basketball time

 My boys love basketball, and its basketball season around here!  My camera stinks for action shots in the gym, so I take what I can get.  This is Jacob.  He has a couple friends on his team and the rest of the kids are from all different schools.  They have done a good job of getting to know each other so they can play as a team.  Unfortunately, they haven't won a lot of games so far, but they go out and do their best every time and its fun to see the improvement over the last month.

Ryan started basketball again too, but I don't have any pictures yet.  His team is playing in a league that is for older kids, so they are currently on a losing streak -- very much so!  Most of his team consists of the same kids that he's been playing with for the past couple years, but there are some new players too.  Hopefully his team will be able to play in a different league this winter where they will all be the same age and be able to compete better.

happy time of day

 One of the happiest times of the day for me is meeting Matthew after school.  I love to watch him come out the school doors and race down the grassy hill to meet me!

On the way home we'll talk about what happened at school or recess and he'll tell me the new words he learned in Chinese class. It makes me happy.  Matthew, I love you...VERY MUCH!

ho ho ho halloween

 Ho! Ho! Ho!  Happy Halloween!  Jacob wanted to be Santa Claus this year.  It was the best idea ever -- very clever, and VERY funny!  But wouldn't you know it, the one year we come up with a WARM costume, the weather is actually unseasonably warm and the costume downright hot!  Oh well!  Our Santa had a great time trick-or-treating and brought home a sack full of goodies.  Matthew chose to be Captain America - awesome!  I love his "grin".

 The kids are ready to start knocking on doors!

We had to get a picture of Captain America sitting on Santa's lap letting him know he's been a good boy this year.

 We carved pumpkins the weekend before Halloween.  Maybe we should just call it "decorating" pumpkins, since Jacob was the only one that actually did some carving.  His Jazz logo turned out pretty good!  Matthew's "Y" pumpkin did get gutted though, so that we could put lights inside to make it glow up. Me, I just opted to stab my pumpkin with a few sticks this year and bag the gutting!