Sledding

It seems that thanks to the wonders of Facebook no one else will comment on our Black Friday post so we might as well move on. We had a big blizzard come through last Sunday which left us with many inches of snow. This year instead of attempting to slide down the hill at the end of our street on the lid to our outdoor storage box, we ponied up the $5.99 at Target for a saucer.

Best. $5.99. We. Ever. Spent.

(You know, as an amount unto itself. Not as like part of say paying to feed our children or paying for tuition or a medical bill or something.)

Both of our children turned out to be sledding freaks. I should have known Ciaran would love it since he is a slide fanatic and sledding is basically just a faster, longer, colder slide. So now the world can have proof that our poor parenting skills didn't end with feeding Beckett a pop rock. We also allowed our 18 month old to hurl down a "mountain" (made out of a molehill).

Here's a video of Beckett and Daddy sledding. You can hear Ciaran screaming in the background. That is because he was enraged whenever he had to stop sledding and let Beckett have a turn.

And here is Ciaran sledding. You can see, as he speeds by, the joy on his face.

And here the kids are playing in the snow a day or two after it fell. This picture reminds me of the kid from A Christmas Story.

You know, Ralphie's unimportant brother. Not that Ciaran is the unimportant brother, just that he was so bundled like that child that the snow angel was about all he could manage.

Evidently there is not much else as fun as kicking snow. Except perhaps sledding.

Black Friday Christmas Gifts

Okay, granted, we haven't been the most active bloggers lately, but I was distressed to see that we haven't had a post reach double figure comments in a while. So let's see if we can change that.

Dawnell's favorite holiday isn't Christmas, or her birthday, or the Fourth of July. Rather, given her love of a good sale, sometimes it seems as though Dawnell's favorite holiday is the day after Thanksgiving, a.k.a. Black Friday. And so it was that we packed up Beckett and Ciaran to go out on Black Friday to see what kinds of deals we could find...

Check out the awesome "buy one get one free" deal we got!

Say hello to Baby A. We knew we were getting this one on Black Friday.

But we were unaware that they were having a sale. Buy Baby A, get Baby B for free!

And here they are gift wrapped together. Estimated date to unwrap these gifts? June 8, 2011.

2nd dude, 1st haircut

Ciaran got his first haircut! After 18 months of crazy fine wombhair he finally is going to start growing some locks of love.

Here he is getting prepared... He doesn't quite know why he has been forced to wear a cape.

Baby mullet eradicated!

Oh no! Not the baby mullet!

Baby wombhair afro!

Beckett also got a haircut, and here's my awesome idea to take pictures of their cuteness right next to vertical blinds. Spectacular lighting results!

The Belated Pumpkins

With Dawnell and the kids in Utah for a couple of weeks, I'm looking back at our cute pics for the past couple of months. And lucky for all of you I'll share.

Dawnell and the kids went pumpkin picking. This gives us the chance to organically place them around pumpkins once again for photo opportunities. Ah fall. Considering it is freezing today I already miss you.

Ciaran looking into the distance...

Okay, this picture is just ridiculous, but I put it here to point out that it's the best of the five from D's attempts to get one of Beckett and Ciaran sitting together. Beckett's scrunched-up "cheese" face and Ciaran looking away. The folks at Kiddie Kandids have tougher jobs than you'd think...

As usual, Beckett was accompanied by Anna. And I'll be darned if this isn't the cutest picture I've ever seen...

We went to the Hudson Valley "Blaze"

http://www.hudsonvalley.org/content/view/195/198/

As the website says, it is a jack o'lantern event with over 4,000 hand-carved illuminated pumpkins.

We all had an enjoyable time, but I think I enjoyed the Norwalk Aquarium's pumpkin event quite a bit more. A bit more whimsy, and the Hudson Valley event had us quite a ways away from most of the pumpkins. For us the events are about the same distance too, so we'll probably try the Norwalk one again before we try this one again. It was fun, but not as fun as the other one.

Halloween 2010

Somehow we don't have any pictures of Ciaran from Halloween festivities. He was an adorable froggie in a costume that Dawnell hand made. Luckily for all of you Dawnell chronicles her projects and she had taken some adorable pics of Ciaran after she completed the froggie costume.




Beckett decided that he wanted to be a doctor for Halloween, through no prompting by us. My understanding is that one of his friends has a doctor play set, so Beckett probably thought he could get some cool toys if he dressed up like a doctor. Alas, we have connections who have real equipment (nurse grandparents) so he got the real thing.

Here's Beckett the pediatrician checking out his Ciaran patient. Notice the look on Ciaran's face. I think he'd much rather see a real expert.






Last year Beckett and his best friend Anna dressed up Hansel and Gretel. You can go check out our blog entries for late October and early November of last year for that cuteness. This year Anna was Little Bo Peep, so no costume coordination. Still super cute together. And I think Anna thought Beckett was still her sheep.









Lots of potential posts in the cue, with adorable pumpkin-picking adventures, to our trip to the carved pumpkin festival, to Dawnell's knitting adventure...

Orchard

Beckett and Ciaran went apple picking with their friends. They also ended up sitting in a pumpkin patch. Looks like it was a lot of fun. Here are some pics:

Beckett and a halfway hidden Ciaran with the usual crew, Anna, Hannah, and Sydney


Here's a couple of Beckett Appleseed



Beckster and Ciaran sitting in the pumpkin patch:

Very cute. Maybe I'll try photoshopping in some open eyes.

Car Boodle

Ciaran is enjoying life these days. These pictures of him on his little push car ended up really cute. These are all pretty similar, but different. I can't quite decide which is my favorite. Probably the 3rd one. And I liked the video down at the bottom also.

First Day of Preschool!

For the past two weeks Beckett has been hounding me about going to preschool. "Are we going to preschool today?" "I want to go to preschool right NOW!" Today was finally the day. We got an email yesterday from his teacher telling us he should wear his favorite color. He choose blue and decided he needed to wear his filthy Jazz shirt that he was wearing at that very moment. Thanks to a washing machine we managed to make that happen after a last minute batch thrown in last night.

We carpooled with Anna so the day started out even better.

These are genuine excited faces. No coaching for pretty first day of school pictures for us. Err, the coaching failed.

Today we learned about colors and started the day by playing with pristine playdoh. (Side note, do you know that if you don't spell playdoh correctly, as there, spell checker gives you both playboy and Playboy as an alternative. Really? I mean I know it's corrected proper/brand names for me before and it can obviously give me a proper name as an alternative. I guess in the field of brand recognition children's toys have nothing on naked ladies.) It soon succumbed to three year old color experimentation, but it was a rare treat for a few moments.

Lots of other exciting things happened, but I don't think you all really need a rundown on the reading tent, play time and decorating bags. Suffice it to say we have a great teacher and Beckett is thrilled to be going to preschool.

Just Cute Kids