Carving Pumpkins...

This seems like a long time ago now, but I need to post a few pictures of this fun night. Ashton and Gunnar LOVE carving pumpkins! Gunnar especially loved digging the guts out this year :)

 The guts have never bothered Ashton either...

 Lars' creation... 

 Ashton loved carving this tiny white one... 

I did the green and white one with painters tape and I drew swirlies on with a sharpie on the other...I don't love the guts :)

 Oh and I used Lars' drill to drill all the holes in this big one and used my sharpie again for stripes :) The drilled one looked pretty cool lit up in the dark...

 Such a fun time that we look forward to every year!

Just a quick post...

I'm getting so behind...life is so busy these days.

I need to get to bed...well after I either fold the 3 loads of laundry that are on my bed, or possibly just move them onto the floor until tomorrow.

But before I go to bed I will post about just a couple of things and try to catch up this weekend.

Gunnar is pretty proud of himself for learning how to do this last weekend...

I love it when they practice and practice at something, then it finally clicks!

He had so much fun blowing bubbles last Sunday :)

And I have to say how proud I am of Ashton. He will be doing his first Reconciliation in less than a month, and in preparation  he has been going to class every Monday night since the beginning of September and is expected to learn numerous prayers. So I got him a binder and typed up all of these prayers for him to put in it and he immediately got to work memorizing. I think just having the binder makes it more fun for him :)...

Anyway I went up to his room and handed him one prayer, went back downstairs to print a couple more and by the time I got back (about 3 minutes later)...he recited it to me perfectly!

It is amazing to me how quickly and easily he picks things up. When I saw the list, to be honest, it was a little daunting and I thought...wow, can he really memorize all of these in time?? But now I am confident that he can and he will.

Good job Ashton!

Book 2 finished!

Well, he did it...Ashton finished  the second Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets! Lars read some of it with him/to him, but for the most part Ashton quietly read it to himself and we are so proud of him.

Good job buddie!

Right after he finished it up on Sunday we watched the movie. He and Gunnar loved every minute of it.

As soon as Aunt Kelli makes it down again, he can start the third one and he is so excited. I love that he is loving reading!

It finally came out!

Ashton lost his first top front tooth about 7 months ago and the other one has been wiggly for a LONG time. But he rarely messed with it and wouldn't even let me check to see how wiggly it was. Then on Friday when I picked him up from school he said that it had been really wiggly all day and he showed me and let me wiggle it a little bit. I could tell when I touched it that it was definitely ready to come out, but I could also tell that he was nervous to do it and that it was hurting. But it was almost time to go pick up Gunnar, so I told him to go into the bathroom and just try to get it out. It was so loose, it came right out!

So much less dramatic than the last one that took lots of wiggling and was pretty hard to get out!

He was so excited to lose another one, and he looks so cute. It was funny though when we were in the car going to get Gunnar, he was realizing that it was hard to say his S's and he was getting pretty frustrated. I told him that he just needed to get used to having another tooth out and that he'd be able to say them again soon.

I love the note he left for the tooth fairy...haha.

Little hoarder, can't let anything go!

And perfect timing for the Christmas season :)

 

Halloween...2012

On Halloween Ashton was so excited to become Harry Potter for the day. He got up and had breakfast and did his chores, then got into his costume...we hadn't had time to spray his hair dark when I did their pictures the other day, so we made sure we had time on Halloween. He looked so cute...

Gunnar had school that day too, but they asked that the kids not dress up. So I took him to storytime at the library where they did get to dress up. Everyone kept saying...Oh it's Harry Potter! So I explained lots of times that no, he's Ron Weasley...his big brother is Harry Potter. Then I got the "Oh yeah, he makes a perfect Ron with his red hair!" Gunnar didn't seem to care...haha :)

While he was at school, I went in to help with Ashton's Halloween party. The head room Mom asked me to take pictures and I gladly said yes...I love that I get asked to do that for things now, and with the busy week it was much easier than having to plan a craft or a treat! And it was a lot of fun to get to see all of the kids in their costumes and snap a picture of each one to print out and send home with them.

Here's Ashton's...

I also did a class picture...

Then it was time to go get Gunnar from school, then run back and get Ashton. Then we only had about an hour and a half before it was time to head over to BJ and Emily's for our annual chili dinner.

A few pictures before we headed over...

 Then off to trick or treat...finally!

They both had so much fun going from house to house and seeing what treats they got. Our cute little neighbor girl Addy ended up joining them :)

Gunnar loved his vampire teeth about as much as any of the candy he got...haha!

They were out for a little over an hour this year before they wanted to head in and check out what they got and hand out candy.

 They loved watching the Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin show this year...they laughed and laughed.

After that we decided to head up to trick or treat at Mrs. Coburn's house (Ashton's kindergarten teacher). She is so sweet and was so happy they came. I have my fingers crossed that she'll teach one more year and Gunnar will get to have her...she loves him!

That was our last stop, then we headed home and had showers, then were off to bed.

Another fun Halloween!

Box Tops...

 After this week, I'd rather not see any boxtops for awhile :)

A friend of mine is the PTA president this year and at the end of last year I told her to let me know if she needed help with anything this year, so she ended up asking me to be in charge of Box Tops (the little coupon looking things that you can clip off of all sorts of things that you buy at the grocery store, and send in to get cash for your school). So I said yes that I'd be happy to do that. It seemed like a good easy job for me...haha! So a couple weeks ago I had a contest for all of the classes. The class that collected the most box tops during the two week contest would get to have an ice cream party. I had already counted a big batch of boxtops that I'd picked up at the school a few weeks before that, and then after the contest ended I picked up another BIG box of all the boxtops that the classes had collected.

Anyway.......let's just say I spent a LOT of hours, sorting, clipping and counting box tops! Lars helped me a couple different nights for a couple hours, then I spent a lot more hours on my own and in the end counted

10,024 box tops! And then I understood why the secretary at the school had looked at me like she felt sorry for me when I told her I was there to pick up the box tops! haha :) It was a big job, but I was so proud of all of the kids for collecting that many so far!

That turns into $1024 for our school!

I was so glad to have my little helper for a little while that long day...

That was just our first batch...I'll do another contest in the spring and be counting a bunch more to send in! I don't really mind...it was time consuming, but I love to help out.

Halloween 2012 photoshoot...

It has become a tradition every year to take the boys out and do a little Halloween photoshoot a few days before the actualy holiday, and I'm always so glad that I do it. They are just way too excited to stand still for pictures on Halloween night when they are ready to get out and trick or treat...finally! And with all of our family not living close enough to see them on Halloween, it's fun for me to make fun cards and send them out with the pictures in them.

Since they've been old enough to decide what they want to be, it's been so fun to see what they will choose and I love how much thought they put into it. Over the summer they'd said that they wanted to be ninjas, but as it got closer Ashton changed his mind and was so excited to be...who else but Harry Potter! When I asked Gunnar what he wanted to be he said he didn't know for awhile, then one day he said he'd decided he wanted to be Peter Pan. I thought that would be really cute too, so I ordered both of them (not in the mood to attempt to make anything this year, and well really the only one I've ever made was Gunnar's mini m&m)...anyway, they both came within a couple weeks. Gunnar's first and after trying it on once and taking it right back off, he decided that he didn't want to be Peter Pan! But didn't really know what he wanted to be instead. So I sent the costume back (and was happy that it had been free shipping and Amazon credited what we paid to ship it back!) and waited for him to decide. It took him a few days, but then on his own he decided he wanted to be Ron Weasley! I hadn't even thought of encouraging him to be that, but once he said it, I knew he'd make a perfect Ron with his red hair :)

So here are my favorite shots of our cute Harry Potter and his best friend Ron Weasley...

I think they looked so cute in their costumes and these little photoshoots are so fun!

Here are this year's cards...