Which Ones?

Our first official family pictures! :) Yay! It's a fun snapshot of our lives this past year.

There are alot of pictures in this post, but I've been putting off getting prints of our family pictures to put up in the house. I couldn't decide, so I want to know what YOU think? I'd like your opinion. There are a few poses with each set. I need one picture of each person combination for the frames I got.

Here are the ones I'm choosing between:

#1 - My favorite of us

#2

#3

#4 - These ones of Samuel and me and then the other of Daniel and Ethan would be book end pictures

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12 - a favorite

#12 - such a great kid

#13

#14

#15

#16

#17

#18

#19

#20

#21

#22

#23

#24

#25

#26

#27

Both Ethan and Samuel were real troopers. They posed and didn't complain and Donna the photographer was great at getting Ethan's attention. He love it.

Late Night

We were all up late one night to help Samuel finish a science project. He had to create a board game, create a cross-word puzzle and a sculpture of a famous scientist and write about his life. He started it early, but the night before it was due he still had a lot to do.

Can you guess the scientist? He did this all by himself and I was proud of him. That's one of my favorite aspects of being a mom, when your kids creativity comes out. I love it.

I was printing it all off for Samuel and this is what I see when I look over. Poor guys. :) Samuel got a good grade on it and had a good time doing it.

Ethan at 10 months

I went outside to our front lawn with Ethan and watched him play in the grass. He loves dirt.

He's great at looking at the camera.

He decided to crawl down the walk way toward the car.

He loves to crawl under things.

His laugh is filled with excitement.

Here we are in the garage, getting back from a walk. This is at the beginning of November - yes those are shorts. I love Texas.

It's ALIVE!!

Back in September we showed pictures of the Tiller cutting up our back yard into rows for a garden.

It's looking good!

More tomatoes!

The row against the fence has beans and snap peas growing.

Corn is at the end, with cucumber on the left and summer squash on the right.

The Squash is gorgeous. You gotta love Texas - There's no way we could do this in Kodiak.

Peek-a-bo!

Ethan has just started to do Peek-a-bo on his own and we got some video of it.

Gimee Gimee!

Daniel's company gets a huge cake once a month to celebrate birthdays, and Daniel usually brings me home a piece. I ate it and it was delicious, but I don't like frosting
so I leave it for Daniel.

Ethan sees the frosting. He's in a trance. It's calling to him.

After some whining he all of a sudden stops, and looks at Daniel with this face.
Like "what do you think you're doing not giving me some?"

After Daniel finished it he gave the bag to Ethan to suck on.

And he's happy. And also covered in chocolate - every kids dream. :)

For Grandma Marcia...

Ethan loves this colored piano that a friend gave us. We hope he follows in your footsteps.

He's also starting to dance to the music!

He loves it!

Be-lated Halloween Photos...

We had an amazing Halloween this year. Both boys ended up changing costumes at the last minute. I got Ethan a superman costume from Wal-mart but it didn't look that cute on him when he put it on, so I sold it on craigslist. Samuel was going to bring his football gear home to be a beat-up football player but his coach said the boys couldn't bring it home.

We were invited to go to a trunk-or-treat for a Methodists church up the street at 6:30. It was 4pm and we still didn't have a costume for Samuel. He came home from school and was really worried about it, so I asked him to come up with an idea and we'd do it out of stuff we had at home. He was discouraged at first and didn't think we could make a cool home-made costume.

But we did!!

In about an hour's time we found an old bed skirt that we don't use and drapped it on him in a way to make a Roman costume. I tacked it in a few placed to keep it in place, made a collar, used some of the material as a belt, clipped some Ivy from the front of the house and made a wreath for his head, and got my make-up out and gave him a beard. He LOVED it!! He did a great job, it was all his idea and I just sewed stuff where he wanted it.

I also found a SAILOR outfit that Daniel's mother gave me. I think Daniel and his brothers wore them as matching outfits or something, and Marcia gave me Daniel's. Well, it fit Ethan perfectly!!! We found an old sailor-looking cap from when Ethan was a baby...

if you compare the two photos you can see how much Ethan has grown. We also had a pair of white shoes that fit him and all of a sudden we had a little sailor on our hands. :)

Here is Samuel waiting for me to finish getting ready so we can go.

And we are on our way down the street to the trunch-or-treat.

They had some fun pumpkins out front so we took some pictures.
The boys look kinda serious though.

A little happier!

They had lots of fun activities, but other than this cut-out, we really went for the candy.

Some pictures of Ethan. He has found his tongue recently.

Showing off for someone walking by.

My little sailor boy.
Thanks Grandma Marcia, for my outfit!!

I took the boys trick-or-treating so that Daniel could vote early because he'd be working on voting day. Ethan got a little tired and fussy so Daniel came and got him
while I went wild with Samuel.

Do you see the pillow case at his feet? Can you say CANDY! Holy Cow. We hit up every house we could in our neighborhood and Samuel scored 8 lbs. of candy - we weighed it when we got home. I was kinda proud of him - we really went for it. It was so exciting... him and I running from house to house, in the dark, checking out all the cool decorations!

I was dressed as a cat, in all black. I waited at each house while Samuel went door-to-door. Samuel is already 12, so he doesn't have many years of legitimate trick-or-treating ahead of him, so I'm glad we went all-out this year. We made some good memories.

And finally we made it home. Ethan was asleep and Daniel was manning the door. We gave out the rest of our candy to a few more kids running around. Then we inspected all the candy we got and organized it and showed all of it to Daniel and told him how much fun we had. In short - we had a great Halloween.