vegas (waiting for food to drop) pupster

shout!

Picture Time!

Here are some recent(mostly) pictures. They don't all fit on the page so you will have to click on November 2006 to see them all. Love and Cheer to all!

Thanksgiving Prep(Note the Miraclewhip&SourCream)

Granddad + gadgets = FUN

celebratory jumping

brother fern attack

super sarah fern

Abe of the Encyclopedias Fern

Trey fern

boys and cars

sweet kiddo

muy seriouso

boys with staff and stump chair

Thanksgiving Entire

Tolbert Entire

Tolbert shot

Baldwin shot

album cover

the married version of this picture

Ah! Glorious fall!

looking at sir daddy longlegs

my son

Walking with purpose and concentration

This reminds me of a picture from the 50's.

Can you say "creepy, ghost-riddled church"?

elementary my dear watson.

The following pictures are of our trip to the Library Halloween costume party. I wish I'd gotten an after shot of their junk food stained mouths. Cupcake goo, lolipop slime, candy drool....but most of all...cheeto grime. It was a glorious moment of abandon on all of our parts.

How do you spell Goofy? P-I-R-A-T-E.

We went to visit all the folks in IL last month.  Went to the mall and what do you know?  Roley and Bob were there.  What luck!

Abe's buddy, "bop"(Bob in toddler)

Wow!  A life-size roley!

At the Will county fair, Mike was roped into volunteering for a vaudville skit.  Anyone who knows him knows that leaning on perfect strangers would make him a little uncomfortable.  Oh the hilarity!  That's him in the blue hat.

 First time helping my mom make Scotchie cookies.  mmmm.

 Here is some older footage of the rescue packs my mom sent for the boys.  For those of you not familiar with all things Nick Jr. has to offer, these are from the GO Diego show.  Diego is a young do-gooder specializing in do-goodery to animals in harms way.  The noisy orange toy includes a stethascope to check the also included plastic Jaguar's heart and other useful animal saving tools.  Needless to say, they loved it.

new stuff

It's been forever and a day since I actually wrote something and so for a change, I'm not going to post pictures this time. I'm only going to write. I'm sure everyone who actually looks at this blog looks specifically for pictures. However, I don't have my memory card on hand so this will have to suffice. My boys are growing up. They are. Wow, where to begin again. Trey's newest hobby is creating a fort on our gray couch with the 2 huge pillows. He pushes them to the center of the couch and sits behind them and reads books, drinks juice, plays with cars and of course drags his blanket. Occasionally, he will invite me back there with him and VERY occasionally, he will ask Abe(who stands in front of the couch saying "upp heeee toooo...tooooo" which is "up here too" in babyspeak. For reference: Abe CAN get on the couch by himself. He either is afraid that this in one of the times that Trey doesn't want him up there and will promptly push him off or is just feeling particularly lazy) Writing this also reminded me that Abe has a new phrase which Trey never really used: "too". He is the "me too" kid. I guess I find this a little sad that he is constantly wanting what Trey is just naturally getting. The 2nd. The partner. The thing that comforts me is that he doesn't know any of this and in reality gets to do way more than Trey probably got to do at his age. Thus is the way of the 2nd child, I suppose. I used to wonder why my brother got to do everything at about the same time I did. Now, the information is revealed to me in the form of parenting.
Abe has another curious development. When we are eating something that he is not fond of(this, like most toddlers changes daily...although, I've never seen him turn away pizza) he will stuff the bite size pieces under his right leg. I will think that he is done(and also a speed eater), but he has only used his cunning to dispose of the evidence. I suppose this means that he's a righty, since his right hand is the one shuttling each bite away. I don't know why he feels he needs to hide it, but it cracks me up, nonetheless.
Trey is sortof using the toilet. We have introduced "surprises" to spur him towards actually letting us know when he has to go. He's an ace pee-er. It's the # 2 that we are waiting patiently for. I don't know what the surprise is going to be yet for that achievement, but you can bet it's going to be sweet. Right now the going rate for peeing is a couple of fruit snacks. Maybe it will be an ice cream sandwich or something. Although, that might not be a practical thing to keep up. We shall see.
Both of the boys are terribly sweet in their own ways. Trey likes nothing more than to sit and talk on the couch with Mike(although why this doesn't translate for a church service is beyond me). Abe, although constantly mobile, is at times heartbreakingly earnest. His fascination is basically unlimited(unless, again you want him to pay attention to anything you have for him at church). While Abe relishes a good tractor or cow, Trey can construct a lyric for anything to the tune of twinkle twinkle or row you boat and probably at this moment at time knows most of the lyrics to both of the backyardigans cds(which we play incessantly in the car, to the detrement of our minds...actually, the songs are great in moderation....after thousands of revolutions, they begin to sound like insanity). They both love instruments(mainly drums and horns), baths(maybe they are dehydrated, but they love to drink that grimy bath water), other kids(we went to a new church the other day and both of them were having the best time with the other kids...at one point, Abe was being fawned over by all the older little girls. He was literally laying in a bean bag chair with them bringing him juice and crackers).
Well, as I speak, my children are avoiding naps in the other room.
Time to go.

ridiculous new skates

snot and muscles

cornbread's video

  The boys just woke up and watched my dad(I felt I should clarify since not everyone know's that cornbread is our version of grandpa) on the computer.  You can still see the sleepy eyes.