Santa!

Jolly old St. Nick visited our house last night, much to Claire's delight.  It seems he knew we were going to be out of town for christmas!  What a smart guy.  This morning when I announced this to Claire as she was reading stories in her bedroom, her mouth literally dropped open and all she could say was "WHAT?"  Then she went running out of her room, giggling and hyperventilating, down the stairs to the pile of presents in the living room.  After playing with their new toys all morning, we finally went to see Santa Claus at the shopping mall so the kids could tell him thanks for all the toys.  I think Santa was confused about what Claire was blabbering on about (she really did get chocolate ice cream toys and she was awfully appreciative).  I know he doesn't look very cheery in the photo, but this Santa was actually really friendly and spent a good bit of time chatting with Claire.  It was great!  Correction:  It was great for Claire.  Tyler was pretty much in shock during the whole experience, as you can tell from his deer-in-headlights expression.

For Great-Grandma Phyllis

Thank you for the holiday activity cards!  The kids loved them!

say cheese!

After living in California for almost a decade and never really getting to experience a true autumn (my favorite season), I am finding the change of seasons here to be so refreshing!  We're on the verge of winter weather now after what has felt like a very long fall season.  We took advantage of the gorgeous natural backdrop in October, and had family photos taken outdoors. 

one step at a time

Here's Tyler starting to take steps with a walker toy:

That was one week ago.  This week he is able to push the lion walker all the way around our kitchen island, so long as someone helps him steer it.  I'm a proud mama!  The best part is that he is laughing as he is doing all of this hard work. 

Warm and sunny in November

We may have had our last warm weather weekend, and we made it a good one! We ventured out to see the Great Falls of the Potomac River, just northwest of Washington DC. It lives up to its name, being much bigger than I had imagined. We enjoyed the overlooks and river-view hiking then we headed into town and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Georgetown. There's a nice walk along the old C&O canal where you can get away from all the congested sidewalks full of shoppers. We discovered a playground nestled in the neighborhood also, which was just what we needed after dessert and coffee at Dean & Deluca. Actually no, that wasn't the perfect end to our day. What made it perfect was Claire's successful potty stop at a store on our way back to the car! (I don't want to jinx us but she wore underpants and used toilets full-time all weekend. We're so proud of her!) No wait, that wasn't the perfecting ending either.  What was REALLY perfect was enjoying a great bottle of wine and skyping with family after the kids hit the sack early. Yeah.

Frick-or-freat!

We really did try to coach Claire on how to say it correctly, but she is stuck on the "f" sound versus the "t".  Plus after hearing the "trick or treat, smell my feet...(and so on)" jingle she quickly shortened it to her favorite parts so all we heard all day was "frick-or-freat underwear!"

Claire helped me decorate our driveway and porch while Tyler was napping.

Then we painted pumpkins.

Frick-or-freating got underway promptly at 6!

Claire's buddy, Cameron, joined us for the festivities.

Here's Claire with her spoils at the end of the night.  She hit up about 15 houses, which is double what she did last year.

Tyler "helped" Mommy hand out candy at home.  That means he was tireless in his mission to grab the candy basket!

Halloween block party

We love our neighborhood.  You couldn't ask for more friendly folks, and there are always little kids out playing in the cul-de-sacs every day.  One of our favorite annual events is the halloween block party, which was held last weekend (thankfully) before the snow and ice struck yesterday.  Claire stuck next to her best bud Cameron most of the time.  Tyler had no choice but to tag along with his big sister -- not cool, but the other babies didn't judge him. 

Getting good photos of these guys is impossible! Here they are checking out an older kid's "scary" ghost costume.

 Then they decided to hang onto their hats for some reason?

Tyler just gave up and started picking grass.

This is the best shot I could get of our two! (Tyler is sullenly tearing up a leaf.)

Here's the whole lot of them:

Tyler spent some time all by himself in the bounce house.

And here's Claire giving me a cursory flash of teeth on our way to the party:

A gorgeous fall hike

We visited the Catoctin mountains this weekend, about an hours drive from our home.  It was so worth the drive!  The mountains were covered with beautiful shades of red, orange, and gold.  I'm bummed that I didn't get any vista photos, but here's some great ones from our hike under the colorful canopy: