her boys up. So, it was a busy weekend, but luckily not a hectic one!


Donavan having some breakfast on the floor