Treats in the Rain

The theme of this year's Halloween was: dedication. Don't want to eat your dinner b/c you're three and would rather just eat candy? Push through it. Are you a one year who does NOT want to be a giraffe but you look too cute to not be a giraffe? Suck it up. Pouring rain standing in the way of you and a bucket full of delicious candy? Strap on your rain boots and go.

Fin was SO excited that Uncle-Will-the-robot- came trick or treating with us.

Fin wanted to be a shark-robot. You can never have too many of those.

The boys before we headed out.

Cole didn't know how to feel about Halloween until he learned lollipops were involved. Then he was a fan for life.

Cutest little spider man came trick or treating with us.

Annie the pirate. Warning: She takes her job seriously. Don't steal her loot.

Gotta end the night with a wrestling match with Daddy.

My favorite quote from Fin of today was: "Since I'm a shark, maybe my name could be Fin, b/c I have a Fin. Is that funny?". Good call bud, except your name kinda is Fin already.

Shout out to my sister Anna for an AWESOME rock, paper, scissors costume. You're my hero. And I hope you won the whole night.

Around and about

We have had a beautiful week soaking in this gorgeous fall weather. We've lived outdoors as much as possible playing with neighbors, going to parks, and having picnics on the back porch.

The boys latest favorite thing is playing in Cole's crib together. They will seriously stay there for almost an hour just wrestling and tickling each other. If this picture looks like Cole is growling and standing on Fin's head...it's because he is. He's recently learned to growl like a dog and I think he thinks he is a dog. It's pretty cute but ask me a year from now if this phase is still lasting ;o)

The boys laid cuddling together watching Mickey Mouse like this for the longest time. I died.

Blurry but love these babies playing together.

One morning we made handprint ghosts with neighbors and Fin played ring around the rosy with his friend for the longest time. It was cute and heartbreaking the way he looked like he was at a school dance.

99% of the time when we head outside, Cole makes a beeline for my next door neighbor/friend Jess's house. He climbs up and sits contentedly on her porch rearranging her pumpkins. He seriously is obsessed. You combine the fact that they have his 3 favorite things: dogs, goldfish crackers, and pumpkins and I'm pretty sure he's moved in there. And yes that is a toothbrush in his little hand. It's like his security blanket. He walks around all day with it. Dr. Dan will be so proud.

Thursday night Sarah and Nicole came over for "Pinterest Potluck". I did dinner, Sarah did dessert and Nicole brought a craft from pinterest for all of us to do. It was so fun and we had such a good time together all hanging out. Cole and Fin were very determined to be a part of the craft portion.

Final Result: Mummy candles. How cute are they?

We had a great family week together. It's a joy for me to see my boys playing together more and more and as a result I'm having to play cars less and less so it's win-win :o)

From the Parental Files: Suffering

With two of my sisters living in different countries and going through many highs and lows, my parents have of course been their usual pillars of support and love through skype and email. They sent out this email to all of us this morning on the five S's of suffering that they have thoughtfully compiled. It was so insightful I wanted to record it here for future reference. Just because I'm living in a "peak" right now doesn't mean the valleys aren't coming. Such is life and thank God our Father is there for both.

Suffering is not Permanent: trials come and go, even though when we are in the middle of them, it feels like they mostly just come. “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, …. Later on, however…” Heb 12:11 promises there will be a later on..when these tough times are behind us. “Blessed is the one you discipline, LORD, .. you grant them relief from days of trouble.” Psalm 94:12
Suffering is Painful: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful”. Heb 12:11 ”Unless the LORD had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death”. Psalm 94:17
Suffering is Purposeful: “but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness”. Heb 12:10   and “when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold”. Job 23:10
Suffering Produces fruit: “every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful”. John 15:2, and  ”discipline produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it”.
Suffering brings Jesus Praise: “These trials have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed”. I Peter 1:7

A Happy Meal

On the way back from a doctors appointment today I swung through the Mcdonalds drive thru to get a happy meal for Fin as a reward for being so good. This is a rarity for us as we don't usually eat Mcdonalds food. Not because I'm against fast food but I'm a bit of a fast food snob and Mcdonalds is the lowest of the low to me. But Fin saw a commercial about Mcdonalds happy meals being given in trick or treat buckets and was intrigued. I was hungry too so I grabbed one for myself.
   As soon as I smelled that meal and ate a fry, I had a flashback. I grew up eating a .99 cent hamburger happy meal every.single. Tuesday. As my mom put it, "where else can you feed a family of six kids  for $6.42?". I was reminded of sitting in the dark in the back seat of the car, riding home, smelling those yummy (?) meals and wishing I could sneak a fry. Of getting home and grabbing 6 Kraft singles from the fridge for everyone to slap on their burger. Sidenote: putting a cold cheese slice on a lukewarm burger does not a delicious burger make.
     I remembered drinks being passed out with the options of fruit punch or sprite and inevitably there are more requests for sprite then there were drinks. Of searching for the burnt fry in the bunch to use to scrape the onion pieces off of my hamburger because of course you don't want to waste a good fry on that! Of picking off the pickles and passing them to a sister that likes them. Of pretending not to care that I got a toy in my meal, but secretly hoping it wasn't the same toy as last week.
     I have to say, the happy meal definetely hasn't improved with age in regards to taste, but it did make me happy today.

A Mother's Lullaby

Tonight I was rocking Cole to sleep. This is a time I usually cherish but tonight if I'm being honest I was hoping for a quick session as I'd had a long day and was ready to clock out as Mama and clock in as sit-on-the-couch-and-watch-my-shows-without-interruption Becca. Pat has a basketball game and so I get free reign of the remote.
Every night while I'm rocking Cole, I sing him a lullaby. Its' words make no sense but it's a lullaby I grew up with and I love it. Tonight in my weariness I may have mixed it up a little in my head...
As my lips were singing this:
No-nee, No-nee,No-neeeee
No-nee, No-nee, No-neeee
No-nee, No-nee, No-neeee
No-nee, No-nee, No-neeee

My mind was singing this:
Please child go to sleeeeep
Please just shut your eeeeeeeyes
Mama's losing paaaaaaaatience
And I need a vaaaaaaacay.

Endearing, no?

Patrick and the Terrible, Horrible, No good, Very bad Day

My poor, poor husband ya'll. Yesterday was like WHOA for him. So bad that I said to him, "that's worth recording for future reference because your day was so bad".
Sunday night Pat was up all night with a bad toothache. We don't have dental insurance so he was probably also awake all night wondering, "how much is this going to cost?". Monday morning he got up, took his work phone off the charger and realized it was dead. He cannot be without his work phone because how else will hillbilly truckdrivers call him yelling that they don't know how to work their GPS? So off he went to get a new cell phone. When he got back to his office, he opened up his computer to discover that the whole thing was frozen. He ran anti-virus software and found out he had a Trojan so he had to leave and drop it off at HHGregg for them to fix.
When he got back to the office for the second time he found out his forklift had a popped tire. Bare in mind he's dealing with all of this with a horrible toothache.
So he deals with all of that with grace (what was going on in his head, I'll never know), and he left work early to go to the dentist. There the dentist told him he had two cavities in one tooth at which point Pat's response was, "just yank it". It's a tooth no one can see, he actually has an extra tooth back there, and did I mention we don't have dental insurance?
So homeboy got his tooth yanked and walks out of the dentists office to a text message from me saying my car battery is dead and I can't get to work. Don't worry though, I solved the problem all by myself. I merely moseyed over to one of my elderly neighbors and posed a few carefully crafted questions to him:
"Hey Mike, do you happen to have some jumper cables I can borrow?"
"Great, and also do you know how to use them?"
"Great, and also can you show me how to use them?"
"What? You'll just jump my car yourself? Well if you really want to..."

Sneaky, Sneaky.
So Pat picked up the boys from the Y with half his face packed with gauze and brought them home to feed and bathe them until I got home. He then went out at 8:30 pm to replace the battery in my car.
My dad always says not to say "bless you're heart" b/c it's a fake southern thing to say but yesterday that poor boy needed his heart blessed! He definetely lost his Pat throughout the day until he was a shell of his former self last night :o)
The good news in all of that: Tooth got taken care of, God is in control of our finances (thank goodness!), we are continually blessed by helpful neighbors, anything electronic of Pat's that could have broken...did. So hopefully he's in the clear today.

A Very Merry Unbirthday to you...

Today was a day where it was nobody's but everybody's birthday in the Stephenson family. We got together and celebrated three birthdays in one- Denise, Dennis and Kerry. We had everyone over to our house, ate chili, inhaled helium, and had a mini dance party. Typical family get together.

Kerry, you look SO young in the pic. Denise, that pose is so flattering I might try it myself next pic :o)

Of course Grandma brought a fake bloody arm over. Cole had a weird fascination with it. It was a little too life like for me.

Sibs minus one

Our attempt at a grandkids pic. Cole wasn't having it. I still like the picture though.

Check out Fin's over the shoulder pose.

Sibs

The core group. Love this pic. Even the shortest person in this pic has a good 8 inches on me.

Vote for Erin

Me and Grumpy McTeethingson. He would not let me put him down the whole night. This too shall pass or this mama might need a happy place.

I'm so blessed to have the inlaws that I have. So family oriented and my mother in law brings everyone presents when she comes! Besides mopping the floor twice in one day, I'd host again in a heartbeat.