Song Leader

Noah continues to pay special attention to all the music in church. This morning, at our Thanksgiving service, he watched grandma be the song leader. He even sang an entire hymn with me! He also watched my cousin Kyle play a piccolo trumpet. After the service, he played with Kyle's trumpet for a long time and tried so hard to make a sound. He just couldn't blow enough air through to produce sound.

Just after he finished eating lunch today, he stood up on his chair and started to sing and direct, just like the song leader in church does.

Pumpkin Spice Play Dough Pumpkins

What a cool idea! Susan, one of Noah's Sunday School teachers sent home a baggie of pumpkin spice play dough and green pasta on Sunday. Noah and I have been making pumpkins the past few days. We make a pumpkin for each person in our family. Levi is a tiny little pumpkin, Noah is medium-sized pumpkin, mom is a bigger pumpkin than Noah and daddy is the biggest pumpkin of all. Then Noah spends a couple minutes rearranging the noodles and giving some pumpkins 3 stems and others none and then he's usually ready to move on to something else. The play dough smells like pumpkin pie and I have to keep reminding Noah not to eat it!

Blue Cornmeal

On Saturday, we went to Ben's grandparent's house to celebrate his uncle's birthday. Lee and Mary Alice, grew blue corn this summer. Lee dried the corn and now can grind that corn into cornmeal. Well, this was a pretty mesmerizing activity and we all had to take a turn.







Thanks Mary Alice for the to-die-for lasagna and French bread!!

King Noah

Noah has enjoyed wearing a crown he got in Sunday School, ever since Sunday morning. It's very cute. He also has a scroll to go with it, but only the crown had to go along to Debbie's house today.

A date with Noah

On Saturday morning, I was lucky enough to steal away a couple hours with Noah to run errands and go to Pages Bookshop. Every second Saturday of the month, Pages has an in-store activity for kids. I thought Noah would really enjoy playing with clay, but he didn't last long. Soon after he got the clay he started shaping it into balls and throwing it. So, we decided to get some snacks instead. Noah got warm (not hot) chocolate, I got a mocha and we shared a chocolate chip cookie. After Noah finished his warm chocolate he played in the tent that's set up in the store for kids to play or read in. We had a great time and I hope to do this again with Noah soon!

Together randomness

I have so many photos of the boys together, that I thought it was time to post some of them. They are terrible at sharing, so don't let these photos fool you into thinking that they actually get along. It's just that every once-in-a-while they actually do get along for brief periods of time. It's refreshing to see them play together, perhaps some day it will happen more often and last longer then a minute. We'll see...

Hmmmm...breakfast!

Both boys wake up in pretty good moods. After about 20, maybe 30 minutes, they both realize they're hungry. Both of them get a waffle for breakfast and some fruit. As soon as Levi catches a glimpse of his waffle, he starts to voice his excitement and impatience to start eating it. He's also really improved at eating, still messy, but not nearly as bad as he was a couple week ago.

Ben took these pictures this morning right after we realized that while we were talking in the kitchen, both of our boys were quietly and diligently eating their waffles. They were so cute! In some ways they seemed so grown up and in others so young and innocent.

I Boated!

On Tuesday, when I told Noah I was going to vote, he thought I said I was going to boat. When I came back to Debbie's at the end of the day to pick him up he asked me if he could go boating, too. Even on Wednesday morning he was still talking about boating and asked me if I was going to go boating again. I guess the attempts I made on Tuesday to explain what voting is didn't make much of an impression.

We went to Vanessa and Doug's for an election watch party on Tuesday night. We had fabulous food and there were tons of kids to corral. To get Levi to bed, I had to leave the party pretty early, but it was still really fun to gather with friends and get some weeknight socializing in.

a Cranky Frog and a One-eyed Lion

So far, as a mother, I have yet to find Halloween to be as fun as I anticipate it will be. Each year, Noah has been much crankier about getting in and out of the car to see family then I think he will be. This year, we barely made it to my parents house before he was completely done with being dressed up. Levi didn't mind his costume or getting in and out of his car seat. When we got back home, Noah had a great time handing out candy to trick-or-treaters at our door but had not interest in going out to ring our neighbors doorbells...maybe next year....