Beggar's Night

Also known as Trick or Treating in pretty much the rest of the country... Last night was our towns scheduled trick-or-treating and the kids had lots of fun!! Max initially didn't want to dress up. (It is something weird with our kids... neither of them like it. This is the first year Zoey was excited about it and picked a costume.) Previously we had to bribe them, or make costumes that seem like just regular clothes!! Max is still in this phase so for him... he was an Ohio State Football Player (I know, I know, I have sold out... but I just came up with the idea, and there isn't anything else to get around here!)

Anyway, after getting over the whole costume issue, they become like most kids and LOVED trick-or-treating. Since we have all of 8 houses in our neighborhood, we went to a nearby neighborhood that has a lot of houses pretty close together, without long driveways to hit the maximum number (strategy... nice!!) We met up with some friends and they ran from house to house... Max was keeping up with the bigger kids, and said "trick or treat" and "thank you" and even as he ran away yelled, "Happy Halloween!" It was cute. And when they got to a house where the homeowner was dressed up, they both very carefully walked up. Looked at the person, not quite sure of it all, got the candy and then RAN away!! Max quickly learned to look for the houses with lights on, too. And he scored huge: Zoey and the two others we were with got to the door first and the guy ran out of candy before Max got there, so we saw him say, "Wait a minute" and ran back into the house... Max waited and waited patiently at the door, and the guy came back with a KING SIZE SNICKERS!! It was very nice of him to do that!! So enough with the talk about it... here are some photos:

Pretty Zoey dressed up as an angel... She was so excited about it. I even put a little blush and lip gloss on her and she just couldn't stop looking in the mirror...
Here is a full length shot to get the whole costume:


And a close up. She is looking so much older lately.



Here is the two of them.


And Max the football player!


The kids get brainwashed here. As soon as Zoey saw Max's jersey she said, "Go Bucks!"

Here is team Buckeye in action:


Oh, now the Angels got the ball...


And our future lineman getting in some practice on Dad:


And here is Max getting some treats:


Happy Halloween Everyone!

A Suburban Girls Random Thoughts on Hunting...

Subtitled: I just don't get it

First off, I realize that hunting and I just wouldn't go well together. For one, you have to go out in the early morning when it is really cold. Second, you have to be very still. I don't not work well with either of these. The only thing that might work is shooting clay pigeons, but I guess that isn't even hunting. So it is a little ironic that our backyard actually looks out along a public hunting area. Our property technically touches the land, however, the only thing that we see are the guys walking from the parking lot, along the path, where they go quite a ways away to get to the pond, or lookout area where supposedly the water fowl and deer are. So here is the view from inside of our house, looking out towards the path... you can see the grass and then a little path just beyond...


So from here you can see the guys (I haven't seen any females yet) walking from their cars into the wildlife preserve. Here is what I don't get... I see the guys go in... I see them come out... I see them go in... I see them come out... I have never, ever, not even once, seen someone return with a prize of any sort!! What baffles me even more is, if for some reason I wanted a goose, well, I could just go and get one. Here is a picture I took from the car the other day as I inched along waiting for them to get out of the way... I could have stepped on the gas and got fifteen of them, or even gotten out of the car and given one a big kick!! They let you get that close! And we know because they walk all around our neighborhood loop. They were in no hurry to get out of my way either. I even honked and it didn't even startle them.


Anyone want goose for Thanksgiving this year? Come on over, I'll get ya one!!

MUST BE FIRST

For the longest time, Zoey always wanted to first whenever we did something. She wanted to be first in the car, first to be buckled up, first in the door, first to get her food.... you get the idea. Well, it wasn't too big of a deal because Max didn't mind, and even if he also wanted to be first, his second place was still first to him, so it all worked out for everyone. UNTIL Max realized that being first actually means being the first one to reach a place or get somewhere! Now our life is a constant race. Sometimes it works to our advantage. Say for instance, when it is bathtime and they don't want to go... we suggest we race up the stairs to see who can get their first! Works like a charm, and the racing part apparently lets them forget their initial protest. It has gotten so bad that once the kids and I met up with Ross somewhere and then we drove home in separate cars. Ross was in front of us and the whole time the kids were yelling, "you need to get in front of Daddy! We need to be first!! Go around the other cars and get in front of him!!" Well, when you enter our neighborhood, it is a big loop, so Ross went one way, I went the other (I know I can't really complain, as my actions totally encourage this) and Ross realized what was going on, so he let us get in front of him!! We made it to the garage FIRST, whew!

From a different perspective...

When Zoey first started going to public bathrooms, she quickly distinguished between the mens and womens symbols. Ross rarely took her (due to the fact that male restrooms are just gross) so she always went with me and we went into the "girls" bathroom. Well, she can go in by herself now and clearly distinguishes between the two. Max has a different (and very cute) perspective that I just realized recently. He goes with both Ross and I pretty equally, so as we passed by the bathroom the other day he said, "that is to go with mothers, and that is to go with fathers!" How funny that he distinguishes them by which parent he goes with! This is a good thing, because I am not ready to have him complain about going into the girls room with me when he is not a girl and I am not ready to send him in to the mens room alone!!

Dairy Farm

We made it to a local dairy farm the other weekend. It was filled with pumpkins, kiddie train rides, hay bales and a very LARGE maze. The maze was so big (over 3 1/2 acres), the kids got tired and we couldn't find the four different stamps we were supposed to find to complete the mission!! It was interesting to get so close to the corn stalks though... Anyway here are the kids on a tractor...

and each of them taking a turn posing on a big tire!!


Zoey driving her train car...

And here is Max in his...

Big jumps over the hay bales...




yeehaw!

Pumpkins... Pumpkins

It is that time of year, so we headed to a dairy farm and pumpkin patch and of course took lots of pictures. I will just put pumpkin pictures for now. I have some from the dairy farm too, where the kids sat on tractors and jumped on hay bales...

The funny thing is that our house is now built on what used to be a big pumpkin patch...

This one is taken inside of a HUGE barn that was 115 years old!! It was put together with wooden pegs rather than nails. It was pretty cool.

Here are the kiddos in front of the house! Pumpkins are much cheaper here than in California!! Ha, Ha!!

Wordless Explanation

Well, not completely wordless... I have to write a little bit.

When we had our crazy 11 day power outage, we talked with a couple of you on the phone and tried to explain a few things... Like, why in the world was it taking SO LONG to get the power back. Well, a quick explanation was that the trees and power lines are just so intertwined and it was (from my new perspective) a lack of preventative maintenance with the trees and the power lines... I could have taken a hundred pictures from our house to the park a mile down the road showing this to be true, but I decided on just one picture... it doesn't show entanglement, but the other extreme... I guess we love our trees here way more than power!! (UM, I don't think I'm in the concrete jungle of LA anymore...)

Not to be outdone...

...by her brother, of course. Zoey had to do her own video. So here she is...

Max Dancing and Singing

Max was singing and dancing the other day and I tried to capture some of it on video. They always change a little when the camera gets out, but these are pretty good. Here he is giving initial instructions... jump left, jump right...



And here he is again. He is watching himself in the oven while he does it!

Zoey's Birthday

Here are just a couple more pictures of Zoey's Birthday. These are from her actually birthday. We went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and she wore her crown! And then came home for presents and cake. Here is she is in the tiara...


Here she is opening just a couple of little presents from us:




And, admittedly this was probably more exciting for me than for her, but here is another cake!! There is a neat little cake shop in town, so I decided to get another one for her (we had a cute Littlest Pet Shop one for the party). Anyway, when I asked her what she wanted, she was so cute... "Butterflies, and flowers and just anything from a garden!" They did a nice job and it was oh so delicious!

Zoey's Birthday Party

Here is a slide show from Zoey's party at a Gymnastics Gym!! Lots of fun!! Max and Zoey and all the kids had a great time. They did some parachute time, and then got to have fun on a bunch of the gymnastics equipment...

Funny Kid Stuff

I apologize in advance if the content offends, but it is just too funny to not be remembered (and thus blogged about):

Ross was getting Max out of the bath, drying him off with a towel, when he farted really loud. Without missing a beat Max says, "Ummm... was that a tuba?" We are all cracking up when he continues (very proudly with his joke), "Nah, that was Daddy's bottom!"

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Zoey was so sleepy this afternoon and we tried to convince her to take a nap. We even told her that she could stay up later if she did. She just looked at us and said, "Well, I can't even take a nap because my eyes CAN NOT close during the day." She just doesn't know what she's missing!

The Playoffs!

This is specially dedicated to my dad and sister... and any other big fans out there (of baseball or Bon Jovi)! Love the playoffs! Go Cubs!