The Year I Forgot the Birthday Candles...

Chuck is determined to not let me live this down. I did buy some for his second birthday cake. Who get two cakes, you ask? Chuck does. His mom brought one that we had Sunday night and I made one that we had Monday night. We had a fun weekend with Mel and Jack and we have had a good week with Chuck being home. We are having a Halloween party tomorrow night. More pictures to come!a>

Gotta love those magic candles! Chuck got a wonderful Dora b-day card from Nicholas and a game for the Wii from the boys and I. Happy Birthday, Daddy! We love you!

Pumpkin Patch

The pumpkin patch we went to this year is really a Christmas tree farm. Riding on a hayride through a Christmas tree farm is not quite the fall experience I was looking for, but I found another pumpkin patch about and hour and a half away that we might go to this weekend. They also have a corn maze (a pumpkin patch must! and 16 acres of actual pumpkins growing on the ground). On Saturday nights, they have a pumpkin glow with 400 pumpkins lit up. When we lived in MA, we went to a pumpkin glow with 4,000 pumpkins that was amazing. If you are ever near Oxford, MA in the month of October, I highly recommend it.

Dribbling...in more ways than one!

Nicholas has absolutely amazed us lately. In the last two months, he has gone from a grumpy toddler to an absolute joyous, verbose little boy. He still loves his sports and he has been potty training this week! It has been so easy! He is really interested in shapes so I started last weekend with having him try and go potty on a square before his bath (lately, every night we would try and he would say he couldn't but then go in his bath). Finally, I grabbed him out of the bath and put him in front of the potty in time and he went last Sat. night. Well, since then, as long as we had cut out shapes in the toilet (circles, squares, triangles and hearts), he is excited to go! We have had to color some of them with markers (if anyone decides to try this I would recommend colored tissue paper as markers on toilet paper squares don't work so well). Today, he took off his shorts and started to pull off his diaper and said "Da Da, help!" and my dad said "Oh, let me help me put your diaper back on" and he said "No, Da Da, tee tee in the potty" and he went even without his shapes. Later today, he decided he had to go and I left him in the bathroom next to the potty and left for a moment to hear him go "Oh no! Mommy, shoo wee!". He had pooped on the floor next to the potty. Yes, gross, but hey, he gets it! In less than a week! Patrick took over a year to potty train. Nicholas just amazes us with his vocabulary and how much he seems to know. I don't doubt that Patrick knew as much, but he just took longer to put it into words. My parents have been here since last Sunday night because on Monday, I had a nerve burning procedure in my neck in between 4 vertebrae. I am not supposed to lift for a week, so it has been great having them here to play with the boys and help out. It has really made me realize how much we miss them in our day to day lives. The boys are so close to both sets of grandparents and we feel so blessed to have them in our lives, regardless of how far away. Nicholas has also learned to ride his tricycle in the last couple of weeks and I included a picture below of Patrick whizzing by on his heelies. He is always busy with his friends. We had a close game of monopoly together today as everyone in the neighborhood was out, but it ended quickly when the doorbell rang and he was swept away again. I am enjoying my boys and their accomplishments so much!

Pooh's Dream Come True

After the hurricane, we noticed water spots on the ceiling. This led to an inspection of the roof for a hole. It turned out to be a big hole (the size of a coke can). It was curious that we had been finding dead bees out in the front of our house since we moved in. For some reason, we didn't give it much thought until the water spots arrived. I guess you figure if you pay $700 for a detailed inspection and also pay for a pest inspection from a reputable company, that this would have been found out already. Not true. So, the pest people came out last Tuesday and killed the bees and then plugged the hole with expandable foam, so the worker bees out for the day couldn't get back in. They asked if we just wanted the hive killed or killed and removed. Would people really leave a dead hive in their roof? Anyways, the pest guy came back Monday morning with a ladder, razor blade and a tarp. When I opened the door, he said, "OK, I'll just be coming in and out. I have got to come up with a game plan, first." Hmm, I thought, you are the pest removal service and you don't have a game plan? You advertise on the side of your truck that you remove bees, but you are not sure how you will do this? So he sets up his ladder and barely makes it to the spot where he thinks he can go in. His first try was through the wall, but as you can see he ran into a 2x8 (Nicholas was watching him cut and said "triangle!"-smart boy). Next he went to the part of the void space above his head. My neighbor, Paula, was over and we were chatting away with our cameras poised, when all of a sudden thousands of dead rotten bees fell on top of his face and head. No need to tell you the words that came out of his mouth.

There were seven layers of homey comb and from what the pest people said, each layer represents a season. That is almost 2 years!

Honey dripped all over the pest guy (and our walls) as he pulled the honeycomb out. It was so disgusting and smelled really bad.

He plugged up the square with a folded up tarp and some paper towels and honey is still dripping through the tarp onto a tarp on the floor. He showed me with his flashlight that above where the hive was, the roof deck had rotted away and all that was left was shingles. Now, we need to figure out how to clean up the honey soaked wood, have the roof repaired, clean up the honey on the wall and possibly repaint AND call the exterminator out again to check for mice or squirrels. Chuck awoke the other morning to Baby Kitty staring at the wall. There was something scratching on the inside. Yuck!!!