Trick or Treat!!!

We had Cookie Monster and a Star Wars clone trooper this year!

The kids filled their buckets in our neighborhood...

 

Then we headed over to Paul and Cyndi's house -- intel revealed they had FULL SIZE candy bars at their house!  We were not disappointed :)  Hope everyone had a very happy Halloween!!!

Pumpkins



We took the kids to Wishing Star Farms last weekend to pick out pumpkins...it was an "agri-tainment" farm so there were tons of other things to do besides picking out pumpkins.  Like taking a ride in the barrel train! 

Our little blue eyed boy has sensitive eyes so he borrowed daddy's glasses in the bright sun.

Riley loved the bouncer...Sully wanted nothing to do with it.

 

It was the day before Riley was scheduled to get his cast off so I was praying he was careful and didn't hurt himself again.

He did a good job having fun but not hurting himself!

 

Sully preferred looking at the animals...there were horses, a pig, and a camel.

 

Who doesn't like to sit inside a humongous tire?!

 

A pose on top of the hay mountain!

 

We each got to pick out a pumpkin before we left...Riley really wanted a white pumpkin like he got last year but they didn't have any so he settled for the standard orange.

Yesterday we carved a couple of the pumpkins since trick or treating is in just two days.

 

Riley is one consistent little kid -- he picked the exact same stencil this year that he picked last year!

 

And here are the finished products...a mean pumpkin for Riley and a silly pumpkin for Sully!

 

The boys can't wait to go trick or treating in a couple of days!  Lucky for us the "Frankenstorm" is no where near us so we will enjoy the 70 degree sunny weather on Wednesday evening :)

No More Cast!

Riley got his cast off first thing Monday morning!  He was pretty worried about the "chain saw" they used to cut the cast off....and yes, there were tears.  After being bent for six weeks straight, his elbow was pretty sore at first.  Initially Riley said he wanted his cast back on!  However, it didn't take long for him to get used to having his arm back...I asked him to show off his arm with no cast and he wanted to show both arms with no casts!

Here's his most recent x-ray -- you can see the extra bone that has grown to fix the break.

 

Riley has to wear a wrist guard for three weeks during the day when he's active.  After that, he'll be completely healed and ready to go.  Next on the list of activities according to Riley - karate! 



Kindergarten Progress

Our little Riley is growing up so fast -- check out his kindergarten school photo!

We had our first parent/teacher conference last night and got Riley's first report card too!  Riley had a rough start getting used to the more formal school setting (let's just say there were numerous notes and emails from the teacher regarding Riley's behavior - every week!).  However, he's getting better and the teacher said she thinks she has his number...he's got a ton of energy and she has learned to channel it for the most part.  We need to work a bit on his recognition of sight words but other than that, he's right where he should be at this point in the year.  And he's participating in a pretty cool extracurricular activity every Tuesday night during the month of October - a Lego competition!  I asked Riley what his favorite part about school is and he said "Lunch!"  I said, "Okay, how about your second favorite part about school?"  His response, "Gym class!"  Of course...food and running -- what did I expect?!

Puzzle Pro

Sully has become quite the wiz with putting puzzles together - his teachers tell me he won't leave any puzzle unfinished in class!  On a daily basis he pulls out the puzzle set Grammy got him last time she was in town and he puts at least one out of the four vehicles together.  This is Sully with the train...

 

Lately he's been putting the dump truck together and making dump truck sounds to go with it.  Too cute!

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, of course!  Riley and Sully spent some time at Cyndi and Paul's house last Friday since Mommy and Daddy both had to work late.  And look what they found!

This is my favorite picture of them recently...Sully looking over Riley's shoulder but protected by his big brother!  Sully told me all about it the next day and kept saying, "I got closer to the snake!"

 

I have some catching up to do from some September activities -- the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and the Balloon Classic.  Still need to download the pictures off my camera, though...stay tuned!

Unlucky

Poor Riley is one unlucky kid...we took him for a follow up appointment with the surgeon last week and the x-rays did not look good.  The bones had moved 25 degrees since his surgery so we had to take him back for another follow up appointment and more x-rays on Friday.  Unfortunately, the bones had moved even more and the pins were completely dis-lodged.  The surgeon said they don't know why it happens sometimes but it does -- in only 1% of patients!  So we had to get him scheduled for another surgery Friday afternoon to reset the bones again...poor kid had to go through it again and was a real trooper!  He freaked out when they put him to sleep and that meant he was still freaking out when he woke up and was in a state of delirium.  It took about 30 minutes to calm him down and he was complaining about how bad his arm hurt.  I was worried because he didn't complain much about the pain after his first surgery.  But by the time we got home, he was back to his old energetic self.  He even wanted to try on his Halloween costume I let him pick out earlier in the day to try to get his mind off the surgery!  By Saturday he was running races in the backyard against Sully and Cody.  And today he was playing with his squirt gun and pretending he was a secret agent.  I asked him to pose and show off his new blue cast...

This is his secret agent pose.

 

The challenging part about the next eight weeks will be keeping Riley from re-injuring himself because the cast has definitely not slowed him down much!

 

Luckily the cast will be off right in time for snowboarding season...Riley is pretty excited and already practicing his moves!

 

He looks like he knows what he's doing even though he's never been on a snowboard before!  We bought this for him for his birthday this year but with such a mild winter in Ohio, he never even got to use it!

 

And not to be shown up by his brother, Sully had to give it a try too!

 

It was a rough start to the weekend but Riley has once again adapted well to the situation.  We're hoping the next follow up appointment with the surgeon in a week goes well.

Broken

Life lesson:  Always wear clean underwear to school.  You never know when you're going to fall off a zipline, break both bones in your arm, and require emergency surgery to reset it before they put the cast on.  Yes, this is poor Riley's left arm...luckily he is right handed.

He was such a trooper yesterday.  The accident happened at 11:20AM at school and we took him to the emergency room immediately for an assessment.  They consulted with a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and sent us to another hospital across town for surgery.  The surgery was at 6PM, done by 7PM and it took us quite a while to wake him up.  After about two and a half hours he was conscious enough to go home.  We finally got home at 10:30PM after what I'm sure is Riley's longest day ever.  This is Riley in good spirits (thanks to some pain meds!) waiting for surgery.  Thank goodness for Cody grabbing the iPad on his way to meet us at the hospital -- what a lifesaver to keep Riley's mind off his arm and the pain!

He requested a dark green cast and let mommy sign it first...then he requested I write his name on it too!

 

He's doing pretty well today...in a little bit of pain but not unmanageable.  We're trying to get him used to doing things one handed...even easy things like pulling up your pants after going to the bathroom are quite challenging with only one hand.  They put pins in to stabilize the bones and those will stay in for three weeks.  Then they will take them out and put a different cast on -- hopefully one that only goes to right below the elbow instead of just above.  He will have the cast on for a total of eight weeks.  He should get it off just in time for turkey day.  Riley has been quite the big boy throughout this whole ordeal...he even told me he's done with ziplines.  Smart move...at least for now!

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

We took the kids on hike at the Garden of the Gods to celebrate Cody's birthday today!

Sully did great and held his own for quite a while...

And then he hitched a ride on Daddy's shoulders.

We had an awesome view of Pikes Peak most of the hike.

Before we headed back to the car the boys wanted to climb on the rocks and pretend like it was a big starfighter spaceship.  Riley and Daddy were in the back manning the lasers...

And Sully was in the front driving the ship!

 

Tonight the dinner request is steak and salad with red velvet cake for dessert.  Happy Birthday, Cody!

Sully is a Big Boy Now!

Sully is officially a big boy!!!

 

When we first moved into the new house a couple of months ago, we had a few days after unpacking everything and before we started our new jobs.  It was a perfect opportunity to potty train Sully since you can't really go anywhere for a few days if you really want it to stick.  We used the same technique to potty train Sully that we used on Riley and he did great!  It took him about three days to really catch on and he hasn't had any accidents for weeks now.  He even holds it all night!  We're very proud of Sully...he's growing up so fast!!!