Halloween

It's been a busy couple of weeks since my last post. Emily's turned 5 months, she's started on solid foods, and we've had Halloween. Enjoy.

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I'd like to ask everyone reading this blog to log a comment. I'm just curious who's reading it.

And now for what you really want, the pictures.

Nap time


Look at me, I'm standing up


Digger man Eli. I went to grab a screwdriver from the garage. When I returned I found him dragging his digger over to the leaf pile. When I ran to get the camera I returned to find him with my gloves on digging in the leaves.


Two best friends, playing in the leaves


Playing in the pumpkins




Solid food, round two. It worked this time. She ate the entire bowl. Yummmm, rice.


Eli wanted a picture of himself eating too


Playing in the candy bowl


She even snagged one :)


Pumpkin Carving Time








Here's the costumes
Firefighter Eli


Firefighter Eli with Duck Emily


Mmmmmmm, this chair tastes good


Two friends sharing a "firetruck"
Rachel dressed up 50's style with a Poodle Skirt

Can I borrow some toothpaste?

This is one of those moments that I really wish we had gotten a picture but we didn't. May the story begin.

Yesterday after we had finished playing outside before dinner we sent Eli upstairs to clean up. We called up to him a couple of times during the process of making dinner to make sure everything was OK. The report was always positive. Well, dinner was ready so Alicia went upstairs to check on him. And what a surprise she found.

Now close your eyes, well, that would make reading this difficult so imagine with your eyes open.

Imagine a 4 year old. Stark naked, sitting indian style in the bathroom sink covered from chin to toes in toothpaste. He was making a valiant effort to fix the mess he was in. He was quite distraught about how we were going to get the toothpaste off.

Well, Alicia extracted him from the sink and move him to the tub. A more appropriate location for bathing a 4 year old. Well, we told him to clean himself off, gave him his washcloth and drew up a bath.

Needless to say, he gets these ideas from Curious George who is now on the banned book list. Our list is a very short one, currently consisting of one item, Curious George. Now perhaps some background is needed. A few months back we checked out a book in which George counts from 1 to 100. Number 18 happens to be drawing 18 toothpaste pictures on the bathtub. Well, Eli didn't use the bathtub as his canvas, he used the mirror. The second time he deposited a fair amount of toothpaste into the soap dispenser. And now incident number 3.

So, toothpaste is now in our possesion to be doled out in pea sized quantities as it should.

He is still working on purchasing more paint so he can do more art. Last week's paint money went torwards new dishwashing soap (1/2 bottle makes lots of bubbles). This week's goes torwards more toothpaste. Perhaps next week he'll get his paint.

To be honest, we're chuckling while we write this. Last night, not so much.

Hope you got a good chuckle out of it, we sure did.

I'm Back

Despite American Airlines best efforts I'm back from the much colder climate of Rochester, MN (it snowed every day I was there). For some reason mom thought I was going to Rochester, NY, perhaps I forgot to mention which state I was going to, oh well.

Alicia and the kids survived. I even managed to talk Alicia through lighting the pilot light for the heater remotely. Fortunately she's good at reading directions and is pretty smart to boot.

We decided to try solid foods with Emily today. She wasn't a big fan of it, somewhat reminiscent of her brother. Below are some pics.

Go Hogs, sounds like the 2nd team's going to play a good bit of the 2nd half (especially since they finished off the 1st half). Kind of feel sorry for SEMS, they did beat Rolla though.

And now the pics.

Busy Weekend

Whew, it was a busy weekend.

Saturday Oma, Opa, and Grandma Nickum came down for Emily's baptism. Saturday was packed full of playing (Grandma Nickum even got on the floor to play with us). Sunday was full of her baptism, lunch, and then the church picnic. While getting ready for the picnic dad sat Emily in the corner of the couch. She decided that wasn't good enough, so she decided to sit up. Ok, it was more of a controlled leaning over but still, she's making progress.

And now what you've been waiting for, the pictures. Captioned from the point of view of the kids. Two of them are large because they wouldn't resize correctly for some reason.

"Shortly after they arrived I talked Grandma into reading me some books."


"Then later I talked her into playing Legos and cars with me. She even brought me some new cars."


"Eli got a bunch of toys for me to play with and brought them over to my blanket"


"It's ackward, but I'm sitting up"


"Dad and Campbell's mom took us for a canoe ride around the lake"


"After we dropped off Campbell and her mom, dad took me for another lap of the lake. I wanted a third but it was time to eat."

Playtime

Alicia caught Emily playing with her plastic chain. She got some cute pics. Enjoy.

It's been a month????

8th's time to try to post this thing is the charm???

Yikes, can't believe I let a whole month get past me. Guess the kids have kept me hopping.

Let's see, what's happened in the past month. Emily's continued growing. She's found that thumbs are good for sucking on. She still hasn't figured out that both hands won't fit in her mouth at once no matter how hard she tries. Eli continues enjoying school. He enjoyed helping buy mom a birthday present (even if he did spoil the surprise).

And now what you've all been waiting for, pictures. Erin reports that she posted 8 tonight, I'll have to see if I can best her (I do have an entire month to pick from).

First we'll pick up with some pictures from back in August and work our way into October.

"Look at me, I can hold my head up"


Eli was helping me put a new cable under the house.


"What is that crazy brother of mine doing? What does he think I am, decoration?"


First day of school


Carrying Ronda in the carrier



A little brotherly love.



Mmmmm, good. Apple pie.


"Ah, that's a yummy finger"



"Who says I'm never happy?"



"Don't mind me, I'm just chewing on the steering wheel"



Wow, big pumpkin



Aren't we cute together



In the infamous words of Porkey Pig "Bdabida-dabida that's all folks"