Happy Halloween/ visit to the pumpkin patch

Happy Halloween! We don't actually celebrate Halloween... but the boys enjoy dressing up all year long, and our church put on a fun NEEWOLLAH program that we went to. 

First, a picture of Sean smiling - he refused to smile in the pumpkin pictures, and so I decided to include this one, since it's just too cute. Grandma Patti gave Sean that big Sully stuffed monster, and he LOVES it. 

Such a cute smile!

 Last week Uncle Brian visited, and we went to the pumpkin patch with him.

I was optimistic about getting a good picture of both boys together

There were serious objections to me trying to snap JUST ONE GOOD PICTURE

Sean announced that he was NOT going to smile for me

Mark, showing off his incredibly blue eyes (without knowing it)

Uhm, boys, that is NOT the faces I am looking for!

Mark smiling

Alright, let's get it out of our system...

Uncle Brian, coolest Uncle.

Of course the boys smile when they are with Uncle Brian!

A few of my favorite guys...

"If you want to take a pumpkin home, you have to be able to lift it."

Good luck with that, Sean... 

That one was a bit too big for Mark, too

Our handsome big boy!

Our handsome little (big) boy

Uncle Brian and Sean

Uncle Brian with Sean

 Today the boys dressed up. Now, keep in mind that we have a huge dress-up box, and Sean especially spends more days in costume throughout the year than in normal clothes. We have LOTS of costumes... nijas, samurai, iron man, Darth Vader, Bumblebee (the transformer, not the bug), a variety of animals... lots of weapons, modern and ancient... and yet THIS is what they chose for today:

Army-guy Mark and Darth-Vader-Boba-Fett Sean (with a jet pack)

There. Are the grandparents (and great-grand-parents) happy now? :) We love you!

2 more Bir-f-day pictures of Sean

We had a little family birthday party yesterday evening. I thought you might enjoy these two pictures of him. 

Sean got all fidgety with happiness when we sang for him

After the singing, Sean announced "Happy Birfday! I'm f-ree now!"

Blowing out the candles proved to be harder than he thought!

Happy 3rd Birthday to Sean!

Today our wonderful 'little' guy turns 3! Happy third Birthday, Sean! He is growing to be such a spunky, smart, mischievous, fun, BIG guy. Have I mentioned that he is the same height as quite a few new Kindergarten kids at Mark's school?!

A boy with a smile and a heart to match his huge size!

Sean started out big, with '10' being his magical number: He was born on September 10, at 10:10am, and he weighed 10lbs even. Here are a few pictures of his first day, and of his other birthdays. 

Sean, minutes after being born

Our toddler-length newborn

He still looked small in Dad's arms

Our little papoose, a few hours old

Mark meeting Sean for the first time

Proud big brother

Gentle big brother

Sean on his 1st birthday

Sean on his 2nd birthday

We love you so much, sweet boy, and look forward to watching you grow!

Mark's 1st day in 2nd grade

Mark started 2nd grade yesterday! We are excited to see what this next year brings. :)

Our 2 wonderful boys

The boy with no brakes

Sean was built without brakes. Or if he has them, they are there to screech, and keep going. If there is something to climb, he WILL climb it. If there is space to run, he will run as fast as he can, as far as he can get away with. And now that he has figured out his balance bike (Laufrad), the kid is just plain unstoppable. He loves to ZOOM at top speed, and doesn't seem to be slowed down much by steep, long up-hill stretches. I should add that he does stop fairly reliably when it comes to crossing streets, thank goodness.

All boy...

The other day something kind of scary, but in the end funny, happened. We rode our bikes to one of the nearby parks, and the boys had fun playing. The play set is at the top of a little hill, and the path has a very steep portion leading away from the playground. At the bottom of the hill there is a sharp turn that even some of the teenagers on skateboards still wipe out on. Beyond the curve is grass, and then forest with stinging nettles and brambles.
When it was time to go, I strapped on Sean's helmet, and was about to tell him to wait for me when OFF he zoomed, down the scary steep hill!
The balance bike has no brakes... and there was just NO way Sean was going to make it around the curve without crashing. I sprinted after him as he barreled downhill... knowing I wouldn't be able to catch up with him on time. He didn't make it around the curve, and ended up on the grass, tumbling and falling. Somehow, he managed to land upright, with one leg on either side of his bike, a little shaken up, but not hurt.
When I reached him, he was still just standing there, a little shell shocked. He turned his little face towards me, and with eyes the size of saucers, finally uttered a chuckle, and with a pleased tone, said: "Huhuh... THAT was FUN!" 

Ben's pontoon boat

Inspired by a country song, Ben decided to build a pontoon boat. This became a fun project for the Bradley guys to work on this Summer. After several land trials, Ben and Mark launched the "Gute Fahrt" (as Ben named it) in the Battleground lake. 

Ben and Mark setting things up for a land trial in our front yard

The boys and Ben taking a well-deserved break after some hard work

YARG!

Ben setting up the boat in the lake

Almost ready for launch!

Launched!

The frame for the tarp over was accidentally forgotten at home, but a great time was had by all anyway!

A little bit of catch-up from our trip to Montana...

Our trip to Montana was wonderful, and I have hundreds of pictures of it on my computer... since this blog is dedicated to the kids, though, here are just a few pictures of the boys!

Warm weather, shiners, and fun

I am several weeks behind in posting pictures of the boys... but in an effort to catch up just a little, here are some fun ones from last week. 

Horizontal surface + boy = climbed surface

Believe it or not, Sean actually had a full set of clothes on when we sent him outside to play. When I went outside to check on the boys, I found that Sean had stripped down to his underwear (which actually is a pair of Mark's underwear that he insisted on wearing in stead of his own), and his rubber boots. He was jumping up and down on the picnic table, watching his reflection in the window.

Mark, hard at work

Mark is earning himself a new bike this Summer. You know, because we are trying to raise good little Capitalists. We made a chart that has 100 bike points that need to be earned. For 5 bike points, Mark is scrubbing the algae/moss off of the railing of our deck - a job that took him about 1.5 hours.

My friendly bunch

Oh. That shiner? Yeah... Sean lost a fight with a door he was swinging on... I took this picture the day it happened. The next day it had turned more purple, and had spread out. We've watched some awesome colors show up in Sean's face over the last week!

Black eyes can't stop my boys from being happy!

My friends who have girls often marvel at the potential for chaos little boys have. I love our flavor of chaos. :)