Pumpkin Carving

We carved our pumpkins the other night.
Well, Seth carved his pumpkin. T and I painted ours because pumpkin innards are gross.

As T now knows.

H kinda liked it though, that crazy kid. Found her chewing on a stray pumpkin seed this morning.

Actually T was waaaay into painting her pumpkin and told me several times today that she needed to paint some more.

We used this method and I think it worked rather well. Except of course we used a paintbrush, not finger paints. Because it's T and she doesn't do messy.

I think they turned out rather well.

Pumpkin Patch

We went up to Richmond last weekend to visit family.
My dad was out refereeing a football game so none of us saw him when we got there late Friday night. Early the next morning when he heard T reading her books in bed he poked his head in to say "Good Morning!" She responded with wide eyes and a panicked whimper and so he quickly departed.

T then spent the rest of the weekend telling us the same exact story over and over again:
"I was in my bed and then Grandad came in and then I said whaaaaa?"
Over and over and over.

In fact she told me that story a few times today as well, so congrats Dad. You officially scared her enough to sear that memory into her brain.

We also went to the pumpkin patch. H loved it because it combined two of her favorite things: being held and being outside.

T mostly liked it. She kept tripping over the vines and then getting dirt all over herself, and because she is a mini-me, I believe she found that very unpleasant.

Her favorite part was taking a hay ride over to the barn to look at the "forseys".

Then we went out for dinner and T showed us all how to correctly use chopsticks. Seth and I were flabbergasted, because at home she can barely get through dinner without dumping half of it on herself and the carpet.

We had a great weekend!

Graham Crackers

My children ate graham crackers for breakfast, lunch and snack yesterday.

But not for dinner!

For dinner I fed them a nice healthy meal of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

So, parenting fail. 

But - toddler win?

Winsor Cousins

Seth's brother Adam and family are moving up to Washington D.C. so we went up to Raleigh to see them this past weekend before they go.
I insisted on getting a picture of T with her cousin A.

And then we also threw their other cousin H in there too because the three of them were all born within five months of each other in 2011. BFF!

The last time we managed to get all three of them in one shot, they looked like this:

We will miss having them so close!

An Unexpected Guest

It was very nice out today, so we decided to leave our backdoor open during dinner to enjoy the weather.
I guess some birds thought it was actually a little nicer inside the house, because two of them flew inside mid-meal.
One immediately flew back out, but the other went into our spare room and Seth and I leaped up in a panic.
Um, I have never had a bird fly into my house before. It was odd.

T went and promptly shut the door afterward so no more birds would get in the house.

Tasty Recipes

I have actually been cooking more often than not and it's probably all thanks to Pinterest.
These are some of the recipes we've tried recently that have merited a spot in my official recipe binder.

Super Simple Spicy Thai Noodles with grilled chicken. Quick, easy, delicious. This recipe is from Melskitchencafe.com, which, if you know the site, you know that every single one of her recipes is gold.
The original recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of red pepper flakes, but we used 1/2 tablespoon and it was just right for our wimpy mouths.

Roasted Cauliflower. Not really a meal, but so delicious I had to post it anyway.
Me before this recipe: Cauliflower hater.
Me after this recipe: Cauliflower obsessed.
Also my toddler gobbles this up (a miracle!).

Tomato Basil Chicken. So tasty. I made this twice in a row because I wanted to just keep eating the stuff forever.

Dal Nirvana. Funny name. Awesome stuff. My children actually ate this up (!). We ate ours with naan bread and jasmine rice and I felt like a world-class cook.

Vegetarian Black Bean and Lentil soup. Originally pinned because I needed another recipe to use up my lentils from the dal nirvana. So good that I will buy lentils just for this recipe now.

Face coloring

Apparently when it comes to coloring, my children just prefer their faces over plain old paper.

That would be dry erase crayon all over her face. I couldn't get her to sit still long enough for a good picture so instead I took some video of the aftermath.

Having to get her hands and face wiped off by me was her punishment - she cried and cried and I did not feel the slightest bit bad because after cleaning her off, I had to spend 20 minutes scrubbing more off the walls and carpet.

The dry erase crayons have permanently been put away.

Creative Punishment

Someone found the markers.

I was looking at an article I pinned called "Creative Consequences" because my gosh, the terrible twos are a real thing people. So very real. And the time-outs are not working. (Me: Stop that! Do you want to go to time out? T: Yeah! Me: Well, then you're not going. T: OK!)
Anyway, I was reminded that I could send T to bed early so when she decided to spend the afternoon coming up with different ways to make her little sister cry I inflicted this punishment on her.

BEST idea ever! She fell asleep in minutes and I have had TWO whole hours to myself tonight.

Bliss.