Halloween Movie Night

Today was a great Fall day. Kind of cool but sunny too. This afternoon we carved 2 pumpkins. Griffin chose the "designs" but really didn't want any part of the carving or cleaning out the pumpkin.

Tonight some of our friends from playgroup hosted a Halloween movie night in their front yard. They had a huge inflatable projection screen, hay bales, Halloween lights, and some snacks. The kids loved eating popcorn and drinking hot chocolate.

Here is Kendall and Griffin passing out pumpkins to the kids.

Gray loved eating popcorn out of his tiny pumpkin.

We had a little visitor arrive in the neighbor's yard.

Mason and Kendall had seats up front.

Teresa and Dillon on the front porch.

Gray loved climbing on me more than actually watching the movie.

We watched The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.

Music Class

Some shots of Gray from the little music class we are taking on Thursday mornings. He loves it.

Mockingbird

Gray has been trying to talk a lot more recently, and we finally have more words that are coming out with regularity. His latest phrase is "No no, stop" which is said with much drama and an evil little grin. I guess he is hearing this a lot lately as he is kicking up a storm whenever I need to get him dressed or change his diaper. Now whenever he doesn't want me to do something, I hear, "no no, stop". "Stop" is definitely said in a drawn out way as if he is mocking me. I am pretty sure he is.

Just Call Him Pickle

Griffin has started to hang out with a group of boys on the playground at school. They all get along really well and sound like they have fun (i.e. "terrorize") with the other kids at school. Anyway the other day he mentioned that they all have "silly names" (nicknames) for each other. Jack is "hamburger", another boy is "Banana boy", and Griffin is "pickle". So now he wants me to call him "pickle". He also told me that he doesn't care if it makes God sad that he is changing his name, but he still doesn't want to be called Griffin anymore. Gotta love it.

Apple Harvest Festival

Today we drove up to Graves Mountain Lodge for the Apple Harvest Festival. The morning started off chilly and Gray learned a new word on the drive up. Cheeto. We split a bag of cheetos on the way up which was good since we ate lunch a bit late. This is one of the entrances to the festival. They had decorated hay bales all over the place.

One of the kids favorite stops was the hay mountain. Basically it was just a bunch of hay bales stacked on top of each other. Kids were climbing and jumping everywhere.

Wow, a picture with both boys looking at the camera.

Griffin enjoyed throwing the hay and make it "rain" on everyone.

The next stop was the pumpkin patch. Griffin loves the really bumpy pumpkins. Gray liked the green ones.

Gray spent a lot of time trying to pick up and throw every pumpkin.

Our two cute boys sitting in the pumpkin patch.

Our last stop was walking to the apple orchard to pick our own apples.

Gray got a ride on Daddy's shoulders.

I got up in one of the trees to get some good apples.

Gray was double-fisting the apples and loving it.

Griffin peeking out from an apple tree.

okey woke

This is Griffin's latest catch phrase. Whenever you ask him to do something, he says, "Okey woke". I have tried correcting him but it doesn't work. And it does sound cute.

Singing in the choir

Today was a big day for Griffin. It was his first performance singing with the Children's choir at church. They can participate once they turn 4, and luckily for our family, the director chose a familiar song (Jesus Loves Me) for the kids to sing. It was also Children's Sabbath at our church. He did pretty well. I was worried that he would make a scene. The choirs came in with the procession at the beginning of the service, and his group didn't sing that song so they just stood there with the rest of the kids. Pretty hard for him but he did it. His song was during the offertory and there were no major issues. He was a little fidgety at one point when the adult choir was singing. He was puffing his cheeks full of air and sticking his tongue out. But he stood in place and didn't cause too much commotion. He got lots of kudos from people in the congregation so I think he had a fun time with it.

He is also really enjoying Sunday School. They do a lot more this year. I guess they must be talking about Abraham and Sarah right now. He came home with a worksheet that said something like, "God decided to bless Abraham and Sarah with a child. What has God given you that is a blessing?". Griffin wrote, "Applesauce". Apparently he had a long discussion about how you should always eat a healthy snack like applesauce.

Touch a Truck

This morning after Griffin's soccer game we went to this event called Touch a Truck at a local middle school. My friend had given us free tickets and it was a lot of fun. Griffin's first stop was the car transporter truck, and they gave away free Carmax cars. Both boys got into the bulldozer. Gray was a little skeptical of most of the trucks.

Gray in his hard hat with Daddy.

Griffin (and most of the other kids) spent a good bit of time honking all the horns back and forth. It was very noisy.

Griffin coming down the slide at the jump house.

We bought the boys some cotton candy. They had never had any before. Griffin loved it but Gray just threw it on the ground.

They had a tent where the kids could paint with trucks. Here is a shot of Griffin trying his best to pose for a picture even though he REALLY wants to play with his truck.

Gray played with a Go Fishing game. Most of the time he just had two poles and we tried to keep him from hitting anyone else.

Tree climbers

Yesterday we had some guys come and trim the branches on a really old maple tree in our yard. It is probably 90-100 years old and needed some cleaning up. Griffin got to watch part of the work from his chair on the deck. This is the cherry picker truck that they had hoped to use. They couldn't reach the tree so one guy climbed up the tree and was suspended by all of these ropes.

It was pretty crazy to see how high he was climbing. And he had a chainsaw in his hands the whole time.

This is the guy on a limb that extends halfway across our yard and hangs over our deck.

Swinging from the trees.

This is just a small portion of the tree that made its way to the wood chipper.