This week has gone by so slowly!

I am seriously going insane.

So on Wednesday I decided I had had enough. 

We went to Michael's in the morning and got a bunch of stuff to do.

We started off with Haunted Gingerbread Mansions.

(80% off. Yay!)

I love these things because they're almost no work.

 Jay loves them because there's frosting and candy.

Leo had so much fun decorating his house.

And Jay mostly sat around eating candy while I decorated his.

We also got these little bugs that grow in water.

Leo was so fascinated with them.

He was so excited to see what each one would turn into.

Jay, of course, tried to eat them.

Then I made homemade play dough.

(Gluten free!)

It was extra sticky.

I'm not sure if that's because it was gluten free or because I didn't cook it long enough.

It still worked just fine in our dough smoosher.

Jay was way more impressed with this than he looks.

He loved squishing out the various shapes.

All of this lasted until about lunch time.

Huge sigh.

Jay loves to come into our room at night and sleep at the foot of our bed like this.

I'm pretty sure he does it because he's figured out that this is the best way to make both me and Ty as uncomfortable as possible.

I wasn't going to post about Halloween again, but it turns out that I have to because Jay was such a toad. It needed to be recorded for posterity. When Ty took the boys out to trick-or-treat last night Jay refused to go to any doors. He would not take candy from any one and even refused to let Leo get the candy for him. After about half a block he was hysterical and had to be brought home. He ended up spending the evening watching Finding Nemo and eating his leftover candy from the Trunk-or-Treat on Saturday.

When Leo was done getting his candy he spent the rest of the night handing out our candy. He kept saying, "I'm really good at this, mom. I'm doing such a good job."

After a while Jay decided that he wanted to pass out candy too. Only, more often than not, he would hold the candy over the person's bag and refuse to drop it in. It was a huge hassle and I'm glad it's over.

Even though we looked dang good.

Our neighborhood passed out a notice saying that trick-or-treating was only allowed between 5 and 8. By 7:45 all of our decorations were down and in the garbage. By 7:55 the boys were in bed. And by 8:05 the pumpkins were also in the garbage can. October, I really love you, but I think it's best if we see other people for a while.

Bonus:
Leo got this Captain America costume (including muscles) at a post-Halloween sale.

He's in love.

He put it on as soon as we got home and checked himself  out in the mirror three different times. 

Every time he gets a glimpse of himself he just gets a huge, beaming grin on his face. 

It almost makes up for Jay's continued naughtiness.

We decided to make cupcakes in honor of Halloween.

(Really we were just trying to waste time until we could get dressed up.)

Leo's favorite part of making anything is licking the spoon.

(Or in this case, the fork.)

Jay didn't want anything to do with the licking.

He did, however, think he should help me fill the cups with batter.

(Bad idea, Jay. Bad idea.)

He was pretty sure he could figure out a way to get the "candies" open.

(He couldn't.)

I frosted and the boys added the sprinkles.

Leo is decorating this one for himself.

I wasn't sure if he'd gotten enough sprinkles, but he seemed satisfied with it.

Jay was more interested in eating than in decorating.

(After I took away his 4th freshly sprinkled cupcake he about lost it.)

Sneaking more sprinkles.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Is it just me, or has October been the longest month ever?

Seriously, I love Halloween, but I cannot wait for tomorrow to be over with so we can get to November already! 

This may have partly been caused by the fact that I bought my Halloween costume in July.

Or maybe it's because we started putting up Halloween decorations the last week of September.

Or, most likely, because I'm going to be in AZ for most of November and December and I can hardly wait to get there.

Whatever the reason, Happy End of October everyone!

Bikes

We got Leo and Jay glider bikes back in July.

They were not all that thrilled with them and generally refused to ride them.

And then about a month ago they decided they were the coolest things ever.

And now they ride them everywhere, every day.

Hooray for money well spent!

And if you're bored you can even watch them in action.

(Jay gets distracted by the camera, so it's a little shaky for a minute.)

Resolved

I hate making New Years Resolutions.

I think it's a waste of time. 

(I know, that's blasphemous. But I don't care.)

I'm just not very goal-oriented.

Generally if there's something I need to do, then I just do it.

It doesn't really help me all that much to write it down and plot it out and share it with other people in order to motivate me to do it.

That being said, I make New Years Resolutions any way.

Every year.

And then at the end of the year I go back and say, "Oh yeah. Forgot about that."

So this year (2012) I decided to do something different.

I only made 2 resolutions that would take me all year to accomplish.

Then each month I decided to make a separate, small resolution that would get all of my attention for that specific month.

This quilt:

 Was my monthly resolution.

For January.

And I just finished it today.

That's right,

my January resolution took me 10 months to complete.

(If you must know I did take a short, 7 1/2 month, break from working on it.)

And I subsequently failed to make any other monthly resolutions.

Because I'm awesome like that.

Random

Last night I had a really strange dream.
It went like this:
A whole bunch of people were all hanging out at a mall. Including myself, my kids, and Barack Obama (who was, in my dream, still the president.) Leo was being really naughty and running away from me, so I yelled at him. It was caught on camera and Pres. Obama used it to make a public service commercial about being a bad parent. I was super mad at him because I was only yelling at Leo because he was wandering off in a crowded place, not because I'm a bad parent. So I went up to him and gave him a piece of my mind. I called him some very mean things and basically told him that he was a big meany. And then I stormed off.
But here's the shocking thing:
He followed me, admitted that he did a horrible thing, and we became buddies.

Fast forward to this afternoon.
I was looking at stuff on Pinterest and I saw a picture of Obama. My heart immediately filled with warm happiness and I thought, "Oh, I like him now. We're friends." And then I remembered that I really think he's a horrible person and a terrible President and also maybe a little bit evil.

That's the end of my story.

Yesterday Jay tells me, 

"Mom, I'm want a cup a cake."

I didn't have any cake mix.

I had 3 extra kids.

The only store within walking distance was closed for the day.

So I tell this to Jay.

And he says,

"Mom, I'm really like a cup a cakes."

And I say, "I know son, but . . ."

(see above list of reasons)

And then Jay says,

"Mom, I'm a need a cup a cake."

So I pulled out a cook book and made him some from scratch.

 How could I not?

Coolest mom-fort ever?

 Quite possibly.

Coolest mom ever?

Most definitely!

So I've decided that in spite of their near-constant naughtiness, these boys are pretty cute. I think I'll keep them around for a while.

We might have let Leo watch the end of Shaun of the Dead.

And he might be slightly obsessed with zombies now.

As in the, "I'm too scared to sleep in my own bed" kind of obsessed.

The other night I refused his tear-laden request to sleep in his room with him.

(I told him that his bed was too small and he said,

"But mom, you can just use the bed on the floor that you used when grandma and grandpa were here."

Someone is getting a little too smart for his own good.)

So any way, after a few minutes of crying both boys went to sleep. A little while later we went into their room and found this:

 Jay Alvin, who is still not afraid of much, had come to his brother's rescue.

On an unrelated note:

Jay loves tomatoes.

If they are within his reach he will steal them and he will eat them all.

 He's a pretty good sharer, but not when it comes to food.

If you take his food he will fight you. 

He will prey open your mouth, get his food back and eat it.

Even if you already chewed it up.

And if you already swallowed it you are on his black list for a long time.

A few days ago I made Rice Krispie Treats.

The following day Leo decided to bring the entire pan upstairs for a snack.

It was half full, at least, and he ate the entire thing all by himself.

It took him a good hour to do it, but he just kept plugging along until they were gone.

Then he said, "So, what's for lunch?"

Here's Jay being a little sassy pants.

He knows he is cute and he takes advantage.

And Leo has decided that the computer is his.

He's currently hooked on videos of train crashes on YouTube.

And lastly,

Jay came upstairs crying today.

He was saying, "Leo hurted myself." over and over.

When he finally made it upstairs I noticed that his face was covered in something weird. Then we had this conversation:

Me: What is on your face? What did you eat? Was it. . .

Leo: Chalk. It was chalk.

Jay: (with a huge grin) SHOCK!

Me: How did it taste? Was it. . .chalky?

Jay: (huge grin) Yes. Shocky!

He was so proud of himself.

Muir Woods

We spent the last day of our trip at Muir Woods and the boys were in heaven.

Jay was absolutely fascinated by the river.

And both boys were happy to be able to run and climb on everything in sight.

Leo thought it was so cool that he could get inside the trees.

He was quite put out whenever the cracked trees were off the trail.

And he loved pointing out all the trees that had been on fire.

Jay rode on Ty's shoulders for most of the two mile hike.

We probably should have picked a shorter trail.

Both boys were pretty cranky by the end.

Even though we stopped to rest a bunch of times,

it was a bit much for them.

At the very end Jay was beyond done. 

He didn't want to walk and he refused to be carried.

We left him on the floor and started to walk away saying things like,

"Well, it was nice having you in our family."

And, "Hopefully someone nice picks you up."

Leo said, "I think I'm going to go back and get Jay to come. Then we won't have to leave him behind."

And it worked.

Jay followed Leo to where we were and allowed Ty to carry him the rest of the way out.

When we were almost to the car Leo said,

"Let's not ever come here again. Okay, mom?"

San Francisco

After grandma and grandpa left we headed up to San Francisco.

Our first stop was Ghirardelli Square.

Jay thought the fountain was the best.

And then he found out there was ice cream.

Here we are, waiting for our sundae.

It was awesome.

Jay was in heaven.

It took me about 10 tries to get that picture of Jay because our camera is slow. 

It kept taking the picture after his mouth was closed. 

I finally complained that I couldn't get a picture of Jay with his mouth open and Leo said,

"Here mom. You can take a picture of me with my mouth open."

Fisherman's Wharf

We took the tour of the WWII submarine.

Ty was actually thinking about being a submariner at one point in time, so he was especially interested.

The doorways were chest-high on Jay.

He had to really climb through each one and he loved it. 

Most of the walk ways were only as broad as your shoulders.

Even with only 4 of us I was feeling a little cramped.

I can't imagine having to live on one of this with 80 other people.

This is as close as we got to Alcatraz.

We went to see the sea lions on Pier 39 but the boys were unimpressed.

They preferred to climb all over this table.

Here's Jay just being adorable.

We spent one of our mornings at the Exploratorium.

Jay was fascinated by this giant bubble exhibit.

You can't see it very well, but they were getting some huge bubbles.

After that we went back to Ghirardelli,

and Jay got his head stuck in a chair.

He was really upset until the ice cream came.

We rounded out our stay with a very short trip to Golden Gate Park.

And a trip across the bridge.

On our way home we asked Leo what his favorite part was.

He said, "Probably riding all the buses."