Thanksgiving

Dancing. Nicely. Mostly.

Pajamas

Anna's favorite piece of clothing is this purple pajama shirt.  If she had it her way, she would wear it every day and every night.  She often talks about her "purple shirt".  Her talking has really taken off.  She can put a lot of words together.  For example, if you read her the 5 little monkeys book and ask, what does the doctor say?  She'll tell you pretty clearly "no more monkey jump on bed!"  Her vocabulary is expanding too and its always exciting to hear her say new words that we didn't knew she even knew.  Her favorite word is still "no" though.

 Lukey has been doing well too. He started soccer last week.  The first half went great.  Then he got a little scared, but still did fine.  Tonight he did great and wasn't scared at all! He doesn't know what he thinks about Santa Claus and mostly doesn't really want him in his house.  I did overhear him in the shopping cart today telling Anna about his big white beard so maybe he'll come around in the next month.  Right now his favorite song is "Turkey in the Straw."  We've been listening to it on repeat the last few weeks every time we're in the car. 

Halloween!

Lukey was very helpful emptying out the pumpkins.  It was his favorite part of making jack-o-lanterns.

They turned out great!  Anna's been talking about her meow meow pumpkin all week (thank you, Uncle Ben).  We also had our annual sheep pumpkin and scary pumpkin.  And new this year-a sad leper and a happy pumpkin.   Lukey also really liked that green pumpkin he found at the pumpkin patch. 

We didn't really decide who each pumpkin belongs to, but Lukey was the one who wanted a happy pumpkin (and the green pumpkin in the above picture), Ma always makes a scary pumpkin, Anna wanted a meow meow pumpkin and that leaves Da with the sad leper.

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The kids had a great time trick or treating!  It was a little rainy out but they didn't mind at all.  They especially liked all the big puddles.  Good thing they were wearing boots.  Lukey had fun right away and was good about saying trick or treat and thank you.  Anna took some warming up to the idea and the first few houses she just said "no" instead of trick or treat.  She caught on though and became really good at it.  She even told a few people that she was a dragon and growled.  Lukey also handed out candy after we got home.  He was very generous.

Maeve's 5th Birthday

The theme of Maeve's party was "Paris".  So, Anna wore Lukey's old soccer jersey Nana and Pa Bob got him in Paris.  The cousins look nice in their Paris shirts.

Maeve is always so helpful opening all of Lukey's presents so he helped her open hers.

When someone asked if she needed help undoing the bow, she replied, "Yes.  By someone who knows what they're doing!"  Poor Lukey..he was trying his best.

Maeve opening up the Paris themed Monster High doll we got her.    

Opening Molly.  She's been looking forward to this for a long time.  As expected, by the end of the night,  Molly already looked a little disheveled.  

All the kids.  Anna was too tired to eat cake so she took a snooze.  They didn't have enough candles so we told Maeve that a roman numeral 5 is a very "European" and "French" thing.

Maeve was sad that we were asking her to sing.  She held strong though and didn't sing because she didn't want to.  I think that she did the right thing by not giving in to peer pressure.

Trick or treating at Greenfield Village

Lukey the knight and Anna the dragon ready to go trick or treating.  They liked it.  Lukey seemed to think things were a little scary at times, but overall they had a really good time.  They were good about walking most of the time and were both good at saying "trick or treat!"

Before we left we taught Lukey how to knight someone.  He kneeled down and we dubbed him Sir Luke of Glengarry.  He liked to knight us after that and tap the sword on our shoulder or head and say "knight of  blueberry."  We put a bow on Anna's dragon head so that everyone knew that she was a girl dragon.  The pink boots helped too.

We barely took any pictures but everything looked really cool.  Kind of scary too.   

Field trip to Plymouth Orchards

This morning Lukey had his first field trip.  He was the most excited kid there and had a really good time.  For everything we did he had full energy and said "this is going to be fun!"  He got to pick apples, pumpkins, eat donuts and cider then play with the animals and tractors.  

The first thing the kids did was go into this barn to learn about apples.  They learned a lesson about how the bees pollinate the apple trees and how the buds turn into apples.  

The kids all got a little bee puppet to pollinate the flowers on the apple trees.

Lukey did a good job of picking apples just the way he was taught to-by twisting and pulling.

Lukey loved the tractor ride!

Lukey showing off his pumpkin.

Eating donuts.

Lukey and Grayson.  Him and Grayson and Joshua went back and forth between the two tractors at the farm.  They did a good job of taking turns and playing together on the tractors.

Lukey and Joshua.