November 9

We had a great Halloween weekend. The Reynoldsburg ‘beggars night’ was on Thursday. Troy and Ryan Boothe teamed up and took the kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. They didn’t go very far, but Andrew and Parker’s buckets were full.

That weekend Sarah and Mike came down. We went for a run on Saturday morning, then we prepared for a little Halloween party that night. We cooked the traditional ‘mummy dogs’ for the kids, and then a couple of years ago I got a fabulous recipe from Jenna called pumpkin surprise. You basically put hamburger, rice, and veggies into a small pumpkin and cook it all together. It looks so festive around the table to see the plates with a pumpkin sitting on them, not to mention that it is delicious.

Then we played some fun games including pin the nose on the skeleton, do you know your neighbor, and hot and cold. We also made homemade doughnuts and tied them to a string for Andrew and Parker to eat. The boys had so much fun and Sarah and Mike always make it even more fun for them.

And if we couldn’t get any better than that, Sarah and Mike brought down Beatles Rockband. It was so much fun.

It was fun to see Andrew belting out Yellow Submarine,

and watching Parker getting down on the drums. I was excited to get the boys into bed so that I could get my groove on to.

We stayed up (at least for me) into the wee hours rocking away. The boys are still singing “Hard Days Night”, “Hello, Goodbye”, and “Yellow Submarine”.

We have been talking to Andrew and Parker about what it is in cigarettes and beer that make people addicted. Parker has been fascinated with the details of this, and it has been interesting to hear how he has connected the dots in his head at times. Some funny quotes from that weekend are as follows:

Parker: “Mom, we are setting up the ‘Mouse Trap’ game wrong. On the back picture it shows the diver facing forward, not backwards.”
Me: “Well in the instructions it says that the diver needs to face backwards.”
Parker: “Well, who ever took the picture must have been drunk.”

Then later that night after they had gone up to bed….
Parker: “Mom, why do we have alcohol wipes?”
Me: “To clean off any scraps we get.”
Parker: “Does Satan want us to eat alcohol wipes?”

This weekend we had such beautiful weather. We drove down to Clear Creek and hiked down to a lake. Dylan was not very excited about the car ride, so we let him hike part of the way, and he was such a trooper. When we got done, we ended at a picnic area that just had grass and trees. Between the dirt, sticks and trees all three boys entertained themselves for close to an hour. On Sunday it was the primary program. It was fun to see Andrew and Parker up there singing and doing their parts. They both did a fantastic job.