Happy Birthday George!!!

Exactly three years ago today (10/27/05), the world became a brighter place because George was born. As a refresher, he was 8 lbs, 9 oz and 19.5" long at birth, born at 4:23 PM. Now he is hovering close to 40 lbs and tall. We'll find out specifics on Wednesday. To celebrate his third birthday, we had a birthday party on Saturday. He was able to show off his present-opening skills that he somehow acquired over the last three years. He loved everything he received and had to stop and play with the gift for a while before he could open the next one. He is a very lucky boy to have such giving family and friends. He is pictured with the Bob the Builder cake, which is his favorite new character. He just started watching the show and knows half the lyrics to the song and also all the characters. He received most of the characters except for two I think, and he takes them everywhere he goes in the house. To bed, to the table, they follow him. He quickly pointed out that he is missing two of the characters, Scoop and Dizzy or something like that.

George's cousin Emma was able to attend the festivities this past weekend. George and Emma really enjoy playing with each other, although things are beginning to change. George is entering his "That's MY toy!" phase and Emma is entering the "George, you're making a big mess!" phase. Regardless, they had a lot of fun together and on Saturday spent some time carving a few pumpkins...or at least helped Grandma carve some pumpkins.


Trick or Treating is regulated around here, and the hours were set between 3:30 and 5:30 PM on Sunday. The weather was a balmy 40°F and extremely windy, with rain. Yummy! George set out with Dad though to collect some treats and I stayed at home with Charlie and Louis to hand out candy. We usually have somewhere around 400 trick or treaters, but this year we only had a bit over 200. Our street is pretty much Halloween Central and half of the Fox Valley seems to end up here. Apparently this is where people think we have the money to buy all of the good candy. Well, George's bucket DID have all the good candy in it, but I can't say the same about the candy leaving our bucket...



If you can't tell from the pictures, George was a ghost for Halloween this year and Charlie and Louis were Baby Einstein Dragons. George made an excellent ghost, except his "Boo" was way more cute than it was scary. Next year Charlie and Louis will get to run around everywhere with George to get some candy.

In other news the photography class is over. I learned a lot, mostly that I AM capable of taking as good of pictures as the instructor (ok, sometimes, but more than I would expect) and that I do not want to take any more pictures of models other than my own family. We are also done with our Wednesday night kickball league, which we finished as league champions for the third year in a row. This year we almost finished second, but the first place team lost so that bumped us back up into first place and now we get free t-shirts again!

I would like to say congratulations to the Olivers! Jen gave birth to Juliet on 10/21! She looks adorable and I hope that over the upcoming holidays we have a chance to meet her!

That's all for now. We'll have more later since George's doctor appointment is tomorrow, and today is Charlie and Louis's 5 month birthday.