Halloween is a comin'!!!

 The boys were excited for Halloween early this year! October 12th, due to supremely good weather, was out first Pumpkin patch extravaganza. Forrest was dead set on carving THAT NIGHT!
So, we carved up our first two pumpkins that evening.
And yes, 5 days later we had a moldy mess on our hands!
Ahhh, well, I'd rather sacrifice a few pumpkins pre-Halloween than just about anything else!

The pumpkin master at work, expect some great pumpkin works of art in this kids future!

The pumpkin connoisseurs at work

Last weekend Forrest and I took a trip to the Halloween store. It was quite a scary, but funny experience! Our local Halloween store, is quite spooky, actually. There are a ton of the foot operated super scary ghosts, whitches, goblins, Chucky like babies, ghouls, headless horseman.....you get the drift! I was even a bit wigged out in the store.
Needless to say, our fiesty Forrest wanted to get the heck OUT of that Halloween store...
As soon as he had picked out his costume of course!
Upon laying eyes on the Ninja brother costumes, he had decided, THAT is what he and Talin were to be. Ninja brothers.
(We'll see if Talin goes along with it, he's dead set on being Batman....!)

 Last year these brothers were SO cute in their super hero costumes. They played so nicely in them, out fighting bad guys and such.
This year, well, there's more of an uphill battle, I do believe. Being 3 1/2 and 5 1/2 vs. 2 and 4....well, a bit more sibling fighting going on.
Heck, a TON more sibling fightning going on.
It's pretty awful, really!
But, truth be told, the costume tradition held up, and these brothers acted like true Ninja brothers should and even helped each other into their costumes, and went off to fight the bad guys, (Turkeys in our garden on this particular afternoon,) in wonderful fashion.
For about 18 1/2 minutes.
Ahhh, well, at this stage you take what you can get!

Looking forward to some fun spooky times come Halloween!!!

Last big garden push...

Surprise summer squash explosion after the first rain!

Last cantelope, strawberries, tomatoes, squash, peppers, zucchini

The apple peeler at work, lots of juice and sauce for this family!

This guy is the apple expert. Lots of apples down the hatch!

Big acorn, hubbard, and butternut squash harvest before a big rain!

Two Big Milestones...

This boy got a haircut!
Finally!

 Yes, I know, it was sorely needed. But also oh so cute in my world. 3 + years without an official haircut is a long time for this baby, errr, BIG BOY to keep his cute infant locks! One of his last baby milestones to cross, I do believe.

 But we were both ready for this day to come. The sylist was great with him, and Talin sat still and endured the ordeal quite well. It took about 25 minutes to get all that hair trimmed nice and short. An official big boy cut!

 Every morning had been quite the struggle combing and brushing. And that is if we bothered with it. Most mornings, honestly we didn't. Short hair is just so much easier. And he looks so different! His facial features are so much more apparent, he looks so much more grown up, but also younger as well.

We're quite happy with the whole shebang!


And Milestone #2-Forrest is nearing in on his first month of Kindergarten! For the most part this has been a smooth transition, with the class itself. We are still working out the kinks with the schedule. Last week was his first full 5 day week, and yes, I'd say he was a bit exhausted at the end. We have also tried, and quit, the afterschool program. It just was kind of awful, disorganized, and Forrest just wasn't getting anything good out of it. So we offically quit that last week, making our schedule change again. I'd honestly rather have him in my office for part of the day then go through the anxiety of wondering what he was doing, how he was doing, etc.
His favorites I believe are still riding the school bus, which is does do 4 days a week, after school, and all things building and mechanical. He talks about his teacher in a positive light and so far we are very happy with her. Here is a picture she sent me of Forrest and his girl posse building a castle...

 

I'm lucky enough to be able to do the drop off and pick up 3 days a week, and it's so awesome to be able to feel at ease in the classroom, talk with his teacher, and check his pad out for a bit. Last week we celebrated a random Tuesday that was more challenging than most for myself with a special ice cream, (beer for me!) date at our local restaurant in Willow Creek after school and work! 

I can't tell you how amazing it is to be 15 minutes from home and to enjoy more quality time with my boys. Very very special indeed.

And, on three other days so far in the past two weeks Forrest and I sneak out before Dad and Talin get home for a quickie bike ride. I really love these days....Special special times.

My boys are growing up my leaps and bounds. HUGE leaps and bounds, seemingly!

July and August, POOF be gone!

 Here it is, in no particular order, our summer in a few paragraphs. We've been a BUSY family over here in the woods. I've been buried in trying to work two jobs, Alex has been taking a huge load of work as well, and the boys, well, they're great! But OH SO BUSY! And full of energy. And full of yelling and screaming and talking...and did I say full of energy? Oh yes. But then I think of what we all accomplished this summer and I am quite amazed. We managed to finally finish a part of our addition. The boys each have their own room now. WAHOOO! Talin has spent the summer growing like crazy. He never stops talking, NEVER! And, he is finally pacifier free as of a week ago. DOUBLE WAHOO!!!! Go Talin! At 3 years 3 months my baby is truly on to boy status. Forrest spent the summer going to his first big kid Summer Camp. Blue Lake Summer Camp, ages 5-13 was amazing for Forrest. For the first time he was expected to behave like a big kid, and achieved this with flying colors. We never ever heard of any behavioral issues with him at this camp. They spent the summer going on field trips to fun places like the HSU natural history museum, park scavenger hunts, bowling, weekly trips to the roller rink where our big kid learned to skate! He's having his own experiences out their in the big word. Very awesome! T-Ball ended so-so this last June, a bit to slow for our engaged Forrest I think, but soccer just started up 2 weeks ago and so far he is loving it. And, the big milestone, KINDERGARTEN! September 10th can't come soon enough. He is SO ready for this!(And his parents are too!)

Alex has had a great and super busy summer as well. We both figure we'll sleep in the Winter time, perhaps. He's been fishing in the ocean several times, (actually is doing just that as I write!), but has primarily working his tail off. And myself, oh yes. This week marks my fist week as I'm officially a part-timer at TWO jobs, rather than a full timer at one, and a part timer at the other. This schedule gave me no time off this summer, which was a huge bummer, but one that I accepted as I knew it was short lived. We've had amazing help from both my parents and Alex's Mom, as well as our great neighbors. We love our village. I officially now am working only 15 minutes from my home two days a week, as a family practice PA. The other two-three days I'm still in Eureka over an hour away, working in vascular surgery. On those days Talin goes with me to go to a great Pre-school on the coast that he just started this past week, (and loved :-)

Being so close to home, (and virtually next door to Forrest's soon to be school two days of the week!,) and able to volunteer in the K classroom on Friday mornings going to be perfect, I think, (I hope!) I'm super blessed to have an opportunity for local employment, given where I live.

And...here are a few snipits of our summer adventures!

Forrest enamored with the Merry-Go-Round at the Humboldt Co. Fair

This was Talin's favorite ride, actually the only ride he would go on, (a bit of a cautious one, he is, on those fair rides!) And he found a new girl friend to share his motor cycle with...oh boy, here we go!

The river! We LIVED down on our beach on my coveted few and far between days off. My own personal vacation on my own home!

Granny came and stayed! For 3 weeks! My newly retired Mom brought so many amazing and wonderful Kindergarten books and K supplies to pass on to my boys and to their new schools. They literally have over 100 new books for themselves and more than that to donate on her behalf. Here I am shucking our garden corn while she reads to the boys on our porch. What a great summer memory.

My Dad came to visit as well and we got out on an amazing ride :-) This was a pre-triathlon work out for me, that I followed with a run. What a great morning though! So awesome I have my own Dad out there to ride with.

 And I'll leave you with one from TODAY! My new job participates in our local Big Foot Parade yearly. So, with the theme this year being Rock N' Roll I summoned up my parade courage and the boys and I rode on the parade.

 It was a hoot, the boys were high on candy and having the crowd wave at them, and I loved dressing up in a costume where I was sure NO one recognized me :-)
Here we are, the doc I work with, Alison, (pregnant with twins, oh geeze!), and myself, as the King himself.
Sometimes you just gotta let loose.

These are the days....

...of the most Wonderful blueberry crop we've ever had....

...of watching with Amazement our garden grow under the terrific green thumb that is Alex...

...of exploring the excellence that is a wonderful broccoli and cauliflower crop, (I spy a cauliflower from above, do you?)

 ...of just SAVORING the lovely weather that is wonderfully warm, but not yet steamy HOT, and trying to soak up these long beautiful days before the endless heat of summer gets to us...

...of having several "Ahhh HA!" moments with our kids, feeling we are finally reaching, or at least glimpsing, admist the daily never-ending messes, yelling, chaos, and fights, that magical age where it all gets easier, and it all is super sweet.

And maybe that's the glass is half full picture, but I feel like our cup is running over :-) These are truly THE days...

A little bit of this, and a little bit of that....

Or to be more correct, a WHOLE lot of this and that! With my job change and loosing my coveted Mondays off, as well as normal Summer craziness with a full garden , birthdays galore, and celebrations up the wazoo there hasn't been a whole lot of blogging going on!
But today, we had a couple momentous occasions.
#1- We have a river swimmer!!!! First time sans life jacket for Forrest. This is a BIG deal!

#2 - Talin pees in the potty! His brother adorned him with underwear soon after the event. Pretty cute brother moment:-)
Hurray for the Fulton boys. And to all a good night!

A true Solstice birthday...

This year for my birthday I got the itch to enjoy it...every last minute. Carpe Diem. So, a week ago I sent out the shout out to friends telling them of my plans, to see if any wanted to join for all or just a part of the start of my 34th year on this longest day of the year....

And, that is exactly what happened!

We started with coffee, tea, and breakfast treats at Solstice Sunrise at 5:43 a.m. (no pictures of the atendees here....we were still waiting for the coffee to start working!) My neighbor and friend Mary Beth and Karen and my WONDERFUL Alex and mother in law Gloria joined me!Soon after coffee and breakfast Mary Beth and I headed out for a beautiful ride along the South Fork of the Trinity. It was gorgeous :-)

Then we had a beach party with friends :-) Some good cold drinks, a GREAT cold watermelon, and lots of semi clothed cute kids helped the day get even better!

Neighbor Jerry, (Above), even made it down our crazy river trail to help celebrate!

At dinner time we escaped the beach for a salmon BBQ back up at our house. Potluck style and everyone did not disappoint! The best meal I've had in a long time. Add a wonderful session of frisbee and a campfire and there you have it! Except....

...what party is fully complete, no matter what your 30 something age is, without cupcakes! Yum :-)
I am blessed with wonderful family and friends who put forth the effort to celebrate with me on my special Saturday birthday! Happy Solstice ALL! An exhausted 34 year old is down for the count.