Pokemon cards...

The Little Misters were obsessed with Pokemon Cards in the month of October. Their friends from around the block would come over almost daily to look thru cards and make trades.

We have pretty awesome neighbors and one of them gave the boys a pack of Pokemon cards after Halloween. She'd heard them saying it was their favorite and watched them trade them. It was a fun surprise and the boys were so excited to get new cards.

Post Halloween...

Over the last few years after Halloween we've done something called "reverse Trick-or-Treating". Usually we'd dress up in costume and drive over to Mormor's school to hand out our extra Halloween candy. But Mormor retired this spring, so that wasn't an option.

As the boys were looking through their rather piles of extra candy (this is after they took out candy for themselves) they started thinking of people they knew who liked a certain kind of candy. Right away the wanted to give all the plain M&M's to Mormor and all the Peanut M&M's to Morfar. So they ran upstairs to give them away.  When they saw the pile of Snickers they thought of my cousin Beth's new Husband who likes those a lot. I told them if they wrote a note- I'd mail them to him.

Next Oliver shouted out "the Lunch ladies need some candy, cause they work super hard feeding everyone". That completely melted my heart- cause that is one group of people who probably always get overlooked. From there they sorted out all the rest of the pile into baggies for the office ladies, the principal, the bus guy and all their teachers. We went to school early on Monday morning after Halloween  (not in costume this year) and walked around handing all the people their bags of candy. The boys were super excited to share and the people receiving were happy for the Monday treats. The Lunch Lady Oliver handed the candy to was almost in tears at his generosity and thoughtfulness. It almost had me crying too.

(I didn't actually remember to take photos while they were handing out the candy)

Quotable: Making lunch...

Our recent lunch exchange. 

Oliver: "when's lunch?!"

Me: "would you like the responsibility of making everyone's lunch?"

O: "YES!"

A bit later...

O: "I'm gonna put a little cheese and mayo on Lucius' sandwich, cause i know he likes it that way."

Me: "thats nice, he'll like that"

O: "i think everyone will enjoy yogurt and i think i'll offer everyone a cheese stick." ... "I looked at the cracker options in the pantry. I don't think anyone would like what we have, so I was thinking of the old dutch chips we ate that other time."

And then it was time for lunch. All I did was pour the milk.

Redecorating...

I felt like a change. It's been three years now, living in my parents lower level. It's never felt like home, because it wasn't really supposed to be this long that we'd stay with them. Things happen, and well we're still here. So I felt like getting a few of our things out of boxes that we haven't seen in years. I also wanted to get a few of our furniture pieces back from my sister who'd been storing and using them for us all this time.

But before I did, I wanted to paint. So I started taping and prepping and finally painting. Lucius helped a little tiny bit, because he said he really wanted to.

It took about a week or so to get all the painting done and things rearranged. I think there are still a few picture frames I'd like to get out of boxes but for the most part it's done. I love that it feels a little more like our space, instead of just temporary living.

We got our blue cabinet back and I un-boxed all our board games. Super excited to start having more game nights again. I also painted the bathroom yellow but don't have a good picture of it. So I guess if you're curious, you'll just have to come and visit.

Quotable: Lucius

A few quotes from Lucius I've heard recently:

"Now I'm feeling puzzled, cause you said I could maybe paint and now I can't paint at all"

We've been talking a lot about fears and feelings lately, but I don't remember talking about feeling puzzled.
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"The pictures in my head are re-doing and I'm seeing the goals that happened today. And that's making me think we'll lose again next week. Its so following me and making me upset."

This quote makes me sad. He had just finished playing his soccer game and his team didn't get very many goals. He was playing goalie when the other team scored two goals on Lucius. He was pretty upset about the whole thing and had said he "Hated soccer".
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"Leah and Malachi are my never ending friends. Never ending means I won't ever forget them and they'll always be my friends"

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Lucius when he saw me refilling the toilet paper holder.

"What?! Oliver did you use all the toilet paper? I literally just put a roll on there the other day. I literally did."

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Feel like I'm raising little old men when i hear things like this come out of their mouths: "curse this wind!", "speaking of ______", & "now i'm feeling puzzled..."

Halloween 2015...

I know the boys are getting older when we no longer have much influence as to what they want to dress up as for Halloween. Lucius decided right away mid-September he wanted to be a skeleton. I was thinking I could make that fairly easily and then we found a sweat suit that had the skeleton on it already, so we bought his costume. Done. No crafting for me, bummer.

But he was happy, which made me happy.

Oliver couldn't decide on what to be. He changed his mind several times a day. First he wanted to be Darth Siddious, then a ghost, something "really scary", a vampire, a saber tooth tiger, Elsa (from frozen) with vampire teeth, and then a skeleton. And that was all in one day. The weekend before Halloween we took him to the costume store and told him it was time to make his final choice.  He decided to be Ash Ketchum from Pokemon. We ordered a pokemon ball with a pikachu inside and a plain red baseball cap. All I had to do was paint the front of the cap to be like Ash's hat. Then he wore most of his own clothes he already had. Pretty easy and he was super excited about it.

Together they were excited to go Trick or Treating... not as excited about taking pictures though.

Leading up to Halloween Oliver had been very concerned that we had no decorations out. I don't own Halloween decorations and we didn't end up getting pumpkins this year. So Mormor printed some coloring pages for the boys to color and then spent the morning coloring and decorating the garage door for Trick or Treaters. 

Eventually it was time to meet our friends and go door to door. We walked around a few blocks with neighbor friends. We had 8 kids and 8 adults walking in our group. For our neighborhood that's a giant party. One older man ran out of candy for our group and started handing the kids nickels.

We had to stop by "Nancy's" house. Oliver's made friends with her and has been asking what she'll be for Halloween all year. He really wanted her to be the headless horsemen and she did it- just for him.

Mormor stayed home to hand out candy and tend the fire we'd come back too. We sat around the fire with the neighbors for a little while. The boys enjoyed a few pieces of candy. Then it was time to go in to wash off face paint. Of course it was only about 8pm when we'd done all that. So before going to bed we started watching Star Wars - the original episode 1. The boys have been curious to see it, and since we'd be gaining an hour for daylight saving we figured it would be best to put them to bed an hour later.

It was a good day.

Simple pleasures: crafts...

Lucius walked off the bus last Friday with a spider on his head. He'd made it at school and wanted to wear it home. So fun.