Sam: (from his perch on the toilet) "Hey mom, I think you are beautiful!"
Me: "Thanks!"
Sam: "and Dad is smart and super cool!"
Me: "Yeah, he is."
Sam: "and Thomas is crazy"
Me: "Definitely! And you are handsome!"
Sam: "yeah, and I'm really, really funny!"

Horrifiying

Just in case you haven't found anything to sufficiently horrify you yet this halloween season, I want to direct your attention toward this little article I came across.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/10/22/easpider122.xml

Go ahead and call me when you can't sleep at night either knowing such creatures are in the world. Those of you out there who are saying "that's cool." I don't want to hear from you at all.

The only thing I can think of that compares to this is the mental image I have of flaming hand-sized hawaiian spiders (courtesy of my father-in-law. Go ask him for the story sometime. It haunts me.) Anyone guessed that I am an arachnophobic yet?

Hey Kate and Matt, have a good time in Australia next month! Ditch the bug spray and see if they will let you bring a gun.

This is for all you siblings out there, who got to contribute to the anniversary balloon ride, but didn't get to join the fun. Sorry about the yucky picture quality. I was using my old camera since my good one is not working at the moment. Wish you were there. Pretty much every one of you has a better camera than me (Actually, Jen's turned out great, but I don't have access to them at the moment).

A change in the routine

I have to admit that I airbrushed the chocolate cake crumbs from

lunch off of Thomas' face before I posted this picture.

Too much information? Like you've never fed your kids chocolate cake for a meal.

Big news! Thomas no longer needs pennies to put himself to sleep, He does, however, need his two squishy pillows jammed up against each side of his face just so ("not like that mom...). He has also forgone the song 90% of the time, to my sorrow, but he does have to shout at the top of his lungs as you walk toward the door "I love you mom/dad" and you have to enthusiastically shout it back until you have shut the door and and said it back and forth as you walk away. Oh yeah, and he still needs his four blankets. In order.

Are we raising a obsessive compulsive here? Samuel only ever required a night light.

What's the opposite of a green thumb?

We have long known that our yard is the despair of our elderly neighbor, who often gives us "tips" as he is down on his hands and knees with needle-nosed pliers removing stray crabgrass from his velvety kentucky bluegrass lawn. This summer while I was out in one of my few attempts to weed, he casually remarked that he had more snails in the last few years than he had ever seen in the last few years and how were we faring? I instantly felt guilty because we moved in a few years ago and seemingly brought a snail infestation with us. We aren't horrible homeowners though. Everything that faces the street gets cared for and the lawn is mowed and weed-whacked once a week, but we lack the pristine edges and completely weedless borders of our western neighbors. Our eastern neighbors make us feel a whole lot more normal.

Last year I tried to grow pumpkins. Nothing. I weeded, I watered, I fertilized, I prayed over them. Nothing. This year, one of the little pumpkins from our halloween decorations rolled off the porch and under a bush where it absolutely flourished this year. We now have five little pumpkins growing by our gate and I didn't do a thing for them. In our backyard pumpkin patch, I tried Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins again and basically ignored them. Weeds, snails and intermittent watering notwithstanding. Powdery mildew? So be it. They flourished and we had two pumpkins grow from the four we planted. Then last week, I saw a third which had managed to escape and grow outside the confines of my garden. I suspect it saw the rampant neglect going on and figured rather than take it's chances with the Miss Hannigan of gardners, it would take it's chances on the toddler/teenager infested park side of the fence. I'm not offended because in this case, the grass really IS greener on the other side. Good luck little pumpkin. We'll come get you for Halloween if no one else gets you first.

park side view

On the other hand, everything else has grown great under the new neglectful regime. I have more tomatoes than I can handle, the red and green peppers that I apparently planted too close to each other have born strange red and green streaked peppers, which Jay claims are awesome. Our onions might be small, but darn it, they grew! I haven't actually seen him do it, but I am pretty sure my neighbor shakes his head in sorrow daily for allowing such a travesty so near his immaculate yard. I do feel bad, but not bad enough to get out there and weed. Maybe I'll take over some tomatoes.

view from my side

Cute Thomas harvesting the fall crops.

Look at my baby's baby blues!

We doesn't like to share our toys at all, does we, precious...?

In a futile attempt to end the constant wrangling over toys and the daily shrieks of "Thomas took my (insert special toy)" Jay made up a rule that anything that was downstairs was fair game. Samuel had to leave his special toys in his room, or deal with it when Thomas got his hands on them. Consequently, 3/4 of the downstairs toys have made it into the "no-thomas" zone in Samuel's room (along with every picture he has colored in the last year.)

On the bright side, it makes his bedroom floor cleaner than it would normally be.

My obedient boy!

Last week we were excited to find this desk for $20 at Savers. Sam spends 90% of his life drawing these days and we thought it would be fun for him to have this a space in his room that he could keep his art supplies and not be bugged by little brother. We painted over the ugly brown finish and were really pleased with the result. I had been kicking around the idea of finding a treasure map replica and modpodging it to the top of the desk to indulge the pirate theme Sam seems to want these days. The morning after we set it up, Sam was pestering me as I was working. In desperation I suggested that he "color on his new desk"

Bless his heart, that's exactly what he did....

spongebob and patrick and his name (sort of)!

A pirate and mickey mouse

This is me as Snow White for Halloween (I wish my eyelashes were that long!)

He was so proud when he told me to "come look at his new desk" and then was crushed when I couldn't repress my initial gasp of horror. He is very pleased with it and I know we can eventually paint it over, but in the meantime, I have learned a valuable lesson in literal 4-year olds.

In other news, I think I am the only person in the house that is excited about fall rainstorm coming this weekend. Rainy conference weekends are the best.