Post Halloween

We went to the craft store and got some fun foam haunted houses to build. Spooky! For Halloween, we stayed home, ate candy that the kids had received from school, and answered the door. Gabriel yelled "BOO!" every time he opened the door and scared the kids! Both boys enjoyed handing out huge handfuls of candy to each trick-or-treater.

Yesterday was Gabriel's parent-teacher conference so I got out of work early. We had a very enjoyable afternoon playing together. I miss my kids!

Ephraim rolls the boulders down the lego steps.

Gabriel spells words, "I LOVE U" was first.

 Gotta make a tribute to the name itself.

Lately I have been very aware of time going by quickly. Ephraim still has adorable cheeks and a little boy voice. I am trying to capture and enjoy them as much as I can. Look at those yummy cheeks!

Such expressions! (And those eyes... *swoon*)

Sunday Morning Brothers

I have the most adorable boys! No more words needed!

 

 

 

 

 

Science Lesson

We had a really cool impromptu science lesson tonight. It was so fun and the kids thought it was so cool, I had to share it and record it.

We were talking about skin. (Ephraim had scraped his toe and was worried it was going to bleed.) We put Ephraim's hand on top of Gabriel's knee, then Gabriel's hand on top of E's, and then mommy's hand on top of G's. Each was a layer of skin, each one older than the one below it. Then we "scratched" our knee and lost just one layer of skin. It was okay to lose the Mommy layer of skin because we still had two more layers to protect our knee. BUT, if we lost the Gabriel and Ephraim layers of skin too, we exposed our knee and it was "bleeding." We grew a scab (a book) on top of the baby Ephraim layer of skin. If we tried to pick the scab off, the book stuck to the Ephraim layer of skin and ... uh-oh, we saw our bloody knee again. So we decided not to pick our scab and we grew our Ephraim, Gabriel, and Mommy layers of skin again. :)

The boys thought this was brilliant! We did this again and again. Happy science for smart kids!

Scary Faces

It's almost Halloween. I saw someone's idea about drawing on old milk cartons and then putting a glow stick inside. I like the idea and so did the kids. By the way, those pumpkins were from our garden.

 

My statue...

 Post-bath mohawk!

Monday, Monday

I had a rotten day at work today and Ephraim's pet caterpillar needed to be released, so we went outside. Ephraim asked for a sandbox (he has asked the last few times we've gone outside, I think he misses his old daycare which had a sandbox). I had a bag and a half of sand in the shed so I poured it into our wading pool. It wasn't enough to fill it, but enough to play in. Very happy little guy. When Gabriel heard tell of the sandbox, he came running and the two boys were very happy. I got my cutters and hacked away at the blackberries some more while they played. Happy mommy. When I went inside to get the camera, I heard hysterical laughing. Oh, dear. I come outside to see that Ephraim had filled Gabriel's socks with sand and was pouring onto Gabriel's head. Whatever. Good clean fun. 

So they both got a quick bath and had fun spiking their hair. They both wanted to pose funny for me, so I didn't get a chance to make it a nice photoshoot. This shows their true personalities anyway. My darlings!

Workin' Mommy

OK, being a mommy who works full time is tough. What happened to my time for taking pictures and blogging? I am so thankful for my parents who are doing most of the hard work--getting the kids ready for school and picking them up in the afternoon, etc.

Here I am in one of my new tops I bought for work.

Gabriel is learning to sound out words and spell. All on his own he decided to start making a book about wizards. I helped a little with spelling, but he came up with the story and sounded out the words himself. He filled the whole page with the story. So proud of him!

Sometimes Gabriel likes to fall asleep in my bed. To keep it from being a battle all night, I sometimes allow it. When I went to go to sleep myself, this is what I found (he is completely on MY side of the bed with MY pillow over him):

On Saturday we went to a super-hero-themed party. The boys had fun!

Then on Sunday we played with clay. It is drying and we are looking forward to painting them soon.

 

I Want to Be a Grown-up!

Gabriel just got quite upset at life. While snuggling and trying to calm him down and talk to him I found out he was tired of everyone telling him what to do. He said he wanted to be an adult right now! (I remember feeling like that.) So I told him he could have 30 minutes as the adult. What did he want to do? "Drive a van. I know how, I've been watching you, mom. Lock mom in her room (which is sometimes his punishment if he gets violent). Drive to Heather's house whenever I want." I asked him for something else he wanted to do. He thought about it and then he said, "Make lemonade without anyone else's help!" Wow! Wish granted! He picked the lemons. I supervised while he used a knife to cut the lemons in half (his favorite part). He squeezed the lemons with our citrus juicer. He poured juice and washed the juicer containers (his least favorite part of being an adult). He sampled and poured the sugar and stirred it and served us. He is a happy camper. With 10 minutes left, he is choosing to watch TV (the forbidden Batman cartoon) and drink lemonade! So grateful for an easy solution this time!