Loot

Finally the actual event arrived. Trick-or-treat time!! This year we were sad to miss Aislinn, Rob, and Tasha. I was unable to coordinate successfully in time, and given the lack of options in the apartment building, we decided to head out with the Austin family in Reading.

Seriously, let me tell you, this town knows how to do Halloween!!! Houses were decorated to he nines with music, fog, and costumes all around. What fun!

Before we headed out:


The first house:



Loot!

Pants on your head

And a few toys on the ground.



Vivie found this so funny ...


it delayed our getting out the for for Halloween by at least 15 minutes.

Chase and Connor visit!

We are so excited to have Katie and Jon moving back to Boston!! This weekend they were up to scope out preschools and apartments. We spent a bit of Saturday with them. We missed pics of the hayride at Wilson farm, but got some dress-up pics at home. Unfortunately, none of the nearby towns were trick-or-treating Saturday night, so the kids had to make due with trick-or-treating down at the local package store, where Daddy and Jon grabbed a growler while protected by a tough cowboy and an alligator. You need your posse on such adventures.



Later Pip and Vivie were very excited to get a chance to hold Connor. Awhhh!!!

They All Asked For You

Vivie has a variety of dance moves she uses in the car. The hip twist, the foot kick, the shoulder sway. Here is the tried and true head-bop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1V_rWlN2SM

Mom's Group Halloween

It's Halloween!!

Time for the Mom's group part at Amy's house. This time we invited the Dad's and got a solid turnout.

Pip continues to dislike costume headgear, despite consistently selecting costues that have them. Phil did his part to relieve Pip of the offending feature. Here he is taking a walk with a cuddly cow.


We are a long way from Rugby weekends aren't we?


Cat and Cow.


Here's the whole Mom's group crew! Look how we've grown!

Vive got her chance to whack the pinata ... watch out Mommy!

Magic Face-Paint Party

This weekend a friend from work celebrated the first birthday of her son, Dhruv, with a wild party! Looking back it was certainly unnecessary to consider bringing toys to amuse the kids. In addition to lots of co-workers and other adults, there were plenty of happy, spirited kids to keep P&V busy. They were off and running from 4 when we arrived to 9 when we left!!

Pip got his first full face painting ... a dragon breathing fire through its nose!


He breathed fire all over the party and even got Vivie into breathing a little fire of her own (although she refused a face-painting of her own).


Pip found a bossom buddy with his Zebra friend, Rishy. Peas in pods. Pip loved Rishy so much he refused to leave his side during the whole party and when it was finally time to leave, we had to leave at the exact same time, get in our cars at the exact same time, and pull out of the parking lot simultaneously.


There was even a magic show complete with a REAL bunny and a REAL bird!! Wowie! I regretably missed the opportunity to snap pictures of Phil's participatory portion of the show, in which he donned and apron and did a little dance. Yes, that's true.

Vivie and Phil found some very cool monster mouths.

ARC-170 Starfighter

I had nothing to do with this. Really.... it was Nat's idea. Although I'll admit that I had a ton of fun "helping" Pip put it together. The mechanism to open up the wings into attack formation is quite impressive. There's a worm gear and rubber bands. I'm convinced that Toy Engineer at Lego would be the dream job. That's got to be a life position....who would leave or retire?

The starfighter has 396 pieces and was completed successfully. Amazingly, it is still completely intact after 36 hours. Pip's favorite thing to do is fly around and launch two photon torpedos out of the bottom at unsuspecting targets.

Bikes!

Yesterday I took both kids swimming at the Y when Phil was at his rugby game. Not to be outdone, Phil took them biking today while I was out shopping. This was much overdue as their bikes haven't seen any activity since we moved into the rental. WHAT FUN! Pip is already begging to go out biking again tomorrow!

Clean Plate Club & Stickers!

Pip is becoming a member of the clean plate club! This explains why his pants from last year don't fit anymore.



Also, Pip and Viv got awesome Halloween cards from Grammie Balas and worked very hard on artwork to spruce up the place. Note ... stickers are ALWAYS a hit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-XUksvUeTI

Conked Out

Monday we headed to Jess's for Mom's group. Group is hard to coordinate these days. In the morning we have sports class for Pip and book/craft class for me and Vivie. Afterwards we are so eager to see our friends that we sometimes skip nap. It generally is not a problem.

This time Pip and Vivie were very well behaved. So we stayed super long. Before I knew it, it was 4pm. Vivie was on the couch reading with Jameson ... until he started to complain that she fell alseep on him. Indeed she did. Little cutie. I had to grab the pic, then settled her in and gave her a blanket. She slept until 5 when I had to pack in it, wake her up, and head home!!

Tougas Farm

This weekend we decided to take a little drive to check out Tougas Farm. I'd heard lots of good things and due to lots of rain this spring, it was the last weekend for apples this year because everything was running two weeks early.

Still, there were tons of apples to be found and we filled a huge bag in no time. Plus the weather was outstanding. Dry and warm with a light breeze to cool us off.

Heading out!


Pip braved a ladder to snag an apple up high.


A rare family photo:


After picking and eating our fill of apples, Vivie tackled the rock climbing section of their playground equipment over and over again for about 45 minutes. While Pip holed himself up in a play tunnel and dug in the dirt gleefully. Finally we managed to extract them and had lunch. Pip found a big boulder to sit on and enjoyed his hot dog all by himself.

Not sleeping

This Friday night I had a Mom's night out with a few ladies from Mom's Group. PF Changs was fabulous and so was the drag show, although going sober may have been ill-advised. The sacrifices I make for pregnancy!!

At any rate, Phil was left at home with the kids. When I got home there was a trail of books leading out of their room and all the way into the living room. Apparently Phil snapped a pic of one of our little masons. I believe this project extended bedtime quite a bit ... no surprise!

Hopscotch

Apparently Phil was quite a hopscotch competitor in his day. Watch him attempt to impart his wisdom on the kids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfdWjjqfvXM

Self Portrait

Pip loves to draw people pictures these days and you can always tell when he draws himself. His hair sticks straight up and only right on top of his head. He brought this one home from school and it made us all smile. He's jumping between two flowers. Love the yellow sun and his big smile.

Topsfield Fair!

This year it was a bit cold and misty for the Topsfield fair. We had to bundle up but the upside was it was lots less crowded. This meant much mre quality time with the animals and less of a fear of losing the children.

Pip was the model of good behavior when he was without any of his wild male friends. Here you see him acting as the responsible chaperone for Ella. He loves to escort her around ... until Nick shows up and then it's like "Ella who??" Typical boy. I hope Ella is paying attention.


I think the cows were the overall favorite, but the sheep were nice too. We were successful at getting them to eat strands of hay from out hands.


After Nick arrived all I remember was a blur of "bad transformer" play fights and tots running in circles. Somehow I managed to get one pic of them sort of standing still.


Later we fed the ducks and chickens. Aflac!!!