Lately

Brian has to use his remaining vacation for the year by mid-December (instead of the end of the calendar year) so he's decided to take a few long weekends.  This weekend was one of them - he took off Friday and Monday.  Unfortunately he was sick and then I was (am) sick.  So we didn't really do much but it was good to have him around and spend some time together, just the four of us.

One thing we managed to do is get some trees at Lowe's.  They must be getting ready for Christmas trees because all their plants were 50% off.  We bought three trees on our first stop there and managed to get them in the back of my car and over the boys.  Rylan doesn't look too happy here, but they both thought this was hilarious.

We are almost done with a bed along the right side of our house that I'll post pictures of when I get mulch spread (hopefully by the end of the week).  We've only planted about 25% of what we bought this weekend but we have now started two beds in our backyard that we are using to screen us from the garages in the alley behind us.  We aren't trying to create complete privacy in the back, we just want to soften the look in the back.  I'll post pictures of that too once we finish planting (those beds won't be done until the spring when we can get more plants and large rocks but we have them planned).

The boys have been playing with (chasing) Charlotte all the time lately.  They LOVE her so much (except when she's trying to steal their food).  Carter will copy what he hears us say and tell her, "I love you Charlotte, but not now!"  Rylan tends to hold his peanut butter sandwiches below the table and Charlotte steals them out of his hand all the time - he gets SO MAD.  But they run and run with her around the loop downstairs and love to get her all worked up.  She seems to love it too (so far, at least).

Yesterday (and today) the kids set up what they called a "booby trap" on the stairs.  So far, no one has been hurt!

After naps we had to get out of the house yesterday so we ran a few errands.  One place we went was Toys 'R Us (they had some great deals on Memory games and Crayola products).  Carter has already picked out what he wants to ask Santa for from the Toys 'R Us catalog - it's a Spiderman remote control motorcycle.  He was checking that out and the boys wanted to try on some masks in that aisle.  Brian got a picture of them with his new iPhone (he's finally gotten something other than a Blackberry from work!).

The kids had off from school today because of voting.  The kids have had short weeks 3 out of the last 5 weeks.  And then they are off all Thanksgiving week.  We just ran some errands today getting ready for Carter's birthday party on Sunday and went to storytime at the Brentwood Library.

Oh, and I HATE Daylight Savings Time.  The boys did better this morning but they had been getting up lately by 5:30 am and so for a few days they got up at 4:30 am.  Hopefully they don't do that again tomorrow morning!