Mud, Mud, Mud...... There is mud everywhere right now, but there is a huge amount at our house. Between the tractor work for the tanks going in, the grading around the house and numerous ditches and disturbances, the bare soil is very wet and mucky around here right now. Our mudroom is just what it's called!



Although I haven't been enjoying all of the extra sweeping, vacuuming (when the stuff finally dries) and laundry. The boys and puppy couldn't be happier.



There is even mud inside our house as the sheetrock finally got put on and the drywallers put the drywall mud up. They were really fast and great workers and the hand-texture turned out nice. Our drywall guy actually had emergency heart surgery but his sons came up from the bay area and did the work for him. Hope our sons are that nice when we're old.


To prepare for some of the rain and mud we bought some rice straw (also from the bay area apparently) from the local ag store and mulched as much as we could around the house. Although our gutters finally went on yesterday, they were not on for awhile and the house was getting wet and muddy. Nolan took a break from wallowing in the mud to help us out.



The hay isn't only good for keeping the house clean and dry. Hopefully it'll keep Caleb a little more clean and dry as well.

Nolan also spent quite a bit of time helping dad dig over 200' of ditch for our water and gas line. It had to be hand dug because it's too wet to get a tractor in and no one would come. nolan also helped cover the ditches back up.

Crescent City and Birthdays!

We decided to take a quick trip up the Crescent city and see their new Home Depot on a whim. We stopped at the beach to play a couple of times. One things we'll have a lot of is beach pictures as the boys get older.



Sometimes we take toys, but the boys are generally happy to just play with sticks and rocks. I was a little nervous and sad because we were at Freshwater Lagoon where lots of young children have drowned due to large set waves that come up and catch people by surprise and the fast currents in the area.



I like to keep them far from the water here.



The dogs had fun and Loren always enjoys spending time with the boys at his favorite place.


Caleb has learned about hot chocolate now and was very happy to get some from Dutch Brothers Coffee on the way back home. He doesn't even stop to breath once he gets ahold of the straw!




We've had a lot of birthday parties to go to lately and it's been a lot of fun. We got to go to Acacia's birthday party last week.

Home Depot is one of those great stores with fun race car carts that keep the kids entertained for a little while at least.



A

I'm not sure if they were kissing or biting, but they were having a lot of fun in the cart and we decided we'd have to take a photo for future embarassment.


A couple of weeks ago we had a surprisingly warm and muggy fall day and all the boys joined Carson and Cole in some birthday suit play. I had to get a couple of photos.



I added the happy faces to censor them down to a G rating.

The house is moving along, slowly but surely. Eric and James are done framing and siding and our drywallers are done hanging. They are just starting to tape and texture. We should be painting in a week or two! The insulation was fun to watch being blown in and it definately makes the house feel more homey. Dad came down and helped us do some grading and drainage. We rented the tractor and he kept busy digging ditches and putting in gravel and pipes. We got some gravel for the road too. Nolan has been really into riding his bigwheel around the house. He loved having Grandpa here too and him and Caleb are really enjoying time in the dirt and mud. Right before the big rains they were able to get our septic tanks in and that was fun for Nolan to watch.

Halloween came and went. Nolan really enjoyed all of the decorations, parties and candy of course. We actually didn't do too bad on the candy since we didn't go trick or treating. We did go to a couple of fun parties. One was at Kaitlin's house (his friend from preschool). Her parents had put a lot of work into a fun party. They had a big trampoline and lots of toys in their yard already. They also had bobbing for apples, sack races, pin the nose on the pumkin, cookie decorating, a pinata and lots of prizes. Both of the boys were spider man since that is what they picked out. They didn't want to wear their masks for my pictures though. There were a lot of spider man costumes this year.

Nolan got to jump with the big boys on the trampoline.
Neither of the boys would do the sack race but it was fun to watch.
Caleb will always find a swing if one is around (and an apple)
Nolan finds the cookies.
Caleb is getting very into driving now and will sit for long periods by any wheels he finds. I used to let Nolan pretend to drive our cars, but Caleb sticks our change in our tape and CD decks if I let him so we've avoided this recently.
This is Nolan squeezing Caleb out of the way and Caleb pushing him off.
Caleb decided bobbing for apples with mouths was too hard and decided hands worked much better. At least he got an apple!

October is almost over already ! We've gotten to do a few more fall things like collect leaves, put up our decorations and get a couple of pumpkins. I've been eating some candy too.



I got to be a volunteer driver for Nolan's preschool field day to the pumpkin patch for a tractor ride. The kids got to pick out their own pumkinds. Caleb got to go to.


It was very cute to watch all of the kids walking around the patch to find the perfect pumpkin. Some of them looked for bigs ones and other for small ones. Nolan wanted perfectly round ones with no blemishes of course.

Caleb just liked to play in the mud and look for the wettest tractor tire marks he could find. He definately didn't want to come home.

Here are some girls from Nolan's class. He's especially crazy about Kaitlin in the middle, but I've seen him and Gabby (in pink) giving lots of hugs lately. =) The whole class is basically blonde except Maddie.


There's the group. Nolan's buddy Cole was there too with his little bro Carson and daddy Mike. We got to play on a giant tower of hale bales when we were all done and that was most of the kids favorite part.

All that work staining the siding is finally paying off. It was a pain, and more work and money than we anticipated, but it does look really nice. The soffits look great too. I'll have to get a close-up of those and the other little details the guys put into the trim. Some of the boards turned out lighter than others since we went through so many batches of stain, but we can touch them up with a little more stain if necessary. I actually like the variation. We're in the process of trying to clean up all the wood now. They're still working on the back of the house, but it's mostly windows so hopefully it'll go fast.

October has been a really busy month so far and it has gone by fast.

I've still been working 2 hours a week at the gym's childcare center for a free membership and it's fun to play with the boys and all the different toys and kids.


The rain has come a few days already and the boys are enjoying their new raincoats and rainboots.

Nolan still loves spending time with dad, and dad loves the beach so that's always a good time.


We got our family photos taken at the beach and although we haven't seen them yet I'm sure their great. The boys had a fun time and were pretty dirty by the end of it though.

Nolan has been a really good big brother and is getting to be a big boy and good helper. Caleb always asks "where's nonan?" when he can't find him.

Most of the flowers are gone around the house, but my artichokes never got harvested and they make very interesting flowers.

There are still a few other flowers in the yard including Crocosmia.

Caleb enjoys blowing the seeds off the dandilion heads.

He also still enjoys trying on all of our shoes. It's cutest when he's in my heels with just his diaper on but I haven't caught that one on film yet. The vans are pretty cute too though.