Rockin' it Out to 3!

Another fun November memory was celebrating Channing's 3rd birthday.  She had a rock 'n roll theme and everyone was supposed to dress like rock stars!  Here's the host family rockin' it out...

Here's our family rockin' it out...

Jake and Cohen's cool glasses and mohawks...

and finally the birthday girl!  I hoped to get a picture of Channing with our present to her, an Ariel princess doll, but Ariel is a little blurry because she was dancing around.  She seemed to love the doll and we definitely loved celebrating with her!  Happy 3rd, Channing!

One Little Indian

Jake's been learning about the Pilgrims and Indians at school in preparation for Thanksgiving.  He LOVES learning about Indians.  In fact, I don't think I've seen him this excited about anything other than sports and presents!  His teacher even commented that we might have a history buff on our hands!  At school, all the kids got Indian names and made an Indian vest, headband and necklace in preparation for their Thanksgiving feast.  Jake was Gray Wolf, and for a few days insisted on us calling him that.  I couldn't wait for the feast b/c I knew Jake would be really happy to wear his homemade Indian outfit.  Finally the day arrived.  Introducing Gray Wolf...

All the classes sit on blankets in the gym for the feast.  Here are Jake's fellow Indians...

and a full body shot...

Finally, I'm happy to share a picture of Jake and his friend, Nicolas.  These boys formed a fast friendship the very first day of school!  It's been fun hearing Jake talk about him and the things they do together.  We've had the chance to do a playdate with Nicolas away from school, and his mom told me Nicolas says Jake is his, "BFFFFFF."  How cute is that! 

The two most handsome Indians I've ever seen!

Halloween 2012

We had a lot of fun celebrating Halloween this year.  Jake decided to be Spiderman early on and stuck with his decision with only a brief thought of wanting to be a policeman.  His idea was fine by me b/c we had everything we needed in his dress up box, so we were good to go!  His preschool lets the kids dress up and has a brief parade around the gym.  Here are some shots at school...

 

Our handsome Spiderman!

The whole penguin class

another shot alongside his more muscular female counterpart

We also did a little trick-or-treating around our neighborhood.  This time, Spiderman was complete with his mask...

Here's our family shot.  I'm a tiger (complete with a tail!) and Kevin's the bad guy nemesis of Spiderman...

Here's Jake with a cute Halloween witch at one of our neighbor's houses...

It seems to have become a tradition to drive over to the Dishmans' house on Halloween night.  It's a lot of fun to spend time with friends who live so close.  Here are our cutie ladybug and Spidey...

This year, the Luksys family also joined us on their bikes!  Ruby, who recently turned 1 was an adorable strawberry...

It wasn't too long before Jake had enough and was ready to go home.  I think he equally likes passing out the candy from our driveway just as much as he likes trick-or-treating for his own candy.  Here are the guys waiting for trick-or treaters...

A glimpse of October

We did lots of fun things leading up to Halloween this year.  We visited Red Barn Nursery for some Halloween festivities and for some cute pics...

They had a small petting zoo there which Jake really enjoyed.  He wanted to hold a mouse!!  Definitely not like his Mommy in this area...

 I love this fall pic...

 There was also a fall festival at our neighborhood elementary school.  They had lots of free carnival-type game you could play, but Jake didn't want to play a single one.  Sometimes he freezes up a little when there's a large crowd in a new environment.  The one thing he did want to do, however, was paint a pumpkin.  Here's his masterpiece...

 We picked out a pumpkin to carve the weekend before Halloween.  Jake picked how he wanted the face and Daddy carved it.  Here are the guys getting the pumpkin prepped...

 When it came time to clean out the pumpkin guts, Jake was not too thrilled about the idea.  He put his hand in once (which I actually caught on camera), then decided his hands were too dirty...

 He then became the trash holder for all the pumpkin guts...a much cleaner job...

 Jake and I also made some special cupcakes for the season.  I showed him a few different decor options and he chose a cat, so we bought all the supplies to make lots of Halloween black cats.  here's Jake with one of his finished cat cupcakes...

Turns out, neither one of us had a long enough attention span to make all the cupcakes into cats, so we started our own creative decorating.  I think they all turned out beautifully!