It's been a pretty good weekend--not really dramatic, I was just feeling the dramatic black & white look. We had lots of family time, which we were definitely in need of.
No, my kids don't usually have 10 boxes of cereal for breakfast--there was a great deal this week and I thought it would be fun to have it all out waiting for the kids when they woke up in the morning (plus they got 4 new bowls for free w/ the cereal). And yeah, they were pretty excited.

Brooklyn asked to make some playdough, so Russ did while I got a bunch of photography work done. They all played for a couple of hours. Here's Russ's shark and unfortunate surfer. I took it at just the right second because Sam dessimated them both a split-second later.

A stand-off between an octopus...

...and a crab.

Sam thought he was the cat's meow with his new kisser.

"Look at my giant hand, momma!"

RARRR!!!

It was disturbingly quiet, so I set off in search. First it was the ruby red lips, now it's my shoes. Funny boy.

A tapeworm picked the wrong day to mess with Russ.

I think she was doing imprints of her lips onto the playdough, but I'm not sure, lol.

Can you guess who's creation this was--complete with swivel-head external flash?

Annnnd Sam comes to the rescue again...heaven help us if we have a playdough creation just SITTING there! MUST.DESTROY.

Russ, having way too much fun.

Then, after the 18,333,405,485,399 time of Brooklyn asking Russ if we could get a Christmas tree yet (I'm sure my hinting to her had nothing to do with it), we set out to Lowe's. Yes, kind of sad that we bought it at Lowe's, but at least they SMELLED like trees, unlike last year's...

She jumped and grabbed onto Russ when the guy started his chainsaw to trim the bottom of the tree.

Ah Sam, 110% boy. Puddles! Puddles! Puddles! Oh, and you can't tell, but he has rocks in both hands. Lately, they've become his security thing. We usually have 3-4 in the car that he always asks to hold on to.

Prepping the tree.

This is how the kids entertained themselves while Russ checked out.

Being home was such a relief to me. I have a fear of things falling off/out of my car after moving last time--I had a bookshelf fall out of the back of the truck going 40mph...SCARY. When I asked Russ at Lowe's if it was tied tight he said, "Eh, it should be okay. We'll see, I guess." ACK!!! Getting home was a heart attack for me.

Brooklyn is SO into gifts--she is always wanting to wrap more and more!!

And we had to decorate the tree, of course. Thank HEAVENS we got the non-breakable (AKA - plastic balls) on clearance last year. Russ opened the box and immediately Sam starts chucking them across the room. There were probably 40 balls rolling all over the floor while Brooklyn and I were trying to put them on the tree.

I felt so bad when I couldn't find the hooks to put the balls on with. Actually, I knew where they were, but when I put my hand in and pulled some stuff out a swarm of little cockroaches ran around the bottom of the box. GROSS!!!! One of the drawbacks to this area...grr. So instead Russ said, "What about your paperclips?" Voila!

Sam even got into it. Although he just stuffs them in there, lol.

There's been an awesome sale on diapers this weekend, so I've been stocking up. The kids were really quiet for a bit, and I found them stacking, lining, throwing, shoving them all up and around Sam's room. They were having a blast! Who needs toys when you have 10 bags of diapers?!

Sigh...another favorite. Good thing we have a trampoline, huh? Geesh, this reminds me that we really need to get some doors on Sam's closet so I can actually USE it. Right now his bed is up against it so he can't get to any of it while he's in there. Not exactly ideal. Blah.

My very sweet Santa's helper.

We've been doing bathtime every night to try and get Sam calmed down and ready for bed (for the past couple of weeks it's taken HOURS to get him down for bed and naps, but it's definitely gotten better). I had to take pictures of him this night though because what he was doing really reminded me of Brooklyn a year earlier--lining up his toys and one by one, knocking them into the tub.


She was, let's see...almost 2 1/2 (29 months) and Sam's 20 months old here.

Anyways, all in all it was a good weekend. Okay, I'm off to rescue my kids from the bath. Have a good one.