Halloween Fun

I've been so busy doing fun Halloween activities, making costumes and  working on Primary things that I haven't had time to post any pictures so BEWARE - this blog post might be quite long.

Ben and I painted a pumpkin! Painting has always been considered a messy activity by our little neat freak, so all my former painting attempts have required a LOT of parental prodding. This time though, he did it all on his own. We did have to pull out some paper towels to clean up any paint that dropped onto the cardboard though.

 

For family home evening we carved a pumpkin. Once again, the cleaning out the pumpkin was a little too messy for Ben, but once mom got most of the goop out he was willing to risk a quick reach inside.

Mom looks pretty silly with a pumpkin head.

And then there was the wonderful trunk-or-treat ward Halloween party. 

Scarecrow Ben spent a good portion of the time climbing under tables with two or three other little boys his age (and of course his shoes and socks came off 3 minutes after we got in the church).

When he wasn't under tables, he was playing with the toys at the young men's rubber-band "shooting range."

 Caleb, the cowardly lion, spent most of his time being passed around to different ward members and winning them over with his little smiles and coos.

Fall-tastic

I really love fall. The weather cools down. The leaves change colors. Pumpkins and pumpkin treats abound.
We took our third annual "fall outing." In the middle of October. The first one was rather chaotic. We ended up getting stuck, being led to broken down bridges, and not having enough bottles for Benjamin. The second time around, went much smoother. We had just moved into our new apartment and Cameron's mom was here. We went to "famous" (at least to the locals) Brown county and ate fudge and drove through the forest, admiring all the fall colors and only taking one or two wrong turns.
This last trip was our best one yet. The colors were beautiful. We stopped at a candy store and got all kinds of different flavored salt water taffy - pumpkin pie, strawberry cheesecake, molasses cookies, cookies and cream, root beer float, etc. The boys did great and we enjoyed getting out of town for a day.

The view from our backyard is my favorite. I love that this is what I see from our bedroom window.

But most of all, I love these two smiley silly boys. Who couldn't be happy with them around?!

Time Out Puppy

This afternoon as we were watching general conference, Ben decided that his puppy (appropriately named Puppy) should watch as well. Ben sat puppy on the edge of the laptop to watch. Cameron warned "puppy" not to touch the keyboard buttons, but I guess puppy just couldn't resist. He tapped a few buttons so Ben promptly took him into the hall and sat him down in our time out spot while saying "Time out puppy. No touch puppy. No! No! Sit puppy!"

Cameron and I were trying our best to stifle our laughter as Ben rejoined us. After a moment he went back to puppy and picked him up and said, "Kisses puppy. Okay."
By that point Cameron had to grab a pillow and stick it on his face and I had to hide my face in a book.
Puppy didn't learn his lesson and "touched" the keyboard again and once again got put in time out. We could tell that this new found power might be practiced on poor puppy for a long time so we revealed another secret parenting technique to our little disciplinarian - redirection. The next time puppy headed for the keyboard we told Ben to show his toys to puppy. Amazingly, puppy lost interest in the keyboard and thus avoided a long night of sitting in the hall.

Warning! Too Cute

These two sure send me through a roller coaster of emotions every day. They frustrate me and occasionally make me want to cry. But mostly they make me laugh, make me smile, and make me just happy that I get to be a part of the craziness.

Ben found Cameron's work clothes in the back of the closet and loves getting dressed up.