No costume this year

Alex doesn't want to wear a costume this year. He loves to read books about costumes and he likes to look at other kid's costumes but wants nothing to do with wearing one. For whatever reason it makes him nervous, so that is perfectly fine with me if he just wants to look at other costumes.
Yesterday we went to the downtown Halloween walk - most of the businesses on Front St. give out treats or little toys. It was crazy down there. A couple places that ran out of candy told us they had gone thru 1500 pieces, and were only giving one piece per child! One person made a comment about Alex's lack of costume :( I told him that just because dressing up made him nervous shouldn't mean he had to miss out on the rest of the fun.....he was like..."oh...guess I didn't think of that, I thought you just didn't dress him up" Um, yeah.
Alex said on the way home that he "loved to trick or treat" and "liked looking at costumes" so I count the day as a success!

Remember to VOTE November 7th!!

Find out who your choices are, educate yourself...and VOTE! This year I will be out of town so I had to get an absentee ballot - if your state allows you to get an absentee ballot upon request I highly recommend it! I could sit down and read thru everything completely, look up information on things or people I was unsure of and really pay attention. If that's not an option, then I'd at least recommend getting a copy of what will be on the ballot ahead of time. Our town clerk's office had sample ballots and sometimes you can find them online as well (in Michigan it's on the Secretary of State page). Ben was able to print off all of the propositions and some information about them.
We started by looking our candidates up on Wikipedia , the online encyclopedia. Ben found another non-partisan site - Politics 1 as well. For candidates already in office try and look up their voting record, the Washington post keeps records on their site, you may be surprised! A friend of mine just showed me this site - IAVA , it's a large group of Iraq and Afghanastan war veterans who keep track of how reps vote on veteran's issues including funding for body armor and VA hospitals, recruiting, etc. They looked at over 150 pieces of legislation that affect troops, vets, and military families. Things like tri-care for reservists, death benefits, funding for traumatic brain injury research. Check out your reps ranking - you might be surprised, apparently "support our troups" is just a slogan to many officials.....

North Flight EMS

Today we went with a group to the North Flight EMS facilities. The kids got to climb all over in an ambulance. They turned the lights on but not the sirens since we were in the garage due to weather and it would have been too loud - Alex wanted to know "where's the woo-woo mom?"
Next we headed over to their hanger at the airport and they got to climb in the rescue helicopter and see the head pilot's little plane that shares the hanger. On the way out we saw the Coast Guard helicopter practicing on the runway! Very cool :)

Birthday party!

My birthday was actually last sunday - the 15th. We had a fun family day that day and went hiking and then went out for an ice cream treat after church sunday night. My mom and dad watched Alex for us friday night so we could go out to dinner and then mom made me a real birthday cake this weekend since they were here to celebrate with us for saturday. Alex picked out the Scooby Doo candle and helped me blow out he candles.

Silly

Look, the tower is as tall as Alex!
My mom made a birthday cake for me, Alex was obsessed with this birthday cake. So we put it on the buffet in the living room. Alex found it. Next thing you know, he was asking Ben to pick him up, then he was asking Ben for one of the giant spoons we were using the clean out the pumpkins....then he was asking Ben to walk over by the birthday cake :)

Carving pumpkins!

Alex did most of the coloring on the white pumpkin himself!

These pictures were taken by my mom as well.

Fun with Grandma and Papa

My parents came to visit this weekend, they say it was for my birthday but we all know it was really to visit Alex! We had lots of fun, the weather actually cleared up for a bit on saturday so we could get outside and go for a little "hike".

(my mom took these pictures)

Potty Learning

Alex has started getting a little serious about potty learning! It will still be a while before he's ready to be totally trained but he is taking some little steps right now. Last week wednesday he asked to wear his big boy underwear and kept them dry for over 2 hours! Thursday he went in his potty for the first time - boy was he excited, we had to call Ben at work and tell him :) I don't think he can always tell before he's going to go yet. So we just have him sit on the potty when he wants to or asks to and we'll see what happens. He definately does NOT like to have a wet diaper now though, he tells us as soon as he goes and wants it off - thank goodness for cloth diapers otherwise this would get expensive!

Trip to the pumpkin patch

Yesterday Alex and I went to a local farm/pumpkin patch with the Moms club. We went to Hoxie's Orchard Hill farms. They took us on a hayride out into the apple orchard and the kids got to pick a few apples. Then we moved on past the corn field and the driver gave them each a couple ears of the tiny Indian corn. Finally we stopped in the pumpkin patch and they each got to pick a couple tiny pumpkins (Alex picked an orange one and a white one) and some gourds ("these beautiful mom"). Alex loved it! We went back to their storefront and they served us apple cider and fresh donuts and brought out some toy tractors for the kids to ride.

Alex really loves his "baby pumpkins" and carries them all around the house.

Ham

A more "normal" fall day - Brown Bridge quiet area

After all the snow, when the sun finally came out we had to take advantage of it! Our friends Jessica and Brandon and their daughter Tessa came with us to Brown Bridge quiet area. It's only 5 min or so from our house and very pretty. Both kids love hiking, although the snow and leaves are a big distraction! They did it all themselves except for going back up one really long flight of stairs.

CHEESE!

"Oh Mom! It's beautiful!"

That's what Alex said when he first looked out the window yesterday morning. He was so excited, grinning all morning and looking out the window.

Later that afternoon after the wind died down a bit we went outside to check out the snow. We had to squeeze his feet into his boots from last year because I haven't ordered new ones yet! He said they didn't feel tight....but that may have been just so I would let him go out! He loved making snow balls and thinks mittens are pretty cool (thank goodness!).