Halloween fun

The day started with a parade at school and ended with trick-or-treating, so I'd say it was a good day.  Dan and Ben's preschool is attached to the K-8 school and a big Halloween parade is a yearly event there.  The preschoolers and kindergartners were definitely the cutest.  Lots of pretty princesses and (fake) muscled superheroes.  Dan and Ben were lean and mean in their Mike the Knight costumes (minus the swords because I guess they're considered weapons?).

After their parade, the baby and I headed home while Dan and Ben had a morning of Halloween fun at school.  They came home with lots of tricks and treats.

The afternoon was pretty long and boring, waiting for dusk and trick-or-treating.  Zach was on his way back from a trip to Yuma so it was just me and the kids.  Which is why I only took like four pictures, since it was kind of hard to keep track of all three by myself.

With Derek and Leo

Dan and Remington

Ben and Harper

Ben and Matisse

Mrs. Ana, Mrs. Lisa, and Mrs. Kim

Our neighborhood turned out to be really great for trick-or-treating.  Lots of little kids walking, not a lot of car traffic, and some houses that really went all out with decorating and scaring.  One house even had a very elaborate haunted house set up in their garage.  Both boys were brave and went in!  In Ben's case, he only went in because the person handing out candy was at the end of the haunted house and he's a bit of a sugar fiend.  

By the time we got home, Zach was there and we all had fun handing out candy.  We didn't have a lot of kids, probably because we live in a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill.  More candy for us today!

Just two knights, out for their evening stroll on the golf course.

Afternoon sun spot

Baby Hannah loves to play in the afternoon sun (in the comfort of the master bedroom).  She is becoming an expert in sitting and loves to play with this same musical table that Dan and Ben had.  Eventually we'll put the legs on the table, but I don't want her pulling herself up anytime soon, so I like it on the floor now.

MAG Halloween party

All of the squadrons at Miramar are part of Marine Air Group 16 or MAG-16, so instead of each squadron having its own Halloween party, the MAG had one giant one.  But none of that logistical mumbo jumbo mattered to Dan and Ben, who were mostly interested in the candy.  The party started out a little rocky because this mom forgot their trick-or-treating buckets, so they had to make do with little plastic baggies for all their treats.  Dan adapted and overcame but Ben is a little more set in his ways and it took him a little while to get out of his funk.  But we ended up having a great time!

Dan even braved the haunted hangar!  It was advertised as being for adults and kids over age 10, but Dan insisted that he was ready to go in.  Zach took him and he said that Dan loved it and didn't seem terrified, even though there were chainsaws and bloody people and zombies.  He hasn't woken up in a panic since then, so I guess he's just a little guy who loves to be scared.

After the haunted hangar, the boys bounced in the bounce house, played cornhole, ate popcorn, went through a maze, and had fun looking at everyone else's costumes.

If you can't figure out what Dan and Ben are dressed as, they both wanted to be Mike the Knight (a character in some books and cartoons that they like).  The costumes have a headpiece too, but it was a little too windy to wear.  As for Hannah, she was pretty mad at me for dressing her up as an octopus.  She especially hated the headpiece.  Oh, well, what's Halloween for if not for dressing up babies in things that they hate?

Bates Nut Farm

Yesterday was the preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch.  Dan and Ben and all of their classmates (plus a lot of parents) rode in a big yellow school bus out to Bates Nut Farm.  By the end of the day, I felt like I could have made my permanent home at a nut farm.  I took Hannah with me and I was assigned one extra kid, in addition to Dan and Ben, to chaperone.  At one point, I had Ben and the other kid, plus three large pumpkins, in a wheelbarrow, while Dan pushed Hannah in the stroller.  And it was 90 degrees, just to make things even better.  

We went on the hay bale ride and chased each other through the straw maze and climbed on piles of pumpkins.  Hopefully the kids had an okay time but not such a great time that they ever want to go back there.  Because Zach is on his own for the next round of family fun...

Mostly Hannah

I used to think that Dan and Ben were pretty good babies.   But then Hannah came along and now I know what an easy, good, happy, go-with-the-flow baby is like.  And it's wonderful!  Everyone always says, "Oh, but wait until she's a teenager, and then it won't be so easy."  You know what?  I cannot even fathom any of my children being teenagers, so I'll take an easy baby now and worry about hormonal teenagers in a decade or so.

Hannah is sitting up pretty reliably now but I don't leave her by herself on the tile floor yet.  The rug or carpet is okay because even when she falls over, her core muscles help her to fall slowly.  She's still not rolling very much, at least from her back to her front, but I think it's because she knows that when she's on her back, it's time to sleep.  So she does!  Like I said, easy baby.  Dan and Ben are a lot more interested in her now that she's sitting up and can play with toys that they give her.  But what they love the most is when she weeble wobbles and falls over.  Of course!

Toddlers & Trucks

Apparently, Toddlers & Trucks is the west coast version of Touch-a-Truck.  Different name, same concept that we know and love.  This event was really close to our house, at the same park where Dan plays soccer and Uncle Jesse plays tennis.

We headed there on Saturday and had a great time.  Our first stop was the fire truck, of course.  Then the boys raced remote control monster trucks.  I'm pretty sure Zach had the most fun.  After that, we walked around and checked out all the trucks: garbage, cement, bus, off-road racer, etc.  Ben and Dan even wanted to get their faces painted.  Dan chose a spider and Ben was undecided until he saw the.....watermelon?  The watermelon drawing really spoke to him and he just had to have it.  Ben is a strange duck, that's for sure.

You can see Dan's fat lip in some of the pictures--don't worry, he's fine.  On Friday evening, he fell off the arm of a chair in our living room and hit his lip on the edge of the fireplace.  It was a pretty deep cut on the inside of his top lip, but the ER doc said that he didn't need stitches.  Both boys had dental cleanings scheduled yesterday anyway, so I was glad to have the dentist take a look.  No loose tooth, no permanent damage.  Just a fat lip to show off at school!

(I know I'm behind on pictures of Hannah, so I'll work on that today.  She's sitting up all the time now and providing lots of entertainment for her brothers, especially when she falls over.)