Hiding Pals

IMG_6265, a photo by MuShoo2008 on Flickr.

Found them in a stump...oh how I love my boys!

Trunk and Treat

Trunk and Treat was a roaring success this year. 

With all of the milk Brighton consumes, 

Brighton felt at home in his cow costume. 

Greg was a ferocious dragon trainer named G-hiccup!

Who likes watching the horses?

Who likes watching the horses?, a photo by MuShoo2008 on Flickr.

On Saturday we celebrated our second to last trip to Keeneland's Breakfast at the Works. Brighton was in a particularly happy mood.

A Day in the Life...

Just doing a picture dump of all the random pictures that I have on my camera.

The boys absolutely LOVE playing outside.

This is how Brighton usually looks after...red face and sweaty (inherited from his mom).

Hose= hours of entertainment!

Greg loves to build forts/tents in the living room. Sometimes he is a little too particular about the construction for my liking, but oh well (ie. Mom, that blanket can't go there! It has to be the red side! There is too much light getting in! etc.).

One day when I was feeling exceptionally crummy, I helped him make a fort and told him he could watch a movie on his portable DVD player in his tent so that I could take a nap. After I slept for about an hour, this is what I found. I guess he needed a nap too!

Blurry but still cute. Brighton always wants his picture taken.

Greg being Bob the Builder, carrying his tools around in his boots. Who needs a tool belt? "Do my children ever where pants?" you ask. Nope.

Brighton being Daddy (he has Noel's pager and ID on)

Mariokart! I've turned into one fantastic mom since I got pregnant. Lots of TV, and Mariokart, and whatever else as long as I can lay on the couch.

FHE Olympics a few weeks ago with the Bylunds, Bylunds, Millars, Noehrens, and Powells. So much fun! I'm so glad that I have clever, creative friends who come up with fun activities!

Just being cute.

I was making a Moby wrap for a friend's baby shower, and the boys were very interested. I took the parts that I cut off to taper the ends, and they made great pirate bandanas. Pirates wear pink, right? Then Greg wanted to try the wrap on. Sorry Jennilyn, the wrap is pre-worn. :)

FHE singing time at the piano.

The picture really does not do it justice, but this is the cake Sherrill Moody made for Greg's birthday. It was AMAZING! I especially loved the fur on Hiccup's jacket.

The other day, I had a piece of toast with breakfast. Toward the end of the toasting, it started to smell really funny. Then after the toast popped up, the toaster started smoking a bit. I looked in and there were two cars in the bottom of the toaster (it's really hard to see in the picture). Didn't know that I needed to check for toy cars in the bottom of my toaster. You better believe I will from now on. I'm really glad that I didn't start my kitchen on fire!

My boys are just so darn cute and funny! I'm one lucky mom!

Happy to be 4!...and a little bit of 5.

We never imagined that the start of Noel's 4th year would be quite so busy and challenging. Perhaps it was due to one of the best summers in such a long time that we were bound to feel some let-down when school began again. Or maybe it was the conglomerate reaction of studying for Boards, anxiety about finally starting the beginning of the end, or worrying about the countdown to saying goodbye to so many wonderful Lexingtonians.

On Thursday and Friday, after studying for nearly a month, Noel took Part II of boards. So far so good. He felt good taking and finishing the exam. Fingers crossed :)

With one more item off the school checklist, we decided to celebrate by throwing Greg a "It's Great to be 4 Dragon Training Fest." 

We invited a bunch of his little friends, and we all had a blast making shields, darting fireballs, feeding Toothless, and being pyromaniacs psyched out on chocolate cake and ice cream. Simply put..."Awesome!"says Greggors. Here are some pictures from the party.

With lots of 4 year olds it was amazing that we had no accidents. We even were able to herd them into one big group and snap a group pic.

Those are some awesome looking dragon trainers!

Brighton and Greg had a ton of fun and were quite tired by the time the activity was over. Brighton was particularly tired but hung on long enough to make it to cake and ice cream.

We concluded Labor day weekend with some apple picking this morning and were surprised to find the apple orchard swarming with fellow Mormons :). 

I was reminded of Mitt Romney's thoughts from the RNC convention, 

"Like a lot of families in a new place with no family, we found kinship with a wide circle of friends through our church. When we were new to the community it was welcoming and as the years went by, it was a joy to help others who had just moved to town or just joined our church. We had remarkably vibrant and diverse congregants from all walks of life and many who were new to America. We prayed together, our kids played together and we always stood ready to help each other out in different ways."

We are so grateful for wonderful friends and a vibrant congregation and community.

As a last thought, there has been a lot of speculation regarding the size of our family. We can comfortably now say that Four of us wasn't enough and Noel and I have taken the plunge and are expecting the fifth Dickens in April 2013. 

Watch out, one more Dickens means another giant step in the entropy of the world!

Things That Matter

Amber and I noticed that as we age our lives have increased in velocity. 

Personally I feel that the advent of Fall acts as the catalyst in this process. This year is no different. 

With school now in full swing my days have become increasingly long yet short, 

meaning I spend lots of time studying and working 

but can never find the time to keep my head above water. 

This time of year also finds me sorting through pictures from the summer. 

Here are some images I found from the 4th. 

Only one month late, but that is kind of how life works...or at least for the state auditors office - behind.

Day 2: Vacation

Day 2 – Rome

I will codename this day Operation GELATO.

Thursday started out just like Wednesday ended…HOT! So, like any good tourist we planned our day in accordance with gelato pit stops. Guido from Cars would be very proud of our planning. 

Rough draft of day:

Morning – Coliseum, Roman Forum, Gelato

Afternoon – Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, Gelato

Evening – Piazza Novano (again), Ristorante Lagano, and of course Gelato

Here is what actually happened.

Breakfast consisted of rolls, croissants, and concentrated juice. I really mean concentrated. They forgot to tell me to dilute the juice with bottled water and so instead I had an Espresso version of blood orange juice. We all started the day with showers, which I can’t say happened everyday, and a lot of Nutella croissants. 

Our first stop on Prison Chin’s tour was the Coliseum. We had passed it the day before on our crazy taxi ride and I was super excited to get a close-up view. The few things I can say about the coliseum was that it was big, hot, incredibly gruesome, and one of the weirdest spots in Rome. Definitely worth the stop, but it has a very different feel from everything else. 

The second stop of the day was the Forum. Gordie had printed out a list of Top 10 things to see in Rome and the Forum was numero UNO. Unfortunately, none of us had done any research on it, so after walking around rocks, basically, for about an hour and almost taking naps in historic ruins, we left without knowing anything more than when we entered. The Foro as the locals call it did inspire one thing…a run at a Gelateria. Hayley had picked out a famous Gelateria in Rome, but had forgotten to look up where it was. By this time we were all hot (hot in body and in the head), and so we wandered around for some time before we ended up all crouched around an air conditioning unit in a tourism kiosk wishing we all spoke Italian. The cashier at the kiosk turned out to be a Roman Google and pointed us in the right direction. Unfortunately, we had run out of time for gelato so we decided to grab a little bite to eat.

Here begins the middle ages of our trip. In Rome there are about 1 billion ristorantes and of those 1 billion we just happened to pick the only one run by Ukranians. Amber enjoyed a warmed up microwave pizza, Noel had the 4 euro can of coke, and Prison Chin had a flashback to prison with his Italianized gruel. 70 euros later and we were ready to head back to the hotel to purge and get ready for a great afternoon.  

And it was a great afternoon. We spent nearly 3 hours touring the Vatican museum and being blown away by the depth and enormity of its collections. The self-guided tours start with the Egyptian collection and I should have known after seeing two real mummies that the Vatican was anything other than normal. I will let the pictures speak for me.

 

 

After the Vatican we walked along the Tiber on our way to Gelateria Giolitti, stopped to take pictures, bought some gummies from a street vendor, and realized how tired we were. 

The journey was well worth it and we thoroughly enjoyed our gelato.

After gelato we made our way back to Piazza Novano and eventually to Ristorante Lagano. Amber had a plate full of pasta and seafood (heads, eyes, and bums included) and Noel about blew out his esophagus with a spicy plate of pasta Arrabiatta. 

Following dinner we walked back through all the little streets between Piazza Novano and the Pantheon on our way to a bus stop. Eventually we found one, but it took us some time before we realized we were waiting for a bus that only ran on the weekends. With the crisis averted, we made our way back to the hotel.

Day 2 Rome – Awesome! and Hot! (mostly because of Noel’s hot body).