Zoo Boo

Last night we headed to the Detroit Zoo for their annual Zoo Boo.  Aside from the chilliness, it was a great time.  What made it even more exciting was being able to enjoy the evening with the Reaves Family, Grandma and Grandpa Frahm, and Grandma and Grandpa Bush!

Rapunzel, Firefighter, Dragon and Tiger - all ready for Trick-or-treating!

They had quite a few little activities along the way for the kids.  Most of them were for older kids, but they had a BLAST in this hay maze.  They literally could have went in and out of it 10-15 more times than they did.  Being outside + running around = heaven for these boys!

Just the boys!

Hard to see, but there was a baby elk behind the tree.

Thankfully the fountain wasn't turned on, but the boys loved running onto the sidewalk, then onto the grass.   Ellis actually did a little dance for us (of course I didn't get it on film, but it was really cute!)

They had a ton of cute scenes made with pumpkin animals.  Unfortunately I didn't get many pictures
of them, but here is one of the cool ones (the penguins are gourds that are painted).

Overall, we had lots of fun and got lots of yummy snacks!

In other fun news, since the boys love riding toys, I found a good deal for a Cozy Coupe on Craigslist.  When I went to pick it up Thursday night, they also gave me (for free!!) a couple other riding toys.  They are moving and wanted to get rid of some of this stuff.  Heck, why not!!  

The not-so-fun part of this new toy is having only one.  They are usually pretty good with sharing.  They have enough other fun toys to play with to distract them while one of them plays in the new toy.  Unfortunately this was NOT the case with this toy.  I've been looking on craigslist already for another one, so lets see if anyone responds to my email.  Until then, the car is in hiding to reduce the number of meltdowns we have.  

I hope everyone has a great, sugar-filled Halloween week.  Let's also pray for a miracle with the Tigers!  So far, no team has come behind from a 3-0 deficit to with the World Series, but we can always change that statistic, right?

Fall, don't leave

I have to admit, fall has never been my favorite season, but after today, I might have to reconsider.  If I could live in a location where their daily weather is like how ours was today, I'd move in a heartbeat.  To take advantage of the beautiful weather, we took our always anticipated wagon ride/walk, and then played in the leaves.  I'm so thankful that Logan liked the leaves more than last year.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from today:

Wishing there would be more days like today in our near future, but I don't think that will be the case.  Regardless, I'm looking forward to the weekend!  Hope you all have a good one!

Some pre-Halloween fun (and more)

It appears I only update on Sunday's.  Yes, my weeks are a little too busy to update during the week - plus most of our out-of-the-ordinary fun is on the weekends.

Here are this week's highlights -

• Grandpa Bush is in town from Alaska!  It's been about a year, so it was a much anticipated visit.  He and Grandma were here for Thursday night and Friday morning, so it was a quick visit, but we'll see them again next weekend.

• We did a Halloween sneak-peek with their costumes.  Sometimes they are funny with extra clothes on.  Hats are hit or miss and socks don't stay on their feet longer than necessary, so we thought we'd put them on just to see their reactions.  And - they loved them!  They actually played in them a good 30 minutes or so before I realized they were probably getting pretty warm since they are fleece-based.

Logan as Mr. Tiger

Ellis as Mr. Dragon

•  Yesterday, we spent the afternoon and evening with Val and Derek.  It's been a while, so we were happy they came over and joined us for dinner, dessert, some football and a movie.  It was so cute to see Del army crawling all around.  Heck, even Logan crawled right along with him when he saw him moving.  It won't be long before all the boys are running around the basement!

Seriously, who needs toys!?!  They find so much humor standing on boxes and walking off of them.

• This morning the boys saw that the pack and play that Delevan was sleeping in, was still out and they thought it would be fun to play inside it.

• After the boys nap, we had some pre-Halloween fun.  The Village of Rochester Hills (an outdoor shopping center nearby) had a Halloween celebration that we went to.  The boys trick-or-treated, picked out 2 small pumpkins, and gave lots of high-fives (that was their "trick" since they can't say trick-or-treat yet).  They weren't quite sure what to do, at first, but they got the hang of it.  One store was letting the boys pick a piece of candy and after that, it was all down hill for Logan.  He was so funny and took as much as he could fit in to his little hand.  One store had a singing pumpkin that had a lid that opened and closed (and they were supposed to get the candy when the pumpkin opened).  Logan grabbed what he could each time it opened, but Ellis was most excited about the song that came from it.  Once the music stopped he kept pushing it, trying to get it to turn on again.  Too funny!

Such a big boy - he did so good carrying his own treat bucket!

Yup, thats Logan!  He's not shy grabbing his own candy.

Looks like they are ready for the Zoo Boo next weekend!

• After trick-or-treating, we ran to Busch's to pick up a few groceries.  They have a grocery cart with a little car on the front of it and the boys LOVED it.  They loved it so much that they actually started crying when we got them out and put them in the car.  

And that is it for now!  Hopefully this coming week is a little less busy and goes by fast.  I'm definitely looking forward to next weekend already!

18 month updates and some other fun

Last Monday was the boys' 18 month appointments.  They had quite the growth spurt in the past 3 months (compared to the 1 inch and 1 lb they each gained from 12-15 months!)  Here are their current stats:

• Logan: 24 lbs 12 oz (up 2 lb 8 oz in 3 months) and 32.75 inches tall (up almost 2 inches in 3 months)
• Ellis: 24 lbs 7 oz (up 2 lb 5 oz in 3 months) and 33.25 inches tall (up almost 3 inches in 3 months)

Other 18 month news:

• The boys vocabulary is picking up just a little bit.  They surely understand things we say and ask them, but they aren't talking too much.  Some of their more frequent words are: dada, mama, done, more, milk, on (referring to the light, fan, tv - sometimes they use the tone of more of a demand to turn something on!), ball, sock, up, and down.  And of course other people might not fully understand these words, but we do!  Sometimes I feel like Logan has actually said phrases like "I did it!", but he hasn't really repeated them enough for me to know if he really did, or if it just sounded like it.  When I mentioned it to the doctor that I thought their vocabulary would have been a little more at this point, she said that girls talk sooner than boys and singletons talk sooner than multiples (who communicate in their own way with each other versus with adults), so since we have twin boys, it might be a little longer before their vocabulary explodes.  We just keep up the reading and naming of everything we see and they'll pick it up.
• They still LOVE to be outside and the weather hasn't stopped them yet.  They don't care that its cooling off, or that there aren't water toys outside to play with anymore.  They are content running around the backyard, even when there are no toys out!  
• They aren't fans of much "junk", which I can't really complain about.  I made chocolate chip pancakes the other day and handed them a chocolate chip while I was baking them and neither one even wanted anything to do with it.  In fact, although they love pancakes, they didn't really want the chocolate chip pancakes I made either.  I bought Lucky Charms for their snack cup in the morning, to change it up a little bit and they really aren't fans of it.  I thought maybe they were getting sick of the cereal thing, but I put some Kix in their cups the next day and they ate it up!  We've tried giving them a taste of a sucker to keep their mind off of getting their hair cut recently and they wanted nothing to do with that either.  Again, I'm not complaining, but I do know that their few trick-or-treating treats won't be consumed by them. 
• On the flip side, they can throw down some fruit and veggies.  They LOVE broccoli, sweet potato and beans - all types of beans.  On the fruit end of it, their recent favorites are grapes and strawberries.  On the way home from work, if they see me eating my grapes, they demand some too!

Over the weekend, we had a Perez family gathering that we attended.  Aunt Dora celebrated her 65th birthday so we headed to Adrian to join the family in celebrating with her.  After the ice-breaking high-fives the boys gave to warm up to everyone new, they quickly joined the other kids and played.  It was actually pretty funny to see them run into one of the bedrooms to play, and every so often, peek out just to make sure Troy and I were still there.  They really had a good time and it was nice seeing many of the family members we haven't seen in a while!

Even when we go out of town, Logan has to take his ball with him.  

Ellis and Ava playing with the ball in the kitchen.

Yes, I know the first picture is a better one of us, but I loved this one and how it looks like Ellis is looking at Logan and saying "Dude, don't poke your eyes out.  How do you expect to see?"

On Sunday, it was the Rochester Hills Fire Station Open House.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't very good, but the boys got to sit in the trucks, check out all the buttons and knobs, and go inside the station and look at all the things inside.  Here are a few pictures:

As for me, I'm staying busy with my math class.  I have my second test tomorrow.  Although it isn't too hard, the problems are quite long (one of them has taken an entire page of paper to complete), so studying is a bit time consuming.  Later this week we'll have a quick visit with Grandma and Grandpa Bush (Grandpa is flying in Thursday), before they make their rounds visiting other family and friends.  

And I think that concludes our last week!  Time to get back to studying...blah...

Our fun Fall weekend

It's been a busy week for us this week, but we've had lots, lots of fun this weekend.

A few highlights from during the week:

• I got a 104% on my first Calculus Test.  Woo hoo!
• Grandma Bush is here to visit.  It's been a super long time (practically a year) since we've seen her, aside from Skype, so it was great to see her Wednesday.  She is here with us for a week - when she will go visit some other friends and family - until Grandpa Bush flies in next weekend. We had to take advantage of her being here to have some fun this weekend!

Our weekend:

• The boys are easily amused by "forts" or anything they can climb into and/or under.  A few blankets over the sides of the table and they were amused for quite some time.

• After their nap, we headed to Yates Cider Mill.  There is an area where kids can ride ride ponies and feed goats and llamas that we checked out before getting some yummy donuts.  They definitely weren't afraid of any of the animals and if they weren't blocked by fences, I think they actually would've gotten closer.

• We were hoping to get some cute pictures of the boys by pumpkins, but it is not only hard to get them to both look at me to get a decent picture, but they were also too squirmy and wanted to walk run around in order to sit still long enough.

• Then the best part - DONUTS!!  Of course we had to eat a few and they absolutely loved them - not a surprise!  No cider for us.  We like it enough, but didn't feel like spending $10/gallon.  

• Last to do before we left, was check out the little fire truck...

• They loved running around and were not bashful around all the people around them - because despite the cool weather, it was still pretty packed.  Once we got home, you could tell they were exhausted.  They both ran over to the table "fort" with their blankets and laid down.  

• The relaxation was short-lived though.  Next up, grandma showed Ellis how to play the "drums"

• Grandma Bush was kind enough to watch the boys while Troy and I had a date night out.  We went to Rojo Bistro, Mexican Restaurant, and had an awesome margarita and dinner.  Then we went to the movies and saw End of Game.  GREAT MOVIE if you are looking for one to see!  

• Today, I headed out to find some bigger clothes for the boys. Some of their 12-18 month clothes fit, but some are clearly too small.  Time to move up to 18-24 month clothes.  I also picked up some winter hats.  After yesterday's cool weather and the fact that the cold does not slow the boys down from wanting to play out there, they are a necessity for us.  I'm slightly disappointed at the selection of young boys hats - most of them had obnoxious animal faces on them and without knowing what color winter coat they are going to have, I didn't want to commit to a crazy colored one either.  So we settled on these:

Once Logan started giving people a high five, then a "high ten", he likes to wave with both hands, too.

Ellis did not like having to stop pulling the wagon for me to get a picture of him in his new hat.

• Of course we had to take a wagon ride after we got home and the boys spent a good hour outside afterwards - with an additional short wagon ride around the block.  

• Phew...and that was our weekend.  I will end this week's update with a few pictures of our fall colors in the front yard.