It's My Birthday Too,Yeah

I love my birthday month. This year my birthday fell on a Monday. On Mondays both boys are in school  - a priceless gift (even though of course, I love those boys, I LOVE them! but when it's my birthday they really don't appreciate that it's my birthday all day, they might give me a good 10 minutes of birthday respect but actually that's optimistic, and it's not even all at once.  It's 10 one minute increments... nope, not even.  It's more like twenty 30 second increments.  And all twenty of them are used up before 8:25 am when we have to leave for school which is never pretty.)  BUT, that might give you the impression that my birthday wasn't fabulous, and it was.

First I woke up to this, which included breakfast in bed (not shown, sorry Mike):

 

Don't be fooled, we always have at least one blown up balloon around this house just because.
Then I spent three hours in quiet solitude.

Then later we picked out fancy outfits to wear to a fancy dinner out together, all four of us (someone learned a little about Veterans Day in kindergarten in case you can't tell).

Jacob takes fancy outfits seriously.
And then it was November 12th. Sigh.
But it was okay because it was 11/12/13 and that doesn't happen every day.

October Recap

Whoops, it's already November.  This was a fast October with trips (already documented) school (still adjusting - one kid loves it, one kid's still not so sure), apple picking with Owen. running the Army 10 Miler with Jean and without properly training (painful!), Jacob learning to ride a two-wheeler, and of course HALLOWEEN! Owen was steadfast in his decision to be Jake from the Neverland Pirates. Jacob changed his mind at the last minute from being a regular old ninja to being the obscure superhero...Falcon. I actually MADE his costume the night before Halloween!  So let's get to it ... in reverse chronological order.

Jake and Falcon

Jacob's kindergarten class - Halloween parade and party

Technical difficulties prevented me from uploading video from his first time riding the bike, but this video is from a week later, the second time he rode it.  Yay Jacob!

Doing our best to hide the pain.  ATM 2013!

 

Another year of completely underestimating how many apples fill a third of a bushel basket.  Hello apple pie, apple crisp, applesauce, etc.