Happy Halloween!

The boys celebrated Halloween today--Jonathan dressing as Catboy from PJ Masks and Chris was a scary ninja! Also, Mommy and Daddy acquired some fun wigs...

Both boys also had parties at school today. I am back to the early childhood parties and the Ghost Walk, all of which is far more involved than the fourth graders parties! No pictures from that but plenty from the preschool party!

Jonathan got to make slime, a reflector bracelet and he also played mini golf, sang songs and read spooky stories with his class. He also got to join the big boys for a little trick-or-treating tonight! Gabriel and James came over to trick-or-treat with Chris and J tagged along. Here are the big boys in a dark pre-candy picture. Chris is the one with the glowing eyes...

Beautiful Fall Day

We had a fabulous family Saturday and on top of it, the weather was so beautiful today, almost 70 degrees! We started the morning at a birthday party for Jonathan's friend, Evelyn. They got to make Mickey Mouse pumpkins and Jonathan even got his face painted! Oh, and he got to hang with his bestie, Lina...

Doesn't his dinosaur look ferocious? To add to the fall festivities today, we made applesauce this morning out of Jonathan apples and the boys really enjoyed it! In the afternoon, we carved and painted our pumpkins and for the first time ever Mommy deviated from the basic triangle eyes and nose and we followed some cool patterns. Christopher's pumpkin was the scary face and Jonathan's is the ghost. Chris also made homemade decorations for the door!

After enjoying the gorgeous weather, we went down to the Plaza for dinner at O'Dowds. Then we surprised the boys with dessert at The Waffle Bar. Here were their selections...

Fall Colors

We have been having an absolutely beautiful fall here in Kansas City! I can't remember the last time I have seen such rich leaf colors here. Every time you drive around (especially during the day when the sunlight is in the trees) it is really awe inspiring! Sometimes it looks as if the trees are glowing. Here are some pictures I took of some of the more beautiful colors we've been seeing!

The pictures hardly do it justice but the maple and ash trees are especially stunning! There are some stretches along Ward Parkway where the yellow and red of the ash trees are like a glowing tunnel as you are driving along. Gorgeous!

Superhero

Yesterday, Jonathan went to a superhero birthday party of one of the boys in his class. It was very cold but at least he had a Spiderman mask to keep him warm!

The rest of the day turned out to be beautiful so we were picking peppers in the garden when we noticed this little guy on Jonathan's parsley plant...

You may remember from last year, we had a bunch of these Swallowtail caterpillars on our potted parsley. This caterpillar seems to have the parsley all to himself! I couldn't find any more and it is a huge plant so hopefully he will survive and we can watch him change. We'll see!

Also, this is the 1,941st blog entry on BabyWogs--CRAZY!

Pumpkin Patch

We made our annual trip down to Johnson Farms this morning to play, eat donuts and cider, and pick out some pumpkins and gourds! After all the rainy, cold weekends we've had recently, we picked the right day to go. It was beautiful! Here are some shots of the boys...

On the way home, we stopped at a pizza place called Midici's. We've only been there once before but the crust is amazing so we decided to eat there on the way home. Well, we were the only people there for awhile so the owner invited Christopher back to make his own pizza! He learned the fine art of crust-making and even got to top his own pie!

Sign Here

Just wanted to share Christopher's autographed Chelsea Clinton book! Regardless of your political beliefs, it's really cool that the daughter of a former president signed a book for your child. Happy Friday!

Chelsea Clinton

Christopher had a cool experience at school today! The picture above is of Chelsea Clinton and a bunch of 3rd, 4th and 5th graders at Pembroke Hill. Somewhere in that mess of kids is Chris. Chelsea came to their school to talk about the subjects in her new book Start Now: You Can Make a Difference. It was very cool that she was able to speak to the kids and Chris will get a signed copy of her book too!

Back in Business

It was a long week last week, especially for our new four year-old. He got pneumonia and so I kept him home from school all last week. He was really doing pretty well after a couple days but we stayed home together just to be on the safe side. Today he was back with his teachers and friends and when I picked him up, it seemed like he was pretty happy to be back in the classroom!

Over the weekend, we started to get into the Halloween spirit, decorating our front walk with "gravestones," covering our bushes with spider webs and putting up some orange lights. The boys also picked out their costumes (and Mommy and Daddy got into the spirit with some wigs to be worn in a couple weeks--no pictures yet!). Here is Jonathan dressed as Catboy from PJ Masks...

He's a pretty happy Catboy! Christopher is a ninja this year, complete with scary light up eyes on his mask. There are about 15 different types of ninjas to choose from and Chris liked this one the best...

On Friday evening, Grammy took Chris and I to see In the Heights at the Johnson County Heritage Center. It was fantastic! We already knew the music from listening to it last year (during our Hamilton craze) and we were thoroughly impressed by the cast.

Happy 4th Birthday!

You may be wondering why we are a day late in wishing J a happy birthday--Brian was on a business trip and had the computer, so I decided to wait until today because it is much easier to upload a blog entry on here than on my phone! Don't worry though, Jonathan received a whole lot of birthday wishes yesterday! He opened presents in the morning from us and later in the morning I read a couple of Frog and Toad stories to his class. The best gifts were from Chris though. I had asked him Monday night to make a card for J. When I came out into the kitchen, I realized he was working on more than that. He made a Henry vacuum picture, a picture of Jonathan and he also wrote a letter. I didn't read the letter because he put it in an envelope but when he read it to J the next day, I was just blown away...