Other Sources...

Shelly has posted a buch of pics from this last weekend where Jen's family celebrated her father's 65th birthday.

Link one
Link two

Also, a link from Jen's birthday a few weeks ago...

We went over to visit Mamie and her girls. The boys were given pumpkins to paint. Thomas loves the color pink which is the only color I can make out on his pumpkin. He consistently knows the color pink and Nathan seems to know the color orange. Every other color, both boys just guess at. I'm not worried that they don't seem to get the other colors, I just find it strange that this is hard for them. They get so many other things. Nathan enjoyed holding their kitty cat. The boys chase our kitty, so she only curls up with them when they sleep on our bed. Yes, those are chickens in our house! I was vacuuming the mat outside the door and got distracted only to here cluck, cluck behind my back. Speaking of chickens, we are finally gathering eggs, just 1 or 2 a day. Although, Nathan did find a stash of them in the garage this morning.

Their new expression is "It's scary!" We carved pumpkin faces so I think that's were they came up with this. The boys are so much fun right now with their talking. I love the insight I get on what they are thinking when I hear them talk.

They absolutely love the song "the wheels on the bus". They learned it at story hour and now we sing it in the car fairly often. They rode on a bus in September going to the Bolton Fair entrance from parking. They now notice every bus on the road and point it out. Nathan is also pretty helpful in pointing out police cars. : ) Not that I'm worried or anything but I do thank him every time for doing that.

I had wonderful help blowing out the candles on my birthday cake! We had those crazy candles that keep lighting up which had us all cracking up. (Don't bother counting the candles...somebodies took care to put far too many on the cake) I'm not sure where Thomas' shirt went but likely he decided it was wet. He is very careful to take anything off that is remotely wet. The boys love riding in the laundry basket so they hop in any time they think I'll be carrying it downstairs. In the last picture, Thomas met up with some gel!

One quiet Sunday evening, we pulled out of the basement the trampoline. The boys had a fun jumping and tipping it over. After awhile, they used the couch for a launching pad to get into it. We surely don't need to give these little boys any ideas, they do just fine coming up with hair-raising ones on their own. I took the boys to a local rink one rainy Wednesday morning a couple weeks back. We had fun for about 45 minutes and then they were ready to leave. It was nice to see they hadn't lost what they learned this spring. They were a tiny bit wobbly when we first put them on at home to see if they still fit, but had no problem skating. We picked raspberries with Isabelle and her family. As you can see from the picture, I wonder how in the world families with triplets ever take a good picture. The last picture is taken with the boys sitting in the upstairs hallway looking down into our family room.

It has been a couple weeks now that the boys have been capable of opening the refrigerator. It's now a favorite pastime to stand gazing into the fridge while their mom is busy getting dinner ready. Thomas who has discovered where the butter lives, is happy to take out a stick, unwrap it and start chewing on an end. One morning, Matt and I were upstairs while he was getting ready for work. Thomas went down to the fridge, grabbed an almost full 2 litter bottle of coke and hauled it upstairs with an empty bottle for me to fill. When I ask what they are doing in the fridge, I usually get the answer "I'm working!" with a slightly indignant tone. Nathan especially has perfected the indignant tone....like must I say, can't you see?

The boys seem to know now when they are doing something cute because I'm getting, "Mommy, cheese!" when the camera is nowhere in sight.

The other day, I caught Thomas stretching. I did not teach him that, I have no idea who did but he was bending over one side grinning at me. When I asked him, he told me he was stretching. Now both boys do it and ask me to do with them.

Nathan wakes up happy from a night's sleep or a daytime nap with a smile about 99% of the time. It's very nice. Thomas often has a hard time waking up from a nap, not sure if the nap is too long or too short but he gets crying and it's tough work getting him to settle down.

The other day, we left our friend's house after a visit. I knew Nathan was ready for a nap and I could see him in the rearview mirror already with his eyes shut. Next thing I hear from him, "Mommy, I'm sleeping!" too cute.

The conversation this morning went something like this:

Thomas: Daddy stay home?
Mommy: No, Daddy needs to go to work.
Thomas: Mommy go to work, Daddy stay home.

ouch!

The boys are standing next to the Rose of Sharon bushes that we transplanted from our old house. I asked them to each hold a bloom in the second picture, but they are hard to see. We went to visit Jennie last Thursday. The boys did super and Jennie was so happy to see us. She was so cute, putting out all sorts of cookies and when the boys would look for more, she said "oh, give them another so they'll want to come back to see me!" They were a little shy when we first arrived and Nathan wouldn't sit with them for the picture, but she did get a hug from both. The last picture was down in Carver the last Saturday in September to see Isabelle for her birthday. We took a long walk around the bogs and enjoyed the beautiful blue sky.

I want to rant and rave about Thomas' sense of sight and hearing. I have been very impressed with both several times. The leaves have started to fall here and when we took a walk up our hill, he set his blue cup down on the path to pick up on our way back. He spotted it long before I did. I wish I could estimate distances better but I would say it was easily 50 feet away amongst the leaf strewn path. He spots our light brown Siamese cat in the woods all the time and tries to point it out to me....it takes me ages to find her. He sees airplanes in the sky long before you hear them. The other day we went picking raspberries and he told me a truck was coming. Now we were in 100 foot rows, not near the road but we could hear the road traffic which was not what he was talking about. He discerned a vehicle closer and he was right, not long and a van came driving right past the patch. We were driving the other morning to Lexington, past where the boys ice skated last year. I didn't say anything, but as soon as Thomas saw the building he started saying 1-2, 1-2 which what they used to learn to skate. Just neat that he remembered the building and associated it correctly. They will begin another series of skating lessons the beginning of November.

We are going to need to start little lessons about telling the truth to Mommy and Daddy with young Nathan. When any thing negative happens, he is quick to blame it on Thomas or even the dogs. Interestingly, Thomas still happily tells the truth....Thomas did you bite Nathan? Yup. Where? Right there!

Thomas picked up the word yup and says it all the time. He can be in the middle of a full blown cry and you ask him something like want to rock? and he'll take a breath, say yup, and start up again.

We made it to story hour again this morning. The boys are definitely not keen on participating, they just snuggle up close and watch everyone else.

Just a few pictures from a super weekend with Matt's parents. Friday night we had to celebrate a birthday and with Grandpa's being the most recent, he was it! The boys are really into birthdays right now, the cake, the presents and singing the birthday song. Saturday morning we went early to the Bolton fair which is excellent with a huge variety of 4-H exhibits, tractor exhibits, horse shows, food booths and dog frisbee shows. The boys rode a bus for the first time going from the parking to the fair. They were so excited and have talked about it since. We saw a black hawk helicopter land and then viewed it up close. Another really cool first for the boys. About mid-afternoon we noticed hives breaking out on Thomas' belly. He has never had an allergic reaction to any thing and we had a hard time pin-pointing the reason, but the hives continued to get worse through the weekend and Monday morning, his eyes were swollen. As Monday past, the hives receded and his eyes almost got back to normal. It was definitely itchy, but all gone by Tuesday morning. The rest of the weekend with their grandparents was quiet but we all just enjoyed one another so much. We went to get ice cream Sunday night. The last two pictures are from Monday morning before they left. There was lots of book reading, snuggling, walking in the woods, watching chickens, eating, and plain old visiting!