pumpkins, pumpkins and more pumpkins!

This past week Dylan and his class went on a field trip to a local pumpkin patch...and they got to eat freshly made donuts too!!

Dylan and some of his friends got the best seats on the hay ride out to the pumpkin patch!

This week (a non-pumpkin activity!) we started eating out of the bowls that Cole and Dylan made with Nana.  The boys made the bowls with Nana and she fired and glazed them. 

Most mornings they say "I want to eat out my Nana bowl!"

This weekend Cole had a birthday party and a class visit to another pumpkin patch!  With the added bonus of the birthday cake and a jack-o-lantern pinata.  Here is Cole giving it his all!

Here is the 'willow' class collecting pinata treasures after it was broken open...thankfully it was not filled with candy.  Cole loved the Halloween pencils, bat rings, glow-in-the-dark plastic bats, and stickers...but the all time favorite was the whoopee cushion.  He even managed to grab one for Dylan (who was playing in the pumpkin patch with Dad)!  Within 24 hrs Cole managed to rip a hole in his whoopee cushion and somehow Mom managed to mention that the Dollar Store carried them...great job Mom!  So the next morning Cole asked about every 1/2 hour if he could go to the Dollar Store until they actually opened!  And yes they did have them...only they were huge and can make very loud noises!!

After the party portion we stayed and took a ride in the hay wagon.

The boys kept looking out for squished pumpkins that the tractor ran over!

Dylan was impressed with how light this particular pumpkin was!

All the 'boys' had fun going down the fast tube slide...over and over and over!

We love pumpkin patches!!

Arts and Crafts

We have been working on some fun art projects, now that we set up our art studio in the garage!

Painting some birdhouses was super fun!

Then we got out scraps of wood and the boys kept painting...

here Dylan is painting a chicken.

Then we moved from painting to sewing.  Dylan put his own dots on the fabric where he wanted to sew!

Cole is working on sewing a circle.  Notice we also did pasta necklaces!

With all these art projects going on Mom had to get involved!  I volunteered to help the sculptor Patrick Dougherty with the installation of his willow sculpture.  He won't be done with the sculpture for about another week...so these are all in progress.

There will be about 9 of these structures.  And they are built entirely out of willow branches.

Here is one of the doorways that I worked on to have a more finished look.  I can't wait to see it when it is done!

The other day we had some friends over and Rob told a story about how when he got accepted into Harvey Mudd (geeky engineering school that he ended up not going to) a pocket protector accompanied the acceptance letter.  I swear Cole was not even in the room and no one described what a pocket protector was...but the entire NEXT day Cole carried around a small ruler and 2 pens in his chest pocket!  He has never done that before!

This weekend we decided to head out to our inaugural pumpkin patch visit...at least 3 more visits to other patches are already planned!

Here we are in an extremely large and complex corn maze...boy was Mom excited when we finally came upon the 'entrance' after being in the maze for about 15-20 minutes with no hope of finding the 'exit'.  Thankfully the boys were just fine with going out the entrance and not continuing to try to get to the exit!

We took a hay ride out to their pumpkin patch...and were sure to sit right behind the tractor!

Dylan was excited about all the worms in the field! Wormy helped us pick out the perfect pumpkin!!

Notice the ruler in the pocket!  (You can see it now that the raincoat came off! I managed to convince him to leave the pens in the car!)

The corn bins are always a hit!

And we can still see the ruler even from behind the pumpkin cut outs and silly faces!

Running and jumping down the large hay tower didn't seem to budge that ruler!  It safely made it home with us.

Where did September go?

 So where did September go?  We have been so crazy busy that it just flew by!

We had our few weeks of summer linger into September...

...so we made sure to enjoy some summer traditions like eating big pieces of watermelon until the juice drips down to our toes!

And sitting on the front step eating ice cream cones while watching the neighborhood.

We were headed to a wedding celebration and managed to get both boys in a picture...Dylan must be standing on that hose because he doesn't normally look quite that much taller than Cole.

Mom and Dad got to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary by spending a weekend in Portland.  The boys had just about as much fun as we did staying over at Grandma and Grandpa's house!  Before heading back to our hotel we stopped off at Voodoo Donuts at 11.30pm to a huge crowd and a line down the block.  Right outside the front door of the donut shop was a 10 piece bagpipe band playing!  Needless to say it was an absolutely fabulous city adventure!

We had our friends Nicole, Matthew and Jonah visit from Yosemite.  The gang hanging out in downtown Corvallis.

We went to several festivals that Corvallis offers in September before the rains begin...one was at our indoor soccer park.  The boys were so excited when a big fire truck and medic unit showed up!

What boy or girl doesn't want to try on fireman gear?!

We helped Grandma celebrate her birthday...the boys helped make the cake!

They approved of the quality.

Dad went to LA for a week for work...and Nana came to help us out for the week.  When Nana is in town the boys can't wait to pull out the clay for another lesson hand building with clay!

Nana made us a gargoyle to help keep away the racoons and deer.  Seems to be working so far!

I had to submit a picture of myself to the boys school...since I am the treasurer of the board for the school.  I looked back to the last year of pictures we took and there are hardly any of me...since I am the primary photo taker in the family.  And the ones I did find of myself usually had the boys in the picture and we tended to be making silly faces.  Not the best for a professional photo...so luckily Nana was in town and took a picture of me.  

The boys started back to their school this month too...didn't get any photos of their first day.  It seemed old news for them.

But this weekend we did go to the fire stations open house...we have to take up every occasion to don fireman gear!

Cole tried on about 3 different coat-pant combinations until he found the ones that fit just right.

Today there was an open house at a local wildlife rehab center where the boys got their faces painted...happy boys!