Bella, Gabe and Josiah

With everything else going on this year, we decided to do a very low key Thanksgiving. We invited Claudia and her kids over and it was just the 7 of us. We started the day with monkey bread. I introduced Gabe to biscuits in a can and my fear of those cans. Then we ran the Turkey trot. It was very cold and wet and windy and the boys were convinced that we were trying to torture them. I was all excited to actually run for the first time since my stress fracture, but Josy would have none of it as “this is not a race, it’s a trail!!” I did run .05 miles, but that was literally because I saw the turnaround spot, left him in the middle of the trail, ran to the turnaround and back to him. That said, it felt so good to even think about running again. Then we went home and started cooking and working on a puzzle. And I made my first apple pie!! It was quiet and low key. But really nice. And then on Friday we got the puzzle finished!

Last weekend, they both got dressed, all by themselves. And somehow they both dressed exactly like their personalities.

Cathy got married! (Or Catherine, as prefers likes to be called. I’ve just known her entirely too long to suddenly switch names…) It was a beautiful wedding. It was very small and no frills, exactly like they wanted it. The boys were the ushers, with they did less “helping people to their seats” and more “looking adorable”… But seriously. Could they be any cuter??? Somehow, even though Pat and I had not discussed footwear and we got dressed separately, we managed to match our shoes. Great minds think alike and all. Also, as comfy as those shoes are, I threw them away when I got home. The boys were in all of the wedding pictures. The ceremony was pretty short, which was good. Gabe was fine. Josy was bored. Then we all went to the brewery for a toast. They had a funny wall with sequins that you could flip back and forth in order to draw pictures or write things. My little artist has entirely too much fun with that. Josy, on the other hand, never left Pat’s lap. He’s smacked his head on a

I should probably stop saying “life has been crazy…” because that is apparent just the regular status of life around here… That said, things have been crazy since we got home.  We got home on a Sunday night, which meant that work and school started the next morning. Also, the cats were super mad at us for leaving (long story that really does all make sense. It wasn’t the cats fault…), so I spent a week cleaning up their mess. The next week, I spent the week getting ready for the bridal shower that I was throwing my friend Cathy. The next week I had surgery and now, a week and a half later, I’m still working on recovering from that. Also, Halloween was in the middle of that, Pat was gone for a week and he just left again this morning. Oh, and this week was Cathy’s wedding. I’d say that things are going to calm down, but next week is Thanksgiving, December is always crazy, Gabe’s birthday and Pat’s got at least another week out of town. Also, I’m still recovering. But such is life… Gabe

Somehow I managed to not post all of our Halloween pictures, so here are some of the fun things that we did outside of trick-or-treating… First, we carved pumpkins. Now, I’m really good at smiley face pumpkins. They are cute and I can do those. But somehow my boys have decided to stretch so off my artistic skills, as one wanted a baseball pumpkin and the other wanted a t-rex. Um, neither of those are cute little faces… But google is really helpful and we made it work. But just we had to buy the pumpkins and we almost lost Gabe in the pumpkin bin… Gabe actually did all the carving himself. I drew the pattern on for him and he did your rest. I was really proud of him. We went to the trunk or treat event at the church. We had a slight wardrobe issue, so Josy couldn’t wear his firefighter costume, but he handled it really well and was happy to be an astronaut again. After we finished trick or treating, I let the boys eat a bunch of candy. Josy was particularly fascinated by a pez dispenser