October was exciting! Halloween was of course fun. We went trick or treating with the Henslee's. The kids were so funny. They took an awkwardly long time to get their candy and leave. Ezra decided to ask each person where their dog was, what their name was and what their dogs name was. They would all say trick or treat, get their candy and just stand there and stare at the people until we took their hands and led them away.

Kinley and Levi are good friends, she said "come ere and give me a hug Wevi", then smiled as if to say "I can get my way with all the boys".

Mallory wore Kinley's baby ballerina costume. She enjoyed sucking on the tulle just like Kinley did.

What a stinger!

Arrrrggggg!

Josh and the kids carved these pumpkins while I was cleaning. I was very impressed with the speed and skill involved in this project.

Kinley was working double time on her Halloween candy.

Sweet little cheese ball! She weighs 15 lbs and slept 12 hours for the first time last night! She rolled from her back to her tummy one time a couple of weeks ago and she has been giggling a little bit which is just a little slice of heaven.

We were in the car and my mom looked at Mallory and found her like this. The bow that was in the band was in her lap. I guess it was bothering her. The funny thing is she never fussed or cried.

This is the beloved Karsen. James' best school friend. His teacher told me that one day James came up to her and said "I don't know what else to do, I did everything Karsen wanted me to and she's still mad". Guess he has to get used to that, it's women for ya!

Sisters watching football together. Kinley is still doing really well with Mallory. She likes to help me tuck her in for naps. Both kids get a huge kick out of Mallory smiling at them.

Josh's parents so lovingly gave us 20lbs each of apples and pears from their trees. We got to work one weekend and made four apple pies and four pear tarts plus two gallons of apple and pear puree for Mallory's baby food. It was a fun project but we don't want to have anything to do with peeling, slicing or big time baking for a while. We did however get lots of brownie points from all the friends we shared our sweets with.

The neighbor kids have found James. Oscar lives next door and is 10. Kristen lives two doors down on the opposite side and just turned 9. They both go to Hoover which is the school James will go to next year. They have been knocking on the door in the afternoons to see if James can come out and play. It has been really interesting because these kids are not exactly good influences but we want to be a good influence to them and James is dying to play with them because they are older and cooler. So we have let them play together in our yard under our supervision. It has been okay so far but Oscar has started to send James in for Dr. Pepper or Capri Sun, whatever I'll let them get away with (water is all this witch will let them have!). Oscar started saying shut up to Kristen and his dog and James told him we don't say that word because it isn't nice and Oscar got mad and left and hasn't been back since?? I think we might have a legalism issue to deal with?? Kristen started playing a little rough one day and made James cry. He said through tears "rough play is just not my thing". It has been really interesting balancing his strong desire to explore these new relationships and our feelings of protection taking into account all the things we said we would and wouldn't do when we got into situations like this. We also faced a difficult issue at school last week. They offer something called Amazing Athletes, which sounds like a great program, the last hour of the day he goes to school. You have to pay $40/month for 35 min of instruction once a week. We decided that wasn't the best value and that he wouldn't be able to do it but we know that Karsen and his two favorite boys get to go and that he really really wants to do it. So we talked to him about it and explained how we will be faced with these decisions for the rest of his life and because of the value issue with this we think we should save our money for cub scouts or karate or a different amazing athletes class. He was really understanding and got excited when we mentioned cub scouts and said he was fine with not doing this if he could do that. He handled it with such self control and maturity. We are so proud of the boy he is becoming.

This face says it all! She has been in the "pankin" stage. She is totally testing us on first time obedience. She has been bargaining with us saying "no I only want two spankings, not one" and one day when she had racked up four she said "how 'bout timeout?". She is loving preschool. One day after nap time she said to her teacher "when my mom gets here we're going to eat bugs!" She is such a sweet, sassy, silly little thing. She'll flirt with a stick and win over stranger in an instant. I have decided boys aren't going to be much of a worry to us because they'll all chase her, she might give a couple a chance but just when they think they've won her over she'll drop them like a rock and leave them wondering what just happened.