Swinging and Spooky Stuff

October has been a busy month for us, which I guess is why I haven't been on the blog much. We are having a more mellow weekend though, so maybe there is hope I will catch up?

In the meantime, we've had some down time for stuff like swinging! Violet got a new swing for her third birthday (more on that later) and she loves it. Here she is swinging with her big brother:



Calvin has recently learned to pump his legs while he swings and that he can get pretty high that way on his own, so he no longer begs us to constantly push him. Hooray! He also makes the funniest, super-intense faces while he swings. They are hard to capture on camera, but here is a sampling:







Also, there was no school on Friday, which I kind of look forward to now because it is so hectic to get two kids up and ready in the mornings and to two different schools that are in two very different directions (more on this later, too). But I was a little worried because I really had nothing planned for us to do. Luckily, Calvin had picked out this decorative Halloween kit for a spooky mansion a few days before. I thought it was a little expensive at the time, but I caved. On Friday, he spent at least half the day working on it, painstakingly punching out and then taping the ghosts and spiders and pumpkins all over. He even thought to use some twisty-ties to add a hanging witch and spider, and transformed some of the cotton packing material into cobwebs. He worked so hard. And in the end, I thought it was a fine scary masterpiece. And so worth the $22.