Here are just a couple of pictures from the end of Mom & Dad's visit.  I love this picture of Mom and Emmett.  Don't these two blonds just belong together?

And we finished off the visit with a colossal game of Settlers.  I'm thinking Mom won this one.  Austin didn't make it to the game phase of the night.  Ever since he was 2 he has put himself to bed when the moment hits him.  (A trait that I love about him :)

We loved our visit and can't wait to see you again at Christmastime!

Happy Halloween!!!

We started Halloween off right with a very spooky dinner.  Mom and I worked together to get everything just scary enough to eat and I have to say, it all worked out pretty spoootacularly.  :)  (I was so glad she was there, or we would have been eating at midnight.)

This year we added fingers to the chili, and I have to say...I thought it looked pretty gross.  If that chili wasn't so tasty, I might not have been able to get it down. 

We had some pretty fun characters for Halloween this year.

There was our little Oompa Loompa.  

I was Willy Wonka to go along with my little guy.

We had Jack Frost (I made him wear shoes before we left the house...but it wasn't easy to convince him.

Alaina was a vending machine.  Robert and his dad worked with her for hours and hours to get it perfect.  (When I asked Alaina how she was helping, she said, "Well. Dad let me hold the tape."  We all know who the real kid is this Halloween.)  They did do an excellent job and her outfit was the hit of the night.

We had one Dr. Who, who looked quite dashing in his bow tie.

Austin was his favorite character from the Percy Jackson series, Leo Valdez.  Austin had been really sick the entire week.  He went from fevers to a terrible chest cold.  I can't believe he stood long enough to go trick or treating, but he made it.

Here are a couple of extra pics.

Emmett kept trying to trick or treat this fire hydrant.  He thought it was a kid dressed up in a costume.  It was pretty silly.

By the end of the night we had a sleeping Jason.  He had almost made it around the neighborhood.

Emmett, on the other hand, LOVE every second of it.  He was totally wired the entire night.  For the most part, he refused to let me hold him or put him in a stroller.  Instead, he wanted to run to each house.   (He'd even give himself a little count-down every few minutes "5, 4, 3 ,2, 1...Blastoff!"  and off he'd run.)  This is a picture of him when we told him the night was over and we had to get back into our own house.  He was devastated!  Over and over he whined, "Mo' trick o treat!!"

Even the 'rolling in the loot' didn't seem to please him too much.

All in all, I have to say, we had a successful evening.  Happy Halloween from the Joneses!

On Halloween we took the family to the Boulder Train which was all decked out for the season.  The kids who dressed up got to go on thee train for free, so we took advantage.  I didn't want to go all out on the little boy's costumes until that evening, so I just grabbed whatever we had in the closet.  The weather was beautiful and the kids were excited to check out all of the different cars. 

I know that I have about one million pictures of Robert and Emmett in this exact same pose.  I just can never seem to get ride of them.  I love both of those smiles so much!

Jason and Emmett were hiding in the gross, dirty space between the seats so that they could reach out and scare people.  Classic.

After our train ride, we went to look at the museum.  Jason loved that he looked just like these other two pirates.

Here he is, showing us just how grown up he is these days.

The sleeper car.

Laina, photo bomber.

Silly, I know, but I love this picture.  

This would be our view of Robert for nearly the entire trip.  Those boys can't get enough of him and since he has been travelling so much lately, they've gotten a little possessive.   He complains, but I don't think he really minds so much.  How bad could it be to be the absolute center of those two little boys' lives?

We loved spending such a great day with Mom and Dad at the train station.  If you asked all of us who went, I'm sure we could each come up with a whole bunch of reasons why it was such a fun afternoon.  However, if you were to ask Robert, I'm am absolutely positive that he would tell you that it was buying the pumpkins there.  Right of the train was a man with a big box of pumpkins and he was selling each one of them for just one dollar!  The size didn't matter.  Robert couldn't stop himself from buying 10 of them.  I can't fault him for it...$10 is half of what just one of those pumpkins would have cost at our pumpkin farm.  Not a bad way to get our jack-o-lanterns.  

Here they are, carving them up.

And the final products.