Once in a harvest moon

Last night was a full moon, which must mean another week has gone by and it's time to post again.

Aunt Steph and Wyatt have been visiting this week which means lots of good cousin time, and family time in general. The cousins have discovered that when we're all together even trips to Target are more fun and that eating dinner at Grandma's every night is BIG FUN. It's fun to see how much rice you can spread around Grandma's living room (T) and it's fun to see what kind of reaction you can get from someone your own size by spitting at the dinner table (Wyatt) and it's fun to eat ice cream with caramel at the bar every night post-meal (Andrew.) Good times for everyone.

Highlights include the fact that Wyatt will say, as many times a day as I'll respond, "Hi, Aunt Susan!" He says it as if you've just entered the room and you haven't seen him for months, even though you've been sitting next to him for an hour. I love it.

Another highlight is that every time we enter Grandma and PaRon's house, Thomas inquires if Wyatt is sleeping and if he's told that he's not, he goes to the top of the stairs and yells down, "Hi, ByWy." Over and over.

Tonight Aunt Susan had the brilliant idea that we would bake sugar cookies (the cheater's kind) and then the boys could decorate them with Halloween sprinkes after dinner. Those little black and orange non-pareils sure do roll on shiny, new wood floors. Grandma is going to be finding them as a reminder of that genius activity for weeks to come. We hope that she'll stop and smile, remembering how Wyatt decorated four before taking a single bite but then wanted to eat them all, how Andrew carefully placed each sprinkle and how Thomas took a look at his bowl of decorations and decided it would be infinitely more efficient to just dip the cookie in them as he ate. If she doesn't smile, she'll be cursing me, so let's all pull for it to be a fond memory.

Tonight I leave you with two pieces of Andrew's artwork from this week. The first is an ode to the pumpkin patch, from which we've been rained out twice in three days. We'll try again tomorrow.

The second is an ode to Uncle Jeff. Andrew is going to be a fighter pilot for Halloween and Uncle Jeff sent some of his authentic flight suit patches along with Stephanie for Andrew to borrow so Jeff's status rose even further with him - and we didn't even know it was possible. He specifically asked me to send this picture to Uncle Jeff, but I can't bear to part with the original so I'm posting it here for him to see when he's back from training.

Happy weekend, everyone!