::more on sand::

Just a little more evidence of how tidy my little Sand is. I really hadn't noticed it until after the birthday cake.

Any moms out there ever given their kids these gross things?

(Can you see his worried look? He's afraid that I'm not going to actually give him the food, but just take pictures all night.)

These things are gross. I usually don't buy these types of things because they are expensive and he eats them so darn fast. But I was at Target today and feeling generous--or just overwhelmed by all the merchandise--and I got this tub. I was actually thinking it was the cheetos type things. Anyway, I got home and got them out and realized they were the gross huge wagon wheels.
Sandy didn't care though, he was ready for them.

"Give me the DARN FOOD!!"

I got these things for Max one time and that was the last. He made such a soggy slobbery slimy mess out of them. So I was rather dreading it tonight.

Here's Sandy post first wagon wheel.

Looks perfectly clean to me really. A little on the bib, but nothing else.

And 2nd wheel:




And there he is with the leftovers--at some point he decided the wheel was kind of gross on his own. He thought real dinner sounded better.

Anyway, such a funny boy. And the differences and similarities between the two brothers is hilarious to me.

::sandy's birthday part 2::

A little more Sandy for you.

At the end of the day we got to have cake and a few more presents.

Sandy loved his little space shuttle--way more than I thought he would really.


I like to see him concentrating so hard. Max of course wanted to play with it too. He did a pretty good job controlling himself--Max did. He tried to let Sand get all the attention. It didn't always work but he tried.


The crazy candle on the cake came from a lady at work. When you light the candle in the middle, it opens and lights up like a sparkler and plays the happy birthday song. Plays the song forever and ever and ever until someone (Max) reads the instructions and cuts one of the cords.

To end this post about such a lovely and joyous day, we have a cake devouring series.
Sandy was very careful and neat with his cake. He tried to eat most of it with his fork.
It was adorable and took about 40 minutes. It may have been one of the best moments of his little life, considering how much he loves to eat.







Cute, right? Have you ever seen a cleaner baby after eating his first birthday cake?
(You can see that he's in his new high chair with a five point harness. The restaurant high chair just wasn't cutting it anymore and I didn't want to end up with him on his head on the bricks.)
Happy birthday to our sweet Sandy! We're so glad to have him!!

::sandy's birthday part 1::

Oh, wait, that's the wrong birthday!
A year ago today our sweet little guy was born. We feel so lucky to have him here in our family.
Today was a great day for him. He started out by eating pancakes made by dad--one of his favorite things in the world.

Max helped him open a present or two and then we got ready for church.
After church and a nice long nap, Max brought Sandy his best and biggest gift--a walking toy that's also a little cart for blocks. He was very very excited about it--almost as much as Max! Max was a model brother today--helpful, enthusiastic and excited about the birthday, but never jealous pushy or unpleasant. (Though incredibly obnoxious, as per the usual.)





More of the day later.
Mostly it was just a good happy day and such a lucky one for us. We're so grateful to the Lord for sending us our sweet boys.

::::

This this sweet little guy has any idea that his birthday is tomorrow?

::::

This is my run from last saturday--9.5 miles and on the treadmill no less! (Weather was really bad that morning, so I was glad to have a treadmill to use.)
I'm pretty proud of myself and my running training. Though like I said before I use the word running loosely. I'm definitely running, though not all the time during my runs. Plenty of walking happens.
Though today I ran a whole mile on the treadmill without stopping at a relatively fast pace for me. I was very proud. I'm making a lot of progress.

Can't wait for the half marathon in January! And I'm really excited to be actually seeing some improvement in fitness after my weeks and weeks of hard work.
So I'm bragging on myself a bit I guess. Yay me.

::the rest of halloween::

Last sunday was so nice. Our chapel is being remodeled, so for now the sunday school hour is eliminated. Church was only two hours and it started at 10AM instead of 11AM. So after church we felt like we had all day long to do stuff.

We always make delicious fabulous halloween sugar cookies every year--sometime around halloween. Sometimes after. So we went to work making those. And while we were doing that Kris and Max started working on Jack'O'Laterns.
Lots of pictures:



Are those TEETH or what?! He looks a little like a snaggle-toothed pumpkin face himself.


Lots 'o guts in those big pumpkins. Can't you just smell the slimy smell?

Not sure if Kris is giving commands or about to sneeze here.

Max picked out a very cool pumpkin, and luckily for him it wasn't especially hard to carve. I was afraid it would be for sure.



Yes, Kris is making the best pumpkin ever.

And my work. It was a ton of cookies becuase we gave some away. I got pretty tired by the end.


Sandy was sleeping for most of our escapades, but eventually he woke up and was HUNGRY as usual. He wanted cookies. Instead he got cheerios.


Cheerios and water. Mmmmmmm.
More of my finished product:

And some of the boys' finished products:

All of them:

Sandy's on the far right--Kris made it. Awesome, right?
Mine is next. Kris cleaned it for me and I carved the face.
Then Kris's of course. Love it!
Max's is on the far right but you can't see it in the picture. It was almost impossible to get a candle to work in there because the gourd was so short!
So here's a photo of the huge candle from my pumpkin trying to light up his adorable one.

And there you go. That was the rest of our halloween--besides the eating dozens of cookies and lots of candy part.
We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting it all done. Happy Halloween!

::i see by your outfit that you are a jedi::

"I see by your outfit you are a jedi too....we see by our outfits that we are both jedis, if you get an outfit you can be a jedi too. Duh duh."

Anyway, here are our outfits.
These are pictures from the ward "trunk or treat" on saturday night.
We had loud star wars music and we used our big black car that reminds us all a bit of a spaceship.

Max is very serious with his obnoxious blaster as Luke the x-wing pilot. He still hasn't seen much of Star Wars, so don't grill him on any details. But we're working on that.


The whole family's theme was built around one thing. That Sandy had to be an ewok. I saw the costume online at some point and knew we had to do it.
And it was perfect. He was the most adorable ewok I've ever seen.



If you want to squish him and squeeze him that's ok. I don't know how you could want to do anything else!
He was a pretty good sport about his hood and only started pulling it off at the end of the night when he was pretty cranky. He's just a good sport generally--we're lucky. And he's adorable of course.

So that's us. We have some more halloween fun to report on tomorrow. But HAPPY HALLOWEEN tonight!