Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.24.2016

I always say... don't even bother with toys, folks... just give them a box and you're good.

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.23.2016

Today we made our annual trek to Jubilee Farm, which is where we go on a hay ride to pick out pumpkins every year. It's always a lot of fun. This year it was different in that while we were out in the patch, at 11am no less, it almost felt like summer-- sunny, pushing 70 degrees. It was nuts. Usually we are freezing and clinging to our apple ciders, but this year, apple ciders didn't even happy (too hot!)

 

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.22.2016

Bennett has infected everyone except poppy with his cold. I usually get about one good cold a year, and I guess this one is it! Hacking up stuff in my lungs, sinuses are a mess, snot galore. Dang it! Oh well, didn't slow me down much. Justin and I went out last night and attempted to hike McClellan butte today. We made it about 4 miles in at which point I was hacking every .5 seconds and the cold air was making my lungs revolt against me. Not to mention that apparently my body was fighting the cold so didn't want to go more than 1 mph up the mountain. So, we turned around. Oh well, noble effort and it was still great to get out. Save the feat of conquering that mountain for next weekend!

Meanwhile at Miss Collette's: (Owen was, of course, running around like mad):

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.21.2016

The nightly push up challenge... surprisingly, Owen is actually not too shabby!

 

He then informed us that he would be going to his baseball game. Ok, then!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.20.2016

Little guy is a little under the weather with a little cold, but you wouldn't know it. He's still happy as a clam all day, and looking dapper as ever. Nighttime is another story... sleep would be nice. Just saying.

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.19.2016

Cute babies this morning at Miss Collette's.

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.18.2016

For some reason, both kids insisted on sitting 2 inches away from poppy tonight at dinner. I had 90% of the table to myself!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.17.2016

Fun on bikes at the school, and trying to get them sufficiently worn out. These boys are nuts!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.16.2016

We got a call from Jordan and Steph today to see if we wanted to meet them at Snoqualmie falls. Seemed like more fun than anything else we were doing, so we headed out there. Since we've had so much rain lately, the falls were raging.

 

Later back at our house-- watching the seahawks while the little ones dressed up to save the world.

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.15.2016

A preview of what's to come in about 15 years: Our kids grown up and sitting around our table talking like the adults they are. Like WHOA. These are 3 of Justin's kids: Bailey (back in glasses), Oliver (right by fireplace), and Laura (back to us). Bailey and Oliver were meeting Laura for the first time, and we had the pleasure of having her birth mom and biological aunt to our house as well. Super cool, kind of weird, and everything in between. We've met Laura several times in the past few years, as she lives in Oklahoma. We love her, so it was cool to have her visit while she was visiting Washington.

 

The big boys and little B. He LOVES his older brothers! Almost as much as Owen does, but Owen typically is running too fast on nights like these to even attempt a photo op.

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.14.2016

Field trip day to Oxbow Farms! I opted out as it was dumping buckets and buckets of rain in what was "supposed" to be the storm of the century up here in Seattle. Spoiler alert: it wasn't. At all. But, today was fairly nasty with rain and wind, and no power for a few hours. Field trip was a go, however, and Owen had a blast with dad!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.13.2016

This is called: No time for workouts, so use the kids to make an at home workout harder (and possible)!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.12.2016

I had an extra long day today in Reno, Nevada, starting at about 4am and then returning around 11pm after a late flight held me there. But, pictures in the airport of these two goofballs made my day!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.11.2016

Bennett and Phoebe at Miss Collette's.

 

This series is called: the clear advantages of having kids, especially kids who are little and like to copy you. FREE CLEANERS. Only issue is that the often do a bit of a sketchy job, but, hey, it makes them happy for about 2 minutes so what the hell!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.10.2016

Who needs toys when you can just push each other around in a pull up box??

 

Or wear it on your head and crash in to things?!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.9.2016

The big guy got some new ski gear today, and is all ready for ski season! He already has skis and boots, so now he is officially ready to go....we just need snow (also: yuck... snow...sad face). I AM, however, excited for him to learn how to ski so young. I wish I would have learned earlier in life. I think he is going to love it!

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.8.2016

More pictures while playing at Miss Collette's. We are so lucky they love going over there so much, and that they have a "second family."

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.7.2016

I got these pictures today at work from Miss Collette:

Owen and his ginger haired twink, Calvin:

 

And Mr. Witch of the West already getting in the spirit of Halloween:

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.6.2016

One guy who is not so thrilled to have the tyrants back: Fred. Poor Fred. He is such a sensitive little doggy soul, and puts up with so much from the human boys, especially Bennett.

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.5.2016

We are back and home! All feeling pretty good. Including Mr. Mohawk:

Daily Owen & Bennett: 10.4.2016

The 5pm flight back to Seattle... sounds great in theory. A whole extra day practically. To all the people who were around us on this flight: it was our only option. It's the only straight through flight back to Seattle that we could take and HELL NO am I doing a hopper layover flight with two kids.

It all started out innocently enough. The kids took wimpy naps on the way to the airport-- about 45 minutes each. And I'll also preface this by saying, they basically slept like crap all week. They were up at 5am and 6am Seattle time and in bed at "normal" Seattle time (like 9pm). So basically sleeping 1-2 hours less at night than normal. They had colds, or allergies or something, which may have had something to do with it. BUT. They were tired. And tired kids = CRABBY kids. Crabby kids on a plane = SHOOT ME.

Everything was fine at first.

 

But by about the halfway mark at 2 hours, things started to go downhill. Owen actually fell asleep which was great, but Bennett REFUSED to sleep, no matter what we tried. At this point, I am looking at my watch every 1.5 seconds. We tried pictures, we tried phones, we tried food. He wasn't TOO bad at this point, just antsy...and tired. But wouldn't sleep. Bah. He kept going back and forth between Justin and I.

 

At an hour to go before landing, things basically took a sky dive. Bennett decided it might be fun to start screaming. And not just any screaming. The shrill kind of scream that elicits glares from 50 rows ahead of you. I was murdered 500 times just by people looking at me in the course of that hour. And it wasn't even "I'm pissed" screams. Or maybe it was, but it was more "HA, this is a great use of time, how fun is THIS. THIS is FUNNY." YEAH.

 

So while Justin has his hand over Bennett's mouth trying to muffle him, we are also trying not to laugh. I mean, it IS kind of funny how quickly we are becoming just one giant shit show. All it would take is another screaming kid to complete the effect. OH WAIT.

 

About 40 minutes before landing, mom had the brilliant MOM FAIL idea to wake Owen up. I thought that since it was actually about 7 pm Seattle time, we should wake him so that he wouldn't go to bed at 11pm... yeah. Anyone want to guess how that went? This, my kid, who gets beyond mad every day when he is woken up from naps by anyone but himself.

 

So then we have one kid STILL screaming because he thinks it is fun, the other screaming because he hates life...and at that point I did contemplate that instead of getting murdered by glares, I might want to just off myself. We tried everything... bribed them, held them, threatened them, muffled them.... yeah. Anyone who has been in that situation, I don't care if you are basically the top parents of all time, you are SCREWED. There's nothing you can do.

 

Pretty sure there were claps when we landed. Not positive as I had lost my hearing by that point.

 

As we were walking down the runway after we got off the plane Owen says, "that was a fun flight, mom, when can we go on an airplane again?"

 

I KID YOU NOT. Ties for the worst flight ever.

 

But, the good news is: we made it home, and that night both kids slept 12 straight hours. It is good to be home.