Our Thanksgiving: Dinner, Desert & Demolition

We had a whirlwind of a Thanksgiving weekend! We spent Turkey Day in San Diego at my Aunt Becky's home. We feasted on a fantastic amount of food and chatted with family. On Friday we headed out to the famous Desert Cabin. This is an after-Thanksgiving tradition that Will's family has had for many years. The "cabin" is located out past Joshua Tree (so basically in the middle of nowhere), and it's a time for the family to ride motorcycles, build bonfires and just be together. This was Ethan and Luke's first desert trip and, as expected for two little boys, they had fun getting dirty and running around. On Saturday we returned to our condo and Will & I spent the day ripping up the flooring on our lower level so that we could have new wood laminate flooring installed this past week (pictures to come!). We quickly learned that a jackhammer is our new best friend and that we hope we never, ever have to demo up tile again! By Sunday we were all exhausted and happy to take long naps. Here's some pictures of our day at the desert: Rocks, dirt, the occasional sagebrush plant . . . that's about it for background scenery.
Me & the boys.
Vroom Vroom!
Lukey "exploring" at the desert. And no, that's not just dirt on his face, I think it's a fine mixture of dirt, melted chocolate and dried milk--lovely.
This is a close to riding a motorcycle as I let Ethan get out at the desert. Although, Will did take both boys on a very slow quad ride.
Ethan with Grandpa "Papa" Bollard and Uncle Charlie.

Asleep, Asleep . . .

Ethan hates to sleep. Or should I say, Ethan hates to sleep when we want him to sleep. From birth he's resisted all of my best attempts to "sleep train" him (and yes, I read all the books that claim ANY child's sleep patterns can be molded, blah, blah, blah). So, on Saturday night when Ethan was still going strong at 11 pm, Will & I turned out the lights and told him goodnight. He eventually made it to his bed we assume. Instead of sleeping in that morning he got up with Luke at 6:45 am and played hard all day, including 2 hours of nursery at church. To our surprise, he refused to sleep during his afternoon nap and continued his day of play in the bedroom. Then, the inevitable crash occurred. Around five in the afternoon, unbeknownest to us, Ethan decided he wanted to wash his hands in the bathroom. He pumped and pumped that soap bottle so hard that some soap squirted up into his eye, which led to the immediate reaction of rubbing the eye with his soap covered hands. That's when Will heard his screaming and proceeded to flush Ethan's eyes (and face, hair, shirt, arms, etc.) with water while Ethan just bawled and bawled. This picture is of him exhausted on the couch after his soap trauma during dinnertime--exactly when you don't want your kid to sleep! The only silver lining to this whole incident: it will never be repeated because Ethan is deathly afraid of the soap bottle now.

Family Picture Day

As you can see by the expressions on their faces, our kids just LOVED family picture day.
Luckily Will & I still remembered how to smile for the camera.
If any group shots actually turned out, then you'll get a Christmas card picture from us this year. If not, well, at least we tried!

History Repeating Itself . . .

Pros of kids 13 mo. apart: You can re-use all of the same baby clothes in the exact same season. Most without even needing to get out a box because they never got packed up!

Cons of kids 13 mo. apart: Photo albums for each kid are starting to look exactly the same! Can you tell whose who?

Halloween Pic's

Here are the well-padded pair of Winne the Pooh & Tigger at the church "Trunk or Treat" Party. As you can see, Luke was too excited to pose for a picture, while Ethan scoped out the Halloween decorations. The whole "trick or treat= candy" concept became very real for him this year. Now, a week after Halloween, we have a daily battle about just how much of that candy he is going to eat (of course, Will & I have already cleaned out the good chocolate stuff ourselves!).
It's tricker than you might think to grasp your candy while wearing large fuzzy yellow gloves, but our Pooh bear managed it well.
Taking a break from the trick or treating with Mom.
Luke was Tiggerific! The best part of the costume (not captured on film I'm afraid) was the Tigger tail that wagged behind his legs when he walked.
Ethan goes cross-eyed for candy.
We met up with a piglet that completed our "hundred-acre-wood" theme. Now if only Will was dressed up as Christopher Robin instead of wearing his "Free the Dog" T-shirt!