Bella, Gabe and Josiah

Happy Halloween from Eleven and Blippi! Unfortunately, Blippi was rather cranky this morning and I had trouble getting a good picture. Case in point: So I have to leave you with his picture, which was taken when we first got his costume, before Pat got the floor down.

Someone went all day without any accidents at school! I feel that this is so exciting that it should get it’s own post! Also, check out our super cute “I voted” stickers. I voted early just for the sticker...

It’s been a big week for Gabe! First of all, Daddy set up his boy carseat! He’s two months shy of 3 and he’s finally outgrown his infant carseat. Man, my kid is tiny... He’s also super proud of it. He was telling all of his friends at school all about his “Big Boy Carseat.” Also, I get a lot of “what’s that?” when we’re driving. Suddenly he can see everything! In other news, we’ve had this conversation multiple times: G: What we gonna start? M: What are we going to start? G (in a deep, announcer voice): POTTY TRAINING!!! Yes, we’ve officially started potty training. We’re only three days in, so we’ve had a lot of accidents, but we’ve had a lot of success too. And he’s super excited about it. This morning I made him sit on a towel in his carseat, but he made it all the way to school, which I was impressed by. So, it’s been a big week. My baby is no longer a little baby anymore! Also, this morning he discovered the word “possibly.” “I possibly like red. And I

We got up at 5:30 on Monday morning to get to the airport. We dropped off the rental car (where the rental guy had pity on me and helped me carry all my luggage into the airport. Apparently I look ridiculous trying to carry a suitcase, carseat, new carseat in a big cardboard box, two backpacks, a stroller and Gabe...) and checked in for the flight. We made it to the gate and waited for the flight. Unfortunately, there was a nasty fog in Seattle. So we got to wait. Gabe was completely exhausted. Half the time he was running down the hall running in his “fast green shoes” while yelling “I’m not running into anyone!” The other half of the time he was sobbing so hard because he dropped his muffin that the guy next to me offered him his banana. It was super fun. After waiting for an hour and still not having any idea when we were leaving, I realized that we were likely going to miss our next flight. So I called the airlines and tried to get us on a later flight, but they didn’t

On Thursday we flew from Phoenix to Portland. This meant that the boys had to say goodbye. Bryson didn’t really understand it, but Gabe gave him a big hug and said “Bye Bryson! I miss you all day long!” Good news, he did not smother Bryson while hugging him... The flight to Portland was long. I mean, not really, but Gabe was tired and pretty cranky. Objectively, he still wasn’t that bad, but he’s usually really good on planes, so the fact that he wasn’t a perfect angel made for a long flight. Also, he didn’t sleep at all.  Once we got to Portland, we still had to drive to Laurie’s house which was an hour away and we had rush hour traffic. And he still refused to sleep. By the time we got to Laurie and Nathan’s house he was a tired and cranky mess. I got a little dinner down and then put him straight to bed. On Friday we had a quiet morning with Laurie and then Gabe and I drove out to Liz’s house, where I finally got to meet her daughter. Sarah had also flown in, so th

Since the boys were together and had matching jammies, we had to do a photo shoot. Um, well, it went okay. I mean, we got some. But the boys don’t really like to hold still. And definitely not at the same time... But I did get to make this:

For our last full day, we decided to go to the Children’s Museum (and make it further than the parking lot...). It was amazing. We had to pull Gabe away from every area so that we could keep exploring or he would have been perfectly happy to stay where he was. We started out by playing in this amazing tree house. (If you look close, you can see Gabe, Katilyn and Bryson.) Then the boys decided to make some hot dogs for Gram. They raced little cars down a track. And then rode bigger cars. They went through the car wash. Gabe did some grocery shopping. And then we went back to the giant treehouse, where I followed Gabe in. It was a pretty fun day. There were a bunch of field trip kids at the beginning that made things interesting since they were in school and not particularly focused on being aware of toddlers, but we all survived. The boys were wiped out after playing all morning. At lunch Gabe asked Auntie Katilyn for so

After a few days of running around crazy, we needed a quiet day. Specifically, the boys needed a day to be at home and plan. So Katilyn and Bryson came over for breakfast and we spent the day together, almost entirely at home. We did go to Bryson’s Grandma’s house to pick up a few things (and have and cookies). She was also able to help us out since we’d had disaster strike the day before. Gabe loves his string blanket. Loves it. He sleeps with it, he carries it around the house, and if he’s having a rough day, a snuggle with his string blanket will usually make it all better. However, on Tuesday he got a string loose while he was in the car and he managed to pull two rows almost entirely off before I discovered it. We had a long chat about it and I told him that I would try and fix it, but it was going to take me awhile. So he had to nap and go to bed without his string blanket. Gram and Katilyn didn’t have yarn, but luckily Bryson’s Grandma did and it saved the day. So re