Favorite Photo Friday

K is for
Knight, and Knuks...

Yeah, I know that's skunk backwards, so I cheated a bit!

The kids had a great time Trick or Treating this year. Ian got away with presenting his treat bag on the end of his sword for a couple houses before we caught on and insisted he carry it in his hands before he stabbed someone. Ana was quite content just riding along in her little pink car, I don't think she made a peep the entire time. I think she just enjoyed watching all the kids run along in front of her. Ian petered out at the same point as last year, his hands were just too cold to continue! That's okay though, we definitely don't need the extra candy in the house!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Jack-O-Lanterns

Last night we carved our pumpkins that we bought at the corn maze a few weeks ago (geez, yet another thing I failed to blog about...I'll get to it!). We all had so much fun!

Ian loved the design part, he designed both his and Ana's pumpkins. I have to say, his pumpkins were pretty cool! He made a creepy one for his own and decided on a goofy one for Ana so it wouldn't scare her. Ana watched Ian very intently while he designed her pumpkin for her.

He did not however enjoy the scooping out part. He has never really liked that part, he says it is "gross". For all the bugs and frogs and creepy crawlies this boy has touched, it never ceases to amaze me how pumpkin guts can reduce him to a whiny mess! He flat out refused to do it, but Greg insisted he take two handfuls out which he did with a disgusted look on his face.



Ana on the other hand thought that was the coolest part. She had no problem squishing, squeezing and even at one point tasting the pumpkin innards. She even gave her pumpkin a big 'ol kiss! She kept chanting over and over, "pum-pa, pum-pa", she was so funny!



Greg brought pumpkin carving to a "overdone as only Greg can" level by taking the tops off with his jigsaw and using his dremel to carve portions of his design. Seriously, this man will find any excuse to use power tools in any way other than that they were intended.



Check back tomorrow, because tonight we had Trick or Treating here and I'm going to post pictures of the kids in their costumes because it fits for the Favorite Photo Friday letter K. I'll say that Ian's costume begins with a K, and Ana's ends with a K. Don't give it away any of you who already know, for the rest of you:

Any guesses?

Favorite Photo Friday

J is for John Deere

Ian received a John Deere tractor riding toy when he was 3 years old from his Nannie and Papa. I remember being worried that he was far too young for such a toy, but it was an instant hit, and he surprisingly learned very quickly how to drive it quite well! Over the past four years, it has been very well loved by not only Ian, but also by all the neighborhood boys as well. We have many fond memories of the neighborhood troop taking turns riding/chasing the tractor in loops upon loops around the house, and of Ian helping Greg "mow the lawn". It saddens me that Ian is on the brink of outgrowing this beloved toy! Just another reminder that he's growing up, sniff sniff!

Here's a picture of him on the day he received the tractor, man I miss that 3 year old face!



The seven year old face is pretty cute too though, if I do say so myself!

Things We Learned on our Trip...

I still don't have the pictures ready, but I thought I'd share a little of what we learned on our trip.

Any fast food restaurant south of Maryland will look at you sideways if you try and order a grilled cheese sandwich. After I don't know how many times over those 6 days trying to explain, we are half an hour from home and order at Wendy's for dinner. Our practiced explanation of a grilled cheese sandwich gets us a plain cheeseburger. When I go in to correct the order the guy tells me, "Well you should have just ordered a grilled cheese!", arrgh!!

Senior Frogs in Myrtle Beach, S.C. has bar stools in the shape of women's bums.

Ian thought Senior Frogs was very funny.

Don't borrow office supplies from anyone from South Carolina. Not that we did, but they appear to be very serious about their office supplies. In more than one store, we saw a pen, stapler and various other items that deliver an electric shock when used! The pen was at the check out desk at the aquarium and Ian tried it, poor baby!

A cardboard box will keep Ana occupied for a good long time in the car

Ana will eat a cardboard box if you give it to her in the car.

Given a long enough time, Ian will start to read the credits to his Scooby Doo movie. He can now tell you the directors name, and even worse, that his theory is that the song that plays on the title screen was made to the same rhythm of that name. Yeah, I'm not sure exactly how many times he watched that movie, but I'm quite sure it was too many!

Ana's feet apparently are very interesting friends. I don't know how many times I looked back and she was having complete conversations with her feet.

Ana can say cracker, "ca ca" which was very cute the first 102 times.

Even satellite radio repeats if you listen long enough (Chicken Fried, Greg?).

We're Home

We just got home a little while ago. I'm not going to write much tonight, we're exhausted! We had an amazing time, and the kids were SO GOOD, I just couldn't have asked for more. And even if towards the end Ian was hearing subliminal messages in his Scooby Doo movies, and Ana was having full on conversations with her feet I think they both came through it okay. More later...

Road Trip!

I don't think I mentioned it before, but we are going to Guatoberfest in Myrtle Beach, SC this weekend! I am so looking forward to meeting other adoptive families including a wonderful family we met on our visit trip almost exactly a year ago (see you soon Debbie, Dave and Lili)! We're leaving tomorrow morning, and we are all so excited to get away! It's about 12:30 am (so I guess I should say we are leaving this morning) and I'm still packing which if you know me at all I'm sure you're not all that surprised. I really did plan on having this all done by dinnertime today but our day was thrown completely off by starting it out discovering that Greg's debit card number had been stolen and there was $1300.00 incurred...not a great beginning. At any rate, wish us luck, this will be our first time driving any length with Ana (we're looking at about 16-17 hours) and Ian has become far less tolerant of any long stretches of time in the car. It should make for an interesting trip! We'll have the lap top, so hopefully I'll be blogging, but I'm not making any promises!

Ian is Thankful for...

We went out to dinner with Greg's mum, dad and brothers tonight and Greg's mum asked everyone to go around the table and give something over the past year that we are thankful for. As everyone spoke about Ana's homecoming and Greg's dad's surgery and great recovery Ian pipes up with this doozy:

"I'm thankful that daddy put a whoopie cushion under mumma's bum in the car over and over yesterday!"

Fabulous...

Can You Believe It?

I can't let today slip by without mention of what today is. My brain is sleepy, I have nothing profound to say, but do you remember these pictures? A year ago today we held our baby girl for the first time. Can you believe it? We are so amazingly blessed...

Anthology

I was shocked while putting him to bed tonight to learn that my 7 year old actually knows what that word means! He was picking out a bed time story, and he says to me, "Mumma, I'd like you to read me a story from this anthology". Huh?! "Ian what's an anthology?" "It's a collection of stories in one book". Go Mrs. Dobson!