Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everyone! Noah's third Halloween was like a roller coaster. When we first started carving pumpkins he couldn't figure out what we were doing to them. He looked very upset that we were cutting up his precious pumpkins that he's grown accustom to counting on our front porch every morning. Hence, the look below:

Here he is hugging one of his beloved pumpkins:

I couldn't get him to help me take the seeds out: he didn't want to get his hand dirty! (Well maybe he won't be a surgeon after all!)

After his nap he was much more willing to help Daddy with the pumpkins (although, I think the selling point was the fact that he got to hold his own carving knife- thank goodness they aren't that sharp!)

We started trick-or-treating at Aaron and Janis's house. It took the persuasion of his cousins to get him in his Mickey Mouse suit. In the picture below, I'm putting the head piece on (that he kept taking off) and Mary is helping with the shoes.

On our way to trick-or-treat at Nana's (Elaine, our family friend who watches him during the week)

The whole group on our way to Nana's (its' really far away from Aaron's house, um. . . . next door!)

Here are the three cousins: Ellie as Hannah Montana, Noah as Mickey Mouse and Mary as a witch:

Noah had been in kind of a crabby mood until Auntie Jan showed him her talking skeleton. I thought it would scare him (like Justin's dancing and singing Homer Simpson that he had out last Christmas) but Noah LOVED it!

Here we are on our way to Trick-or-Treat at the Vogelsberg Grandparents' house. At this point he still wasn't in the best of moods and we had to quickly slip his ears on before they answered the door.

Here he is checking out the M&M's and books my mom got him:

Between visiting my parents and visiting Justin's parents, we stopped for dinner at Sonic. Who knew the power of a cherry limeade?! Noah was back to his usually cheerful self and he even kept his ears on for a long time at the Shoemakers!

First thing you do when you get to Grandma Kathy's? Turn on the iPod of course!

The Shoe's got him an M&M fan (that's really soft so he can't get hurt), he loved it!

And the icing on the Halloween cake? A brand new tape-measure!!! (Hence, the tool obsession continues!)

We hope you all had a happy and safe Halloween. A Donut Man Halloween Video will be posted tomorrow!

SNOW DAY!!!

Justin, Seth, Aaron and my mom were lucky today and had a snow day. I'm going to take a minute here and whine: out of us teacher, my district was the only one that did NOT have a snow day today! But, I do have one tomorrow, so I can't complain about that! And when I was driving home the roads weren't bad at all, in fact I had already accepted the fact there would not be a snow day tomorrow, but my district surprised me! :)

Here are a couple pictures Justin took around 2 this afternoon. At that time he measured 9 inches on the table in the back yard:

Lucky Justin got to spend the day with our little guy. They watched Sesame Street, backed cookies and Justin tried to teach him how to smile for the camera. He does great with the professional pictures, but with us he has to run to the camera to see the screen and we can't get a good picture of him (the main reason the blog updates aren't as frequent).

Noah's really into "Handy Manny," a cartoon character on the Disney channel. Really, he's always liked tools and this has pushed him "over the edge!" He can't go anywhere without a tool of some sort in his hand and I can't tell you how funny it is to check on him when he's sleeping and he's still clutching his toy screw driver!

Here he is using his "new tape measurer" that Patty (a.k.a. Aunt Paki, who is one of the ladies that watched him during the day) gave him. He had to put it in the key hole of my music cabinet. I kid you not, this entertains him for hours! In fact, he insists I sit down and watch.

And here's a picture from last weekend. He's getting so big! I'm really looking forward to all the Holidays and seeing him experience them now that he's a little older!

Happy Birthday J!!!

Happy birthday honey, hope you had a good day!!

For those of you that don't know, Justin had to teach all day today and then had parent/teacher conferences after school. Last year was the same way and I had the other link commissioner recruit some students to go get donuts and a latte for him. This year I recruited my talented, awesome sister-in-law, Janis, to bake a cake. (She's really gotten into cake baking and decorating and it's funny to see all of her creations, she's very talented). I told her just a plain old cake would do, but being creative, she had the idea to make the cake like a poker chip. So, she asked what Justin's favorite casino was and I figured we couldn't go wrong with the Bellagio! With the help of Elaine's (Noah's caretaker) granddaughter, who is one of the 360 leaders, the cake was delivered to Justin right before he started his day. My only regret is that Janis doesn't have business cards yet: Justin was saying he knew of at least three teachers that would have taken one.

So, here's Justin's birthday cake:

Noah's 2 Year Pictures, FINALLY!

We had Noah's two year pictures taken today. We went to a different place than in the past and Justin and I agreed that we will for sure be giving this new place our business from now on. There were many things that made us love this new place. First, the photographer worked with Noah: she was very child-centered in her approach and very patient with him. Two, we were offered more than 6 poses. We ended up with 57 pictures of him! Three, the studio itself was more child-centered: they had a lego table where the kids could play and stay in the view of their parents while they chose which pictures they wanted. And, finally, we may have paid a little more than we had in the past but we ended up with three times the amount of photographs that we purchased, plus the CD with all the photographs AND the photographer didn't rush us. It was a great experience!

So, here are some of Noah's 2 year pictures!

The one below is my favorite:

The two below turned out a little dark, but I love his face and body language: