Turkey Day

Hopefully everyone had as enjoyable a Thanksgiving Holiday as we did. We spent the day in Livingston (not quite a 2 hour drive to the north and east of our house) in the "country" at Paulette's parents house. They have about 10 acres out nearly in the middle of nowhere so it is nice to go up, hang out and be away from the hustle and bustle. Right behind the house they have a small pond that they claim to have fish in but that we have never been able to substantiate, until Dylan caught a fish after only three or four attempts.

If you talk to him about it, the most important part about him catching a fish was that he was the first one to do it since I managed to catch one (a bigger one) a while later.

Much to Dylan's dismay we had a traditional Thanksgiving feast because Paulette told him that if we caught any fish we would get to eat them. We practice catch and release in this house though since none of us are huge fish fanatics (maybe it's just that we wouldn't know what to do with a flapping fish to prepare it to eat).

Hayden was there too but didn't make it in to the big action story because he is not allowed to fish with an actual hook on the end of his line. He is quite proficient at casting though so someday he may prove to be a real angler.

Paulette went Black Friday shopping with her mom again this year. It seems as though they have made this their new tradition. When she left I was never able to go back to sleep since Kolton wanted to eat plus I was skipping my monthly audit at work so I had that on my mind. After both of us having been up since the whee hours of the morning Hayden decided to spill his guts out all over his bed late that night right after Paulette and I both fell asleep. I tried to clean up as much as possible to Paulette wouldn't have to get up, but apparantly I didn't do good enough because she got up after I went back to bed and cleaned up some more. To add fuel to the fire, Hayden has decided that he is afraid of the dark so it has been a fight nearly every night to get him to bed. We have done really well about not letting him sleep in our room at all but every time he woke up that night we had to fight with him to go back to bed. I am sure everyone knows what it is like to fight with a scared, sick, tired 3 year old.

Kolton is still alive too and he is growing up extremely quick. We just finished teaching him to walk so naturally bike riding is the next step. Kidding of course, he is starting to really laugh rather than just squeel and we are having a lot of fun trying to make him laugh.

Friendly Feast

Dylan had his Thanksgiving celebration today at school. They called it their "Friendly Feast." The children were all assigned something to contribute to the feast. The parent volunteers then dished up a little bit of everything, which in all actuality was more than he will eat at his real thanksgiving dinner. Much to my surprise the first thing he put in his mouth was a green bean, which was quickly followed by drinking his entire Caprisun. Needless to say he didn't eat any more green beans. He tried a little bit of everything but overall didn't eat very much of anything. I mean he had already eaten a large lunch. We were assigned to bring the pumpkin pie, and Dylan was very excited to tell everyone that they were eating HIS pumpkin pie. Before the feasting actually began the music teacher had them sing a couple of songs for the parents and now you all get to enjoy them too.

Dylan was an Indian at the feast

Green bean in and juice to wash it down with.
Dylan and his little pilgrim "girlfriend". She lives around the corner from us and they like to go and see each other as often as the parents will allow.
Dylan and his teacher

And Hayden spent the feast strapped to the stroller.

(The only way I could be guaranteed of his location.)

Third Wheel

I took the day off work today so Paulette could go to a dentist appointment. I never thought staying home from work would feel so awkward. I woke up this morning to Paulette's alarm clock rather than mine, then Dylan and Hayden bounded downstairs and into the bedroom and immediately began getting dressed by themselves. Paulette is in the shower and Dylan proceeds to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for him and Hayden all the while I am still in bed. I felt like I was better off staying there because I felt out of place in my own house since everyone has a routine and they do it really well. I finally get up in time to be ready to see Dylan off to school which I haven't done before and have been trying to find something to do before Paulette leaves. Hayden is still here of course but he is occupied because Teddy (of Elijah and Teddy) is over while his mom goes to her doctor appointment. This is about as productive as I have been so far today with the exception of a few emails that I shot off for work while still laying in bed.
After Paulette leaves I will attempt to work on my Statistics class but that is about as exciting as things may get today.

Gymnastics

Dylan had his first gymnastics "competition" today. It wasn't actually as much a competition as it was an exhibition. Nevertheless he did have a little "routine" on each event and he was so excited to get to do them. Of course he started off with a little stretching. (for some reason all the pictures were either blurry or dark, but try to enjoy anyway, sorry)

Floor Exercise

Pommel Horse

Rings

High Bar
The instructor that was in charge of high bar was not Dylan's regular coach so he didn't realize that Dylan could do the entire routine by himself. Dylan told him before he got on the bar, but he still insisted on "helping" him. I think you can pretty much tell that he did it all by himself.

Parallel bars

Vault


Dylan is in an advanced kindergarten gymnastics class and when we signed up for the competition they put all (all 4 of them) of the advanced kindergartner's in the group with the advanced older kids. So, when they did the second vault they did a vault that he had never done before. In his class they usually do a dive roll instead of a handstand so you get to see his first attempt.

He got a gold medal, 3 red and 3 blue ribbons and as you can see he is very excited to pose with his awards.

(P.S. Yes we know that form is not his strong point, but he is strong and brave. And he really seems to enjoy it even if it looks...well, not pretty.)

The musical stylings of Hayden Kline

I proudly present the musical stylings of Hayden Kline!

Please contact his agent today to book him for your holiday party.

Kids at play! and DIBS

Hayden, Dustin and myself playing house in the clubhouse!

And two dirty dogs.



P.S. To all whom this may affect.

DIBS, We call dibs on the good room at christmas.

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween. I know that we sure did. We started off the evening by going to the church for a "Trunk or Treat" and the kids loaded up on candy and goodies. We then went home and trick or treated for 2 hours and the kids still weren't ready to come home when we made them. They got more candy then should be legally allowed. It is out of control. When we were a couple of houses into our trip we were tracked down by a little girl in Dylan's class. It was really cute, they stayed together for the rest of the night. A friend of ours who was helping with the kids said that they were making plans to hang out at one of their houses after trick or treating was over. Sadly for them, we made them go their separate ways at about 8:30. The kids had fun and then Dustin and I had fun after the kids went to bed and we got to pick out all the good stuff for us.

If you can't tell the boys were firefighters and a dalmatian

My 1st Halloween!

I even turned the stroller into a firetruck complete with head lights and lights on the top, but with the flash you couldn't see that the red things on the top were lit up.

Last weekend we went to a pumpkin patch and here are a couple of pictures from there.

Cute pictures

This is a summary of the three times we have had the boys pictures taken in the past month. Dylan's 6 year old pictures, Kolton's 3 month old pictures, Hayden's 3 year old pictures and Halloween pictures. Enjoy!!

Happy Birthday Hayden!!

If you thought we through a big party for the boys two weeks ago when we had a horse and all of their friends over you should see the celebration we had today. There was a bounce house, a giant slide, a giant carnival swing, face painting, karaoke, a dunking booth, cake walk and a ton of other activities. Actually it was the annual "Carnival at the Creek" hosted by the PTO at his school, Willow Creek Elementary, as a fundraiser (beats selling stuff right Erin). Since it just happened to fall on Hayden's 3rd birthday we told the kids we were doing something special for his birthday by going to it when we would have gone no matter what weekend it was on.

We really dragged the celebrating out a lot longer than just going to the carnival. We woke up early this morning for day two of the biannual subdivision garage sale. Originally Paulette was not going to participate today since we had other plans but since it so horribly yesterday we decided to give it a go for another two hours this morning. Yet another bust! We had our stuff and a ton of stuff (junk?) from Paulette's mom and I think that total between the two days there were no more than 30 people stop by, not counting the ones that drove on by, which brought in a whopping $45 to be split between us and her mom.

We did have one thought during the garage sale this morning though, is there something that magically changes in a kid once they turn 3?

Erin are you sure we didn't accidentally switch kids that one summer we all went to Lagoon together? This kid looks like he might have some Boehme blood in him. Both boys are blonde and cute, it could have happened, right?

Hayden makes garage sales seem a lot more fun than they actually are.

Never mind Erin about the whole switched child issue. Based on his "awesome" sense of rhythm I am relatively certain he belongs to us.

We had to cut the garage sale short to go get pictures taken for Hayden's birthday. I don't know, it's some sort of weird fetish that Paulette has about getting the kids' picture's taken ON their birthday, no sooner no later. I'm surprised she doesn't tell the photographer to wait to snap the picture until the exact minute. We went specifically for Hayden but she always tries to get all the kids together too, just in case something good comes out of it, which is rare. Today we got really lucky though because we got some REALLY good pictures. I am sure Paulette will post them or at least email the link to see them, they really are incredible pictures.

After pictures we went to Shogun, basically it is exactly the same thing as Kobe for those of you familiar with our celebratory eating habits. Dylan insisted that we go to Kobe for his birthday too, but we told Hayden that it was too far since we were staring at Shogun from the JC Penny parking lot. One thing I can say about taking the kids to these type of restaurants is that none of the food gets wasted, really, though devour it.

After lunch we went to the carnival where we thought we would just redeem some of our tickets for some cheap food which didn't happen since some friends asked us if we wanted to go to dinner afterwards since they were certain that the food would be no good. We ended up going to eat at Willie's Icehouse. We rarely go there for the same reason the family that we went with usually goes there, the sandbox for the kids. At least their kids ate, my kids didn't hardly eat anything until Paulette finally forced some food down Hayden and Dylan decided to eat right as we were getting ready to leave. My kids don't usually like sand boxes but I guess since their friends were there they decided to pretend like they were boys who like to be boys.

Now for the funny part. Anytime Hayden was asked "how old are you?" his response was "I be 5, I go cool" which in English means "When I am 5 I get to go to school." Of course it's funnier when you see it in person.

PS: We saw gas for $2.49 today!

PPS: Cute pictures

Every time we saw his horns off he's sweet for a little while.

What's not to like about this picture?

Hello! Baby smiling, can't leave it out.