Cool eggs!

A friend of Brian's at work keeps chickens and she has a lot of extra eggs and offered us some. The different types of chickens lay different colored eggs, so here we have green, brown, and brown speckled. The kids thought they were really cool! The yolks of these eggs were also darker yellow than the ones you find in the grocery store, but they tasted the same.

Sammy is three!

We've been so busy lately that I forgot to post about Sam's birthday! Sam turned 3 on the 14th. The weekend before his birthday we went and stayed in Indio, which is near Palm Springs, with Brian's family (it was us, Tim, Wendy, Cory, Carson, Zukie, Laura, and Kathe). We had a little party for him there so he got to eat cake and open presents twice (my mom came in on Monday and stayed for the week, and Sam's birthday fell on a Wednesday). We also got to go swimming over the weekend since it was so warm in the desert. We all had a really nice time just relaxing and hanging out.

Before we left for Indio, I went to Costco to pick up the cake. I put it in our fridge until it was time to go, and Sam wasn't too happy when I told him that we needed to save it for later that night and couldn't dig into it right away. Brian and I were in our bedroom packing and in walks Sam, covered in red icing. We ran to the kitchen and the pictures you see are what we found!

I also included a picture of the flurry of hands helping Sam to open his birthday presents. We had a hard time getting the other three kids to let Sam open his own gifts!

Sammy said "I love you" for the first time today!

And it was to Ben! Ben laid his head on my lap when we were doing puzzles and said that he had a stomach ache. Sammy looked over at us and said, "I luv ooo Ben". Awwwww, brotherly love! Kind of makes up for all the time they spend fighting!

So the kids want a dog

The boys have been asking us for a dog for months. We can't get a dog where we live now because the landlord won't allow it, so that has been an easy excuse. We are however, in the process of trying to buy a house. As soon as I mentioned that to the boys, they immediatly thought "dog". I am not too keen on the idea of getting a dog because I know that the responsibility of walking, feeding, and cleaning up after the dog will be primarily the grownups' responsibility. We are considering getting one when Sam gets a little older, so that I only have to clean up the poop of one person/animal. Yes he is three now, and no he is not potty trained. Then we also have the issue of boarding the dog or finding someone to watch it when we go out of town which is often.

I did feel a little guilty about the dog issue when Will and Ben were in the backyard trying to teach the cat to sit and jump up on his hind feet!

Ben lost his first tooth!

Last week, Ben lost his very first tooth! He was very excited, coming into my room at about 5a.m. to tell me that his tooth was gone. He said it just fell out on it's own, so it's probably lucky that he didn't end up swallowing it! He was thrilled when the tooth fairy left him a "gold" one dollar coin. The reason this picture looks kind of funny is because Ben was upside down on a chair when I shot it. That was the only way he'd let me take it. Typical Benny!

Happy Halloween!

Yesterday we finally got around to going to the pumpkin patch and picking out our pumpkins. Better late than never! In our defense, we had plans to go to Tanaka Farms, a really cool local organic farm and take the pumpkin tractor ride, pick veggies, visit the petting zoo, and pick our own pumpkins, but that got cancelled due to the fires. So yesterday we visited Pumpkin City at the mall instead, went to the petting zoo there, rode a terribly overpriced "car" ride, and picked out our pumpkins. I did get a few cute pictures of the boys.

We ended up using templates that we printed off the internet to make Blues Clues, Sponge Bob, and alien faces on our pumpkins. With the alien one, we used a kit that came with these little lite brite type pegs that you pound into the pumpkin and the "candle" that you put in it blinks. It's kind of cool. It looks just like those lite brites we had as kids, except with a pumpkin.

We went trick or treating with Will's friend from school and another little girl. They all had a great time running from house to house and collected about 10 pounds of candy. We will probably end up sending some of it with Brian to work because that is just WAY too much candy!