We had a great Thanksgiving at my mom and dad's house this year. After dinner the adults watched a movie and the boys built a huge train track that kept them busy for the whole movie.
Justin Michael was a Ghost Rider. He loved his costume and loves motorcycles!
Ryan Daniel was a Cowboy Sheriff. We got those cowboy boots for him at DI for 5 dollars. He loves them and wears them everywhere. In fact, yesterday we were running late getting him to school and could only find one boot. He cried while having his hair done, brushing his teeth and then all the way to school.
Joshua Isaac was an elephant. This costume was a good bye I must say. My mom bought it for Justin when he was 19 months old from Old Navy for $16. Justin wore it, then Ryan wore it and now Joshua wore it. I'm sure the next little guy will wear it in about 2 years. If we end up having a girl, I'm going to put a huge bow on it and have her wear it. Now that's a costume!
I wanted to get cute pictures of the 3 boys together. The older boys were more than happy to sit and pose. Joshua on the other hand, was not. It took us 24 pictures to get a few cute ones. Justin was in charge of keeping Joshua in the right place.
He was doing a great job, but Joshua would not smile. Ryan was being darling.
Here is Joshua trying to escape the grip of his big brother.
This tells his feeling on taking more pictures. I know you can't hear the sound he was making, but lets just say it was a very high pitched scream.
We went to see Grandma and Grandpa (Jeff's Parents) after Justin and Ryan got home from school. Grandma had special treats for the boys made of ice cream and candy. The treats looked like witches which the boys thought was great. We visited for a while and then were off.
Next, we took the boys over to see GG (Jeff's mom's mom) . She loved the boy's costumes and made a big fuss over them. While we were there we decided to take the kids next door to see Aunt Jean, Uncle Ross, Scott, Jan and Andy. The boys got a ton of candy and we hadn't gone real trick or treating yet.
We went trick or treating for a few hours and then over to see Grammy and Grampy (Debra's Parents). They had special treats for them including 3 different colors of play dough for each of them. They were so excited and it was a great way to end the night. I was exhaused by the end of the day, but we sure did have a great time. Happy Halloween - 2008!!!
Mrs. Eby and Ryan at their Halloween Party. Little Scholars does such a nice job with the holiday parties. The kids always have a blast. Ryan LOVES Mrs. Eby and she is so good with all the kids. I am so happy Ryan is having such a great experience at preschool.
Ryan with all his preschool buddies in costume. Too cute!!
Justin's 2nd grade class at their Halloween party. Jeff and I had a great time helping and taking pictures of the party.
The mummy wrap. Justin and Bracken won!
Justin loves to be creative and he starts talking about what his pumpkin will look like as soon as we start seeing pumpkins in early October or late September.
However, taking the pumpkin guts out is not one of his favorite parts of the tradition. He has never liked having his hands dirty or sticky. He must of got up at least 10 times to wash his hands during the process of removing the guts.
One of the things I love about Justin is he is always ready to lend a helping hand. Ryan was getting frustrated because he couldn't get all the strings out of his pumpkin. Justin stopped working on his pumpkin to help his little brother. What a great example he is for his younger brothers.
Ryan loves everything about Halloween, but he especially enjoys carving pumpkins.
He loves playing with the pumpkin guts and makes the best sound effects while doing it.
Joshua was so delighted with his pumpkin that he picked all by himself.
This was his first year to really enjoy our pumpkin carving tradition. He was only 5 months old last Halloween. I think baby's seconds are always better than their firsts. He was so cute!
He absolutely loved touching the pumpkin guts. Every time he suck his hand in his pumpkin he would giggle.
He also enjoyed taking the pumpkin guts out of his pumpkin and putting them inside of his brother's pumpkins. The older boys got a big kick out of that.
He drew his face on his pumpkin with a lot of help from mom. Then daddy carved it for him. After we put the candle in, he kept saying, "ohhhh" in a high pitched voice. He was darling the whole night.
The boys had so much fun making jack-o-lanterns for family night the Monday before Halloween. Each of them is sitting behind their pumpkin. As tradition, we all had a caramel apple as a treat after our night of carving.
Ryan had such a blast at Lagoon. For about 2 1/2 hours out of the 12 hour day at Lagoon, Jeff and I split up. He took Justin to all the big rides that Ryan is still too little to go on and I stayed with Ryan in Kiddie Land and watched him ride all of the rides over and over. He was all smiles! 
Justin and Ryan love the Dinosaur Drop. Ryan is always a little nervous at first, but once he rides it once, he wants to go over and over.
This is the new ride at lagoon. I can't remember the name, but Justin and Ryan loved it. It is a family water ride, but you can control how wet you get. We spent most of our time at family rides that we could all ride. Our favorites were the Tilt-o-Whir, the Scrambler and the Tidal Wave.
This is a weird picture to take and then love out of all the pictures we took this day. However, I love it because it shows such brotherly love between the boys. Justin was so darling in that he always kept a protective arm around Ryan in lines and made sure Ryan was all buckled and settled before buckling himself. If Ryan was nervous at all, Justin would say, "don't worry I won't let anything happen to you." Ryan would grin up at Justin and off they would go.
We had the best time and the best weather all day. We had t-shirts on all day until the sun went down when we put on sweat shirts. It was perfect, never too hot or never to cold. We ended up staying for 12 hours. We kept waiting for the kids to get cranky or for it to get too cold, but it never did. We had pajamas in the car for the boys and they were both out within 10 minutes. My mom and dad had Joshua for the day so he was happy. He cries anytime they leave our house without him. So we knew he was having a great day being spoiled. It was one of the those awesome days where everything went just right and I can't think of a thing I would change. Hooray Lagoon!!!
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