He Walks!

Cute Pictures

Ephraim doesn't usually take his naps on the floor! He was happily playing and suddenly he was asleep.



The girls were having a puppet show. After they quit Ephraim decided to have a puppet show of his own. He's turned into such a copycat!

Ephraim had two milestones today. He's been taking a few steps, but today things just really clicked. He can walk the length of the room now, looking like either Frankenstein's monster or a drunken sailor. Also, he's been waving a little and saying, "bye bye" when we prompted him (a lot), but today he did it for the first time on his own. We went to the store this morning to buy a rug for the playroom, and when we were leaving Ephraim said, "bye bye" very clearly without being asked.

Science Lesson

This was the coolest praying mantis ever! I don't think I've seen one this big before, and I swear it was tame! The kids all sat in a circle, and I set the praying mantis down in the middle of the circle onto the floor. Instead of trying to run away, it would hop over to one of the kids and climb into his or her hand. It climbed all over all the kids and touched their hair and faces with its amazing, little hands. Riley stood in the circle instead of sitting down, so the praying mantis hopped over to Riley, climbed his pants leg, went up his shirt, and sat on his shoulder rubbing on Riley's long hair. It was just amazing to watch! The twins are usually cautious around animals and creatures of all sorts, but this guy (actually probably a girl) was so friendly, they warmed right up to it. Ephraim was fascinated, although I didn't let him touch it. I was afraid he might love on it just a bit too hard. I had a hard time getting pictures of it because each time I would squat down to take a picture, it would run towards me, and once it saw the flash, it wanted to investigate the camera. The kids all played with it for over an hour before we took it back outside, and not once during that time did the mantis ever try to run away!

BUSY Halloween weekend

Whew! What a busy few days! To start the long holiday weekend off, the girls went to a Halloween party at the library during their regular story hour and craft time. On Halloween evening they went to the trunk-or-treat and carnival at the church just down the road from us. We go every year, and the kids always enjoy it. They have carnival games, hayrides, hot dogs, and Go Jump equipment. Saturday during the day, the kids went to a carnival sponsored by the fire department. They had Go Jump equipment, face painting, clowns making balloon animals, hot dogs and drinks, and the kids got to tour a fire truck and ambulance. That evening Bailey and Thomas went into Nashville to watch (and participate in) The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That was Bailey's first experience, but she read up ahead of time and was prepared with hot dogs, rice, newspaper, toilet paper, and the rest of the props. It's been almost 30 years since Ben and I saw Rocky Horror while we were in college!

Sunday was Reid's birthday. It's still amazing to me that she's such a grown-up, little lady after starting out as a 2 pound, 15 ouncer six years ago. Bailey and Thomas took the crew to Chucky Cheese's while Ben and I wrapped presents, made a cake and chili for her birthday party. We were just not up to Chucky Cheese's after three Halloween parties in as many days. Her party was just immediate family, but I think she had fun. When your birthday is just two days after Halloween, it's easy to get cheated, I guess!

When we were in Birmingham for Ben's high school reunion, Brooke and I hit the jackpot at Goodwill and found a pile of great costumes for $5.00 each. I stocked up because I thought they would make great dress-up clothes. As you can tell from the pictures, some of the kids found a favorite costume and stuck with it for all the parties. Others couldn't make up their minds and dressed up as a different character each time. For everyone who thought Ephraim's ladybug costume was too girly, you'll be glad to know that he trick-or-treated as a dragon instead. And in case you can't figure out the older kids' costumes, Riley was a mad scientist, Jensen was a rock star fairy and Thomas was a brown crayon.

Wonderful Autumn Weekend

This past weekend we went up to the lake from Thursday night through Sunday night. The weather was chilly but fabulous! We probably won't get to go too many times now before winter sets in, so this may have been one of our final getaways before next spring.

We worked part of the weekend remodeling the upstairs bathroom which was circa 1960's. Over the past few weeks we have ripped off the old mirror, repaired walls, re-painted, removed the glass shower doors, and used a fiberglass spray paint to paint over the old pinkish-brown bathtub. We'd never tried spray painting bathtubs before and were nervous about the results, but I think it turned out pretty well! This weekend we removed the old carpet and tried our hands at tiling. We've never tiled before, so we'll see how that goes. Ben cut the tiles with his new wet saw and spread the goo, and I laid the tiles and placed the spacers. Next time we go up we'll grout. After that, we have to hang a new medicine cabinet, paint the trim, re-hang the shower doors, hang the window curtain, install a new toilet, sink cabinet and top, remove the old light fixture and hang the new one. Whew! Maybe we'll be finished and ready to start on the basement and replacing our old rickety deck by sometime mid-summer.

I posted a bunch of pictures of Riley because I got so many good ones this time. He takes after me by not being very photogenic. These all turned out to be rare, relaxed poses. You can see just how tiny Ephraim is in the picture of Riley giving him a bottle. Ephraim is now 15 months old and Riley is 13 years old.

The kids got to spend the whole weekend playing hide-and-seek, playing in their tree house and jumping in piles of leaves. It looks like we had them busy raking leaves for us, but actually they were just raking so that they could turn right around and jump in the piles or hurl them at each other.