surviving another cold spell

I knew another cold spell was coming so we went to a park every day until it got too cold.

I told the boys we could not go exploring with pops or another adult. Nick said no "ericsploring" without pops. I thought Nick's Uncle Eric would enjoy that.

After the other boys leave Cooper usually wants to climb on great, great, grannie's bed and read train books. This time he also wanted to cover up with great grampa's blanket.

How to entertain ourselves during the cold spell? Peeking into the kitchen, and "falling down" and saying "I'm ok" were great games.

Peeking into the kitchen doesn't work so well for Ry

We also decorated the Christmas tree. Nick put the sparky star on the tree and a few Christmas balls. Cooper put every thing on the tree in the same spot right on top of each other and Ry undecorated the tree and wore the basket as a hat.

Busy Week

Making cookies followed by a juice break.

Helping Pops make a fire pit.

Cooper takes the camera. Uncle Matt and Brittny on Thanksgiving.

Cooper and dad goofing at the train museum.

beating the storm

Everyday Nick walks into my house and says "I wanna go to the park". Park day is Wednesday and Friday if the weather is good. This week we knew a storm was coming so we decided to go to the park before the weather got cold. We went to three parks and the playground at the mall.

Cooper only seems interested in climbing the rock walls when he wears this shirt. Nick was wearing is new cowboy boots not the best choice for climbing next time we'll check the footwear before we go to the park.

I love Ryan's face in this picture.

Nick and Cooper can climb up all by themselves getting down still requires help. Ryan is working on it.

Boys in the back yard, sitting in the hole the dog dug to keep cool.

music lessons

Every morning we play with the musical instruments.

Everybody has their favorite.

Right now we are teaching Ryan the animal sounds. The boys like the "What does the fox say?" video. Cooper was singing all the crazy sounds from the video when a favorite instrumental song came on. Slowly the fox tune he was singing changed to the one on the CD so he was singing the words of the fox song to the tune of "So happy together". I thought it was funny.

Spooky, Spooky, Spooky

One of the ways we got ready for Halloween was by reading this book called Spooky, spooky, spooky. So when the time came to decorate the boys had a word for it Spooky. Which later became Spookify. It took Cooper a month to get used to Mr. Scary Bones but that was what he dressed up as for Halloween. Nick would come up on the porch but wanted nothing to do with the decorations, except when he and Cooper would touch Mr. Scary Bones and then run away as fast as they could. Cooper was very concerned about that giant spider and opened the front door several times a day to check on it. We had another spider almost as big as this one in the house the boys kept a watch on it too.

The big Kids stopped by on Halloween.

The Zoo

With all that was going on in October we almost didn't get to go on our annual trip to the Zoo with Auntie Aerro. Things fell together at the last minute and we went for it. I'm so glad we did the boys are talking about Auntie Aerro and the Zoo all the time.

the drive up was nice.

We got caught in a tornado, Nick did not think it was fun until it was over.

We didn't get a lot of pictures but we had a lot of fun.

best 25 dollas ever spent

Mathew says this is the best 25 dollars he ever spent. We came back from an outing and I had put Ryan in the crib brought in the junk from the car put it all away and wandered off the see what the boys were up to. they were sitting on the little couch waiting.