Countdown to Halloween

I thought it would be a cool idea to post pictures of past Halloweens. Justin and Kyle have had a lot of cute costumes over the years. The cutest being the ones they wore when they were younger. Those are the ones my mom made for them. She would still make their costumes, but there aren't patterns for the things they want to dress up as now that they're older.
So here we have Halloween 1999, the pea pod. Justin was almost 8 months old. I had always loved the idea of this costume. It was a nice warm costume for a baby made mostly of a felt material. Unfortunately, it was a very warm day. My mom made the peas detachable which made putting Justin in his car seat easier.
In 2000, when Justin was about a year and a half old, he was obsessed with Blues Clues (it's fun to tease him about wanting to watch it now!). It was only appropriate to dress him up as the star of the show for Halloween. My mom took a regular dog costume pattern and used blue material. Then she made the ears extra big. I like his little blue nose.
The last one for today is Halloween 2001. I was very pregnant with Kyle and Justin was two and a half years old. He LOVED signs, especially STOP signs!!! Therefore, we dressed him up as one. He loved it and continued to wear it around the house for the next couple months.

"The big race"

Justin started referring to this as "the big race" before Kyle could talk. I'm sure anyone that grew up in a house with stairs did it. I grew up in a ranch so I was deprived of this. And there's NO way I'm going to attempt it now. As you can see, both boys get in position at the top of the stairs, stomachs down. Then they push themselves so they can slide down. Now that they're older, they slide pretty fast. (As I'm writing this, I'm surprised that I've allowed this to go on.) However, Justin and Kyle will only do this when the weather is cooler and they are wearing feetie pajamas since they're one piece. They learned this at a young age after suffering from rug burns. Ouch! And since it's not cold enough tonight, I'm sure they'll be changing into different jammies before bed, but they got to have the first big race of the season.

A day at the park

Matthiessen State Park in Utica, IL that is. It's just past Starved Rock, which seems to be more popular. Matthiessen is much smaller, but just beautiful. It also has a lot less man-made areas than Starved Rock. There's much hiking to be done, not to mention water to get across by jumping on rocks. Justin, Kyle and I had been there last year with our neighbors. The boys really wanted to go back there with Jason so he could see it. We decided that autumn would be a perfect time.
It was a sunny day and about 60 degrees. We had planned to eat a picnic lunch. Due to a swarm of bees, we ate our lunch in the car. Not how we wanted to start the day, but after that everything was fine.
At the end of our day, prior to leaving Utica, we stopped at a gas station to fill up. Gas was only $2.97 a gallon down that way!
Feel free to click on the pictures to enjoy the fall scenery or see Justin and Kyle jumping across the rocks. Kyle took the picture of Jason and me. Not bad, huh?

A busy day

Well, here's Justin hard at work on a new Lego set. It's from the Lego Agents line, the Swamp Raid. This set has 231 pieces. I asked him if he wanted help and he declined. He really enjoys the building part of it.

The Chicago Marathon took place this morning. Of course, Tony was a participant. (Tony is my obsessed with running brother.) This was the 3rd marathon he ran this year alone! It was a little warm to be running a marathon this morning, but he ran it in 3 hours and 30 minutes. That's an awesome time, unless you're from Kenya, which Tony is not!

The powder room project

As I said before, I usually paint something in our house about every six months or so. I just get the urge to change something. It came about 2 weeks ago. I was about due since I painted the living and dining rooms back in February. This time it was a smaller room. I happened to be at Menards looking at wallpaper border with my mom and found a really cute one that was on clearance. At $5 a roll, I couldn't resist! I had to decide where I could use it at home so I could buy it. I didn't even have to buy paint because I had a color that worked at home in my paint collection.

Winter projects: our master bedroom, Justin's room (it'll be going from solar system to camouflage!)

Facial hair

Most of the time Justin and Kyle take showers, but every once in awhile they'll take a bath together. When they do, I put bubble bath in the water. The result: facial hair.
Goofballs!

Halloween crafts

A couple weeks ago my mom purchased a couple foam crafts for the boys to do for Halloween. Some of the pieces fit into certain places, but there were others that they were able to choose the locations. They had fun and they both turned out really cute. I'll have to put them away carefully so we can display them again in the future. Justin's is the graveyard and Kyle did the spooky tree house.