Weekend festivities

So Santa came to Perritt Elementary this weekend to have breakfast with all of the kids. We went to have our photo taken and make some crafts. Since we had just seen Santa earlier in the week at the craft store, he asked how the boys ornament project had turned out. This is one of the advantages of living in a small town :-) Micah told him he would like Legos for Christmas and Jacob told him he would like a train. We'll just have to see if those Christmas wishes come true! We spent some of yesterday afternoon bagging leaves in the yard. Micah was a big help and we got 13 bags done in about an hour. I keep telling him that I'm going to record him when he says "Mom, can we please rake leaves?" and play it back for him in about 5 years :-) I have a pretty cute video from their leaf adventures that I'll post on Facebook. For some reason I still can't figure out how to send videos from my phone to the blog without downloading them first, so I'll just post it there. Micah made letters for both of his Grammas yesterday and sent them in the mail, so those should be on their way! Micah asked for a calendar this week and I gave him an extra one we had. I asked what he was going to do with it. He said, "Jacob keeps saying its time to open presents every day when he wakes up so I'm showing him on the calendar how many days we have left." He's been putting an "X" over each day until Christmas for little brother to see before going to school :-) We've been baking and wrapping and cutting and gluing and doing all of those sorts of things around here this week.

Ho HO HO!

Couldn't keep them out of the leaves!

This is the cutest picture :-)

Happy Birthday Micah!

Micah turned 7 on Nov. 9! He requested a Batman party, which we held at a local park. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time celebrating with friends and family. Speaking of family, we had a very special visit from Aunt Debbie and Aunt Janice and Grammy and Pop Pop! The boys had fun getting to know some members of the Vermont family and receiving all of that extra attention :-) The aunts stayed at a local B&B called Capt Henderson House and were so close to our house that they could walk. While they were here we visited Garvan Gardens in Hot Springs, a huge arboretum that was so beautiful in the fall. Micah appreciated all of the birthday cards and gifts and we are still playing with all of them. He got a lot of science-oriented things since he is really into that now. So we're "excavating" "dinosaur bones" and breaking geodes and making light bulbs light up on circuit boards. Just for a benchmark, Micah can: read kids books all by himself now. He says math is his favorite subject and really enjoyed doing a book of word problems that Pop Pop and Grammy gave him. He also likes crossword puzzles (I wonder where he got that from?) and did several with Grammy while she was here. I will post some more photos of our Christmas tree and such, but I wanted to at least get these up now that I can upload to the blog again.

Grammy and Jacob have fun reading stories together.

Pop Pop is the Tickle Monster!

Aunt Debbie and Micah read a book on CD.

Snuggle time with Aunt Janice!

Micah opens some gifts!

There was a playset at the park, but the boys preferred the dirt pile :-)

Mmm, cake!

Our sweet Micah!

Happy Halloween!

So I was having problems getting my posts to load, so this one's a tad late! Anyway, you can still see the cuteness. Micah was a knight for Halloween this year and Jacob was a doctor. They had a great time "carving" a  pumpkin with me and digging out the slimy pulp. We went to a party at church and then went trick-or-treating at the dorms on Daddy's campus--an event they hold every year. It's now December and we still have Halloween candy around the house!