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.

I loaned my digital camera out to a guy that is doing some field work for me, but I have a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Nolan is still very into building and he's very creative with blocks. He is very particular about his building and gets frustrated at times, but it's interesting to watch.

Caleb says some really cute things now. One of my favorites is "right" instead of "yes". He's getting to know his colors and numbers pretty well and even said prayer at meal time once.

We got to go to drive out to Nolan's buddy's birthday party. Cole turned four and we got to enjoy a day in Willow Creek.

The party was on a beautiful piece of land near the river with lots of fun stuff including a pool with slide and a large sandbox.

Nolan got the first chunk off the pinata. He's got quite a lot of practice hitting things with sticks unfortunately.

Everyone enjoyed the big payout. Taking the sucker from Caleb was the hardest thing I've ever done. I know a whole new meaning to the phrase "taking candy from a baby"

...... and more sugar.....

The roof got put on the house earlier this month. I told Nolan to look at the crane in the yard and he informed me it was just a truck with an arm on the back of it.

The house looks quite a bit different now, but here is was when they stacked the material on the roof
and after started applying it. I'll get my camera back tomorrow and add more recent ones and hopefully some cute pics of the boys.

We got to ride the Skunk Train and see our great friends in Fort Bragg last weekend. It was a really nice vacation and wonderful to see old friends.



Nolan was very excited to ride the train and even wore his Skunk hat!



Caleb was very disappointed that he couldn't walk onto the track and climb on the train before we boarded.

We got the boys to hold still for a minute for a picture.





We had lunch at Northspur on the Noyo River.

The boys had a great time throwing rocks in the river.





Caleb slept well during the trip thanks to "banky" the magical velvety blanket.



We had to take Thomas the train with us, and Caleb showed his gangsta style with daddy's hat.



We even got to bath in a bathroom that didn't smell like funky trailer!



Ninja Nolan demonstrates his scary face (generally used to irritate Caleb).



Caleb is still infatuated with hats and glasses, but has developed a new shoe fetish as well (photos soon!)