WW - Relax

Last Sunday we were all exhausted from all the weekend fun, so we enjoyed a day of 'nothing'.

....I'm already in need of another day of nothing.

Halloween

This Halloween we had our annual trick-or-treating hayride (last year's here). Our neighborhood is part of the Texas Hill Country, so the kids legs need some help making it door to door. So, we all gather at one house (this year it was ours) for a picnic style dinner, and then one adult per household heads back home to pass out their candy. After eating/socializing, the rest of the group loads onto the trailers (3 this year). The kids love trick-or-treating in the large group. Jax loved it during the first 5 or so houses and then we moved him into my SUV that was pulling the large trailer. He enjoyed the warmth of the heated car and the movie that was playing. After trick-or-treating the neighborhood has a post-party where adults and kids alike enjoy themselves. This year's Halloween party worked out for perfect timing of the UT game, thanks to the DVR.

Eating his pizza

Load them up

Jax's first-ever trick-or-treat house - The Angerame's

Ms. Lisa hooked him up with some yummy m&m's

Hudson checking out his loot, rather than watching where he's walking

Dino Jax now in the comfort of the car

Hercules

I didn't get many pictures this year, Hudson and Noah were all over the place and moving fast door-to-door with friends. They had a lot of fun!

Now, onto the true holidays...bring on Thanksgiving & Christmas!

Pre-Halloween

Friday night, we went to a fun Halloween party over at our friends, The Trinkles, house. Adults and kids alike had a great time! Thanks for having us over!!

During the Halloween party, the kids sang Happy Birthday to Jax, who is short a couple of weeks of turning 2 years old. My friend, Candice, was having a hard time handling the thought we weren't throwing him a big party this year...so she brought the cupcakes and got everyone singing. It was so cute watching him blow out his two candles...the first one with air out of his mouth and I think the second one went out from air from his nose. :)

Our house is ready for trick-or-treaters

Ruen boys are ready to party!

Trinkles - Party hosts

"Just punch me" Coach

Why is everyone singing and looking at me?!?!

That second candle was blown out by his nose! Ouch.

I love candy-corn!

But, I REALLY LOVE cupcakes!

Thanks Candice for the birthday cupcakes/song!

Blurry, but too sweet to delete!

Harlem Globetrotters

Pirate & Hercules enjoy Wii

Saturday, the boys worked hard carving their pumpkins:

I wonder what's in there...

We made yummy ghost cookies

My punkin kept stealing the pumpkins

Trick-or-treating pics to follow in a separate post. We hope you all had a Happy Halloween!

WW - Mmm Mmm Good!

I never claimed to be competing for Mom of the Year!

Jax keeping himself happy & busy by feeding himself chocolate cake with his hands:

Giddy Up!

Cowboy Bob brought his pony to visit Jax's preschool. Jax loved every minute of it!! These pictures will make his grandpa proud!!

In the helmet

This past weekend Hudson wanted to ride his bike around the neighborhood. While getting his bike out, look at what we found.

I assume these have been here since spring/summer since we haven't been leaving the garage open during the day since then....and with that, I assume these eggs are not going to hatch. :(

Yes, they are still in my garage, hung right back up where the Momma bird originally left them, I just can't bring myself to dump them out. I feel horrible...I must have locked the Momma bird out of the garage. Sorry Momma bird and especially to the baby birds.

My conscious is feeling a little better now. Next week, onto cleaning them out.

Roar or Rawr??

I thought Jax should test-drive his Halloween costume. I needed to know if he liked it and if it fit, so I could return it if not.

As I was uploading the below pictures, I googled "rawr" to see if it is actually a "word". I know most people use "roar", but I feel like we (me and my kids) say "rawr" for dinosaurs. In my search results of "rawr" was the urban dictionary and did you know that their #1 definition was:

1.
Rawr
A word that means "I Love You" in dinosaur.
"Rawr"

Giving hugs

Biggest smile ever

How perfect! So, "RAWR" it is, because I love this little dinosaur!

Wild Things

Today was my first appointment with the Podiatrist. I thought I had broken a bone, however I have a neuroma. So, today I got my first shot into the nerve...Ouch! I am scheduled to have these weekly shots for 6 to 8 weeks to hopefully avoid surgery. This pain has been occurring for over 5 years and it kept getting worse and worse because I never had it treated. I had assumed to get it corrected would require surgery, and who with 3 kids has time for foot surgery. We are hopeful this helps with the pain and I can start wearing closed-toe shoes again! I can't wait to get back into my fall boots!

Jeff is home today helping with Jax because of my doctor appointment and foot pain. So, with his help, we got to go see Annabeth (6th grade - family friend) perform the puppet show Where the Wild Things Are. The local middle school's drama club put on the show at the city library. It was so cute. Jax sat still for half of the first performance, but then he saw there were cookies. Cookies always win over his attention! We watched the show twice and he enjoyed his cookie on the way home. Pictures posted below.

A couple of other updates:

• Hudson returned to school today - Finally!
• Tonight Noah has a baseball game that will be muddy, muddy, muddy to say the least! Go Green Machine!!
• Tomorrow, both boys have makeup baseball games due to all the recent rain.

Jax & Annabeth:

My Wild Thing:

Not on my birthday.

Things you don't want to happen on your birthday:

1. Your oldest son to have the H1N1 Swine Flu.


2. Your son to be fever free for 48 hrs and planning to return to school and baseball, but fever returns out of the blue.


3. Your son to have to stay at home sick from school another day.


4. Your son to have to miss another baseball game after missing this past weekend's tournament.


5. You to have a horrible headache all-day-long.


6. The middle child to pull a smooth one on Daddy while Momma sleeps in....He wants to stay home from school since everyone else would be home on my birthday. Can you believe this worked?!?


7. The smoke detectors go off at 4am.


8. You can't figure out why, other than one must have a low battery. Which you can't find.


9. You get to check every inch of your house/attic looking for fire.


10. You check and recheck the carbon monoxide detector.


11. ADT starts calling your home at 4:01 am to check on you before sending out the emergency vehicles - which have been sent before.


12. Your husband, while trying to figure out the alarm system, pushes the silent medical alarm button on the key pad.


13. ADT starts calling again at 4:15am. At this point you give up on the idea of getting more sleep.


14. You re-break a bone in your foot.


15. Your appointment with the Doctor is not until Friday.


16. You change the baby's dirty diaper to find he put a poker chip in his diaper before doing his dirty business. Needless to say, it was all just thrown away. Yuck!

And finally, you don't want this to happen on your birthday either:

17. Your husband to get the 'from him' and the 'from the kids' Victoria's Secret gift boxes confused, and not knowing he did so until after you opened a gift from the boys that surely the boys wouldn't have picked out. Your poor son turns blood red in the face.

Good thing we celebrated before yesterday got here!

Beware - Flu is here.

Yes, we have one confirmed case of the flu in the Ruen household.

Hudson woke up in the middle of the night last night with a horrible cough and 102 fever, so I took him to see the doctor this morning rather than to the baseball tournament he was supposed to be playing in all weekend. He was heartbroken!

We have never had the flu, so I wasn't prepared for the up-the-nose flu test....Hudson freaked out (and that's an understatement)! She told me it would be about 15 minutes for the test results, but she came back in only a couple of minutes because his swab showed positive for the flu strand A pretty much instantly. The doctor said he is actually lucky to have A (which is what the H1N1-Swine Flu is) rather than the B. Apparently, B keeps you down longer.

We are washing hands, covering coughs/sneezes, spraying lysol, drinking fluids, getting lots of sleep....and watching lots of movies this weekend...hoping the other 2 kids don't get sick too.



Noah is still playing in the baseball tournament this weekend. Go Green Machine! And, go Bandits...Hudson is cheering you all on from afar!