One year old

Time has flown and Evan is a whole year old now! He loves to climb the stairs, and is pulling up on things, but is not ready to venture into taking any steps just yet--which is fine by us! He's a pretty happy little guy who wants to play everything the other kids are playing, but is content to at least be in the same room where all the fun is going on. On a good day, he'll take one long afternoon nap, and a catnap in the evening, then go down around 9-10pm, and sleep until 7-8am. Yay! But those days are not every day, as brothers and sister's activities often dictate the schedule. He's happy with just a short nap in the carseat, but I'm not so thrilled on those days--not a lot gets done!

Thanksgiving Parade

We headed downtown for the parade this year, which we haven't done for a couple of years.

It was great, but my favorite part was the lady standing next to us: she talked to every person who went by and got most of them to talk to her (the mayor, the sherriff) and got a lot of people to come over and shake hands with our part of the crowd ("Darth Vader--get on over here! Don't you act like you don't me!"). She tried to get all the high school kids to relax and smile ("You not from my school, but that's all right! Show some pride!" "Girl, I like that hair ribbon! I'm gonna get me one!"). She had everyone around us cracking up! She sweet-talked her way into winning some tickets to an Aeros game, and she earned them in my book!
Waiting patiently for the parade to begin.

Brennan enjoyed all the fire trucks and their sirens didn't bother Evan, thank goodness. But Brennan was probably most excited about the helicopter hovering overhead.

For Uncle Ben: The MOB (Marching Owl Band)

The Shriners are always fun to watch zipping around in their cars.

Brennan wasn't too sure with the first few characters that came over to shake hands.

Two of Thomas' favorite parts of the parade--cheerleaders and beer.

The kids managed to get some prime real estate, thanks to the people we were standing next to.

Marian and Aidan's favorite part of the parade.

A high school band, getting down!

Unlike the Sponge Bob balloon, Nemo was staying afloat just fine!

Sponge Bob went down completely shortly after it passed us, and had the crowd squealing with its swaying from one side to the other, threatening to tip onto the crowd.

Brennan was most mesmerized by my favorite part: Santa Claus!

11 months

Evan is crawling full-on now, so he's gotten really good at getting into everything. Including all of the kids favorite past-times at this age: pulling books off the shelves. Lately, when we drain the water out of the bathtub, he likes to watch it until just the last second. Then he either thinks its going to suck him down the drain also or he just doesn't like the noise, and he scrambles in near-panic to back away from the drain!

Baby Cousins

The kids gained 2 new cousins this year:

Owen Edward, born Sept 6th

and

Michael Francis, born Nov 6th
Marian was hoping for some girls, but the boys definitely outnumber us now!

This and That for Brennan

I finally caved and brought back out the sand table because Brennan was digging up all the dirt in the steps in our backyard. Here he is in his 'new' sand table, despite the fact that the whole point of it being a table was that the kids wouldn't get as dirty. I don't recall Aidan ever getting in it.

Brennan had a blast at his preschool's festival

Riding the train is always a favorite

There was no getting him out of the bouncy obstacle course. We burned up a whole lot of tickets on that one!

This and That for Evan

The look on his face is just "What are you doing?!"

And then, "Oh, yeah! I remember that! Lemme smile big!"

His 2 left teeth. Don't know what happened to the bottom right one! The top right one just came through the other day.


Brennan likes putting this train engineer hat on people lately.

He kept it on for a while. Too cute!

Trick-or-Treat

Aidan as our resident clone trooper, this time as Commander Cody

His sidekick, Evan, as an Ewok

Marian as a vampire

Brennan as Buzz Lightyear

The group ready to head out. Brennan was simultaneously freaked out by the werewolf behind him and a clown waiting at a house across the street. So it took him a while to warm up to the idea of walking up to any houses, but he did eventually.

Marian's 11th Birthday

Marian's party this year was where she takes cooking classes. They made gnocchi and cupcakes--delicious!

In honor of her reading all 7 "Harry Potter" books (in less than 2 weeks), Marian had a Hogwarts birthday (and is dressing as Hermione for Halloween at school). Her only requests this year were a Harry Potter game for the Xbox and a pottery wheel.
Marian designed a "Pin the Glasses on Harry" game, with the boys here trying out the glasses (drawn on the paper).