Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

From Tate, the construction worker:

And Sullivan, the train engineer:

And my niece, Samantha, batgirl:

Let Sleeping Babies Lie

I decided to do a blog post on my boys sleeping after checking out fellow blogger, Jenn's, adorable sleeping baby pictures at http://ihatewhine.blogspot.com/. The above one is Sullivan, and yes he really was sleeping like that!

Have you ever heard the saying, "never wake a sleeping baby?" Well, if you are a parent, you know exactly how true that is. Not to mention how cute they are sleeping. I could stand and watch my kids sleep for half the night.

Sully can not sleep without his blankie, as a matter of fact, he has four of them the same material so that they can get washed regularly. Though at the moment he has 3 of them in bed with him, which he was very insistent on. He also has two stuffed kitties he couldn't sleep without. Here is the picture of him I took just minutes ago:

He's really growing like a weed, as you can see he no longer fits in the crib sideways without being crunched up, which apparently he likes.

Someday Tate is going to bring home a girlfriend to introduce to me, and I am going to embarrass the bejeebers out of him with pictures of him as a child, especially the above one of him sleeping in the car with a Barbie head. ;)

Tate likes to sleep with furry stuffed animals, though he is starting to get away from that a little. He has been getting by with just one, instead of 3 or more he usually has. His three favorites are Josie, a black & white Shih Tzu just like our real one by the same name; House, a stuffed Yorkie he named himself; and Kolby, a gold & white Shih Tzu just like our real Kolby.

Sometimes, our real dogs have stood in for the stuffed ones. Most of them don't have a problem with Tate playing with their fur or using them as a pillow.

Both boys suck their thumbs, but Tate is a lot more attached to his. Once the thumb is in the mouth, nothing will do but sleep, no matter where he may be.

Here he is tonight, with his beloved Kasey Kahne pillow I made him. Out like a light!

Fall Splendor in Clayton County

Fall is definitely here! We took a little roadtrip through Clayton County last week to check out the leaves. Every view was picturesque- this is just a small sampling of my pictures from that day.

Tate and Sullivan had fun looking at trees, rivers, and trains. I was of course on the lookout for fossil-collecting sites. I knew of some road cuts near Millville which I scoped out on the way by. I also found several washed-out places that might be good collecting.

The past couple nights have gotten pretty chilly, so the leaves have been falling like crazy. It's a good thing we took this trip last week! I haven't been able to spend as much time outside with it getting colder, because of the kids, but I have managed to hike and fossil-collect while keeping the kids occupied when cutting firewood.

We are getting quite a supply of wood built up for the winter. I am starting to get tired of loading firewood, but it's good exercise! We had the cement poured for the wood burner and the chunk of sidewalk Joe had to break up to trench for the pipe. We had a fun time trying to keep the kids, dogs, cats, and chickens out of the cement!

The sidewalk now has little cat and dog paw prints across it, but it's really cute, so I left it. The kids put their footprints on the slab for the wood stove, which made Sullivan cry, of course. :)

I hope you enjoyed my autumn pictures of Clayton County, Iowa!