Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, we went out to Elgin, Illinois to visit Reid's parents.  It had been 2 years since we were last out and we were certainly excited to visit them again.  Kai was particularly excited, as he loves his Grammy and Papa.  We flew out on Wednesday the 16th of November, and it was actually a pretty easy trip.  Somehow we managed to time everything just right.  After checking in, clearing security, getting a bite to eat, and visiting the restrooms, we arrived at the gate right as boarding began.  Despite the flight being right at nap time, Finn stayed awake nearly the entire flight.  He eventually fell asleep about 5 minutes before we landed.  But he was good (in other words he didn't scream) and he played nicely the entire time with several new toys that I had bought specifically for the flight.

While at Grammy and Papa's we had many fun activities. We went shopping several times, took a trip to the library, threw a 75th birthday party for Papa, went on a nice long walk around the neighborhood, went out to eat, and even visited Kohl Children's Museum and the Rainforest Cafe. The last day of our visit was Thanksgiving. We are sure thankful for our family, the time that we got to spend with them, and the memories we made. We look forward to doing it again--whenever that may be.

Finn really likes Pizza Hut breaksticks.  That ended up being his lunch at the airport.

Reading a book at the library in Elgin.  Yes, they really were reading and this wasn't staged.  I have no clue why the book is upside-down!

Playing at the library.  I'm actually really glad our library doesn't the kinds of toys this library does because my kids would be begging to go every single day.

Happy Birthday Papa!

It turns out that Finn really likes party hats.  We kept them around and ended up playing with them nearly every day.

With a crowd of screaming kids running all around him playing, Finn slept like this for the first 45 minutes we were at the children's museum.  Poor kid was just tuckered out from not sleeping well at night.

Kai repairing a wheel at the museum

They "painted" a house

This was in the science wing, which was new since our last visit.  It was a lot of fun.

The water room is always a hit!

Finn and I were inside a tree, Reid was outside.  Finn loved being in this tree.

Kai learning about camouflage

This picture makes me laugh.  No he didn't hit him, but this definitely reflects the phase he's going through right now.  Everything is "MINE!"

Our Thanksgiving meal.  It sure was really, really good.

More Pictures

Our photographer posted the pictures from our photo session on facebook this past Sunday.  Now all I have to do is the pick which print I want and then I can go pick up the disk and the print.  Decisions, decisions.  Here are some of my favorites--other than the one I already posted.

Oh, who am I kidding?!  They're all fantastic.  For now, I just need to pick one!  Agggh!

Soccer

Kai has been pretty much consistently enrolled in soccer now since May.  He has been participating in a beginners' class and has enjoyed it quite a bit.  This season he has been in a very small class (which is quite the opposite of what we experienced in the summer).  There were several weeks where it was just him and one other Pre-K aged boy, Drake.  Kai and Drake have been becoming friends and Drake's mom and I have really hit it off.  We have kids the same ages (although her 2 year-old is a girl) and we keep similar schedules with our kids.  Towards the end of this season, there have been a couple of additional boys in the class, but that's it.  This week is the last of the season and then Coach Kyle will be moving both Kai and Drake to an intermediate class.  I'm excited for Kai and I'm looking forward to him learning more of the basic soccer technique.  He is asking to do gymnastics instead, but I don't want him to drop soccer just yet.  I think I'll let him do gymnastics over the summer if he's still interested.  I just can't see doing two extracurricular activities with him right now.  He has enough going on.

Here are some pictures of us playing soccer in the basement one Friday evening about 3 weeks ago.

Yes, Finn got yet another gash in his head.  He's still a cutie, though.

Our soccer player

Look at that foot work.  :)

I took this picture because I was trying to capture the difference in their eye color.  I'm still unsure of what to call Finn's eyes.

Pardon Our Absence

For Thanksgiving this year we went to spend 10 days with Reid's parents.  We had a great time and are just now home and trying to catch up.  A blog post will follow soon.  But in the meantime, the afternoon before we left I had the boys' pictures taken.  Mostly it was for Finn's 2nd birthday, but I couldn't resist getting pictures of both of them.  The photographer just sent me a sneak peek and I thought I'd share.  I can't wait to see more.

Our Halloween Weekend

Halloween lasted nearly an entire weekend in our house.  It was fun and for the first time it seems that Kai now loves Halloween.  The festivities started on Friday the 28th with our ward's trunk-or-treat.  Kai went dressed as Superman and Finn was supposed to go dressed as a pumpkin.  However, while Kai was more than eager to get dressed, Finn wanted nothing to do with it.  We took his costume with us in hopes that he would succumb to the peer pressure to put it on.  I should have known better!  We got to the church parking lot and found all kinds of wonderful costumes and friends handing out candy.  Kai jumped right in and Finn refused to go within 10 feet of anyone dressed in a costume.  I finally dragged him over to a friend's trunk where he received his first piece of candy.  But he still wasn't sold.  After about 3 pieces, though, he started to think it was worth it to tough it out.  Kai completed the loop of cars in a matter of 20 minutes or so and Finn managed to approach maybe half of them.  I love our ward and we have vowed to actually hand out candy next year.  Our bishopric even had a fire going in the middle of the parking lot (in a fire pit) along with cookies and hot chocolate.  It was really fun!

On Sunday, we carved our pumpkins.  Kai was very excited to do this and he helped Reid to design his jack-o-lantern before they got started.  Reid did about 99% of the work, but Kai did assist in cleaning out the pumpkin.  He was a bit concerned about the mess at first, but eventually got over it.  After they finished Kai's pumpkin, Reid went to work on an Elmo pumpkin for Finn.  It turned out pretty well and Finn loved (and still loves) his "Nuk nuk" (said with a little tongue click and means pumpkin). 

This is what Finn and I were doing while the other two were carving pumpkins!

It was around this point when Kai exclaimed, "Making jack-o-lanterns is easy!"
Reid and I both laughed.  Yes, it's easy when you have slave labor!  :)

Finally, Halloween day arrived.  It seriously was one of the busiest days of my entire year!  Kai's class had a "Fall Party" for the entire class period and as a room mom I needed to be there.  So, Finn spent nearly 3 hours with friends in the morning while I helped run the class party.  The party turned out well and we had a great time, but it definitely wore me out.

Kai's Pre-K class party

playing musical chairs

Kai's friend Eli

The winning round.  I wasn't watching the whole time but I don't believe that Kai could have won this completely honestly.  Just saying, I know my kid!

After school we had about an hour and a half to ourselves before friends came over to play while their older siblings went to an appointment.  They were over for a bit more than 2 hours.  After that we ran to Wal-Mart to pick up drinks for dinner with friends, headed home to get Reid, and then were off to our friends for a combined Halloween dinner.  In all, there were 4 families from our ward that got together for dinner and trick-or-treating, and it was a lot of fun.  I so want to make that a Halloween tradition!  The older kids ended up breaking away from the group (or you could say that the younger kids straggled behind the group) during the trick-or-treating, so for that portion of the evening it was only me and Finn, Reid and Kai, and Matt and Peter.  But we had a good time knocking on doors and getting candy.  We actually hadn't planned on having Finn go out trick-or-treating, but when he saw what Kai was getting to do he insisted on it.  I tried to get him in his costume and again he refused.  We eventually compromised on him wearing just the pumpkin hat, but then we didn't have a coat for him.  Reid went to the car and found that we actually had the perfect coat--an orange one--in the car!  Despite not wearing a costume, Finn looked exactly like a pumpkin and everyone knew it.  Success!  The night was perfect and clear and not cold.  Seriously it was the best Halloween we've had here.  I wish every year would be the same because then I might actually grow to love Halloween, too.  Now we only need to figure out how we're going to eat all of this candy!

So sad that this is the only picture we have from Halloween night.  I left my camera at school and the cell phone wasn't the greatest for taking pictures.  Finn was adorable in his "costume" as the hat kept falling over his eyes and then he would have to adjust it.  It was really cute!  Maybe I'll just dress him up again so we can get a good picture.