Halloween

It has been since October that I last posted - I vow to do better - once again.  Here's a little catch-up with the Hones.  Let's start with Halloween.

We had a fun and very warm Halloween.  Campbell once again chose to be Harry Potter.  The only hiccup was that his lightning bolt scar which was so pronounced last year, has faded quite a bit so he consented to a little makeup that just traced his actual scar.  Addison was again a bumblebee and Cooper was again a baseball player - we take comfort in the familiar.
But Coleman was so excited about his costume.  He came up with the idea on his own and was afraid to share it with anyone for fear that they would steal his idea.  We had several parties and gatherings that he had to wear a costume to so he changed it up each time - a Jedi knight, a wizard, an injured boy on crutches.  But it all accumulated on Halloween night when he became DEMON DICE!  He created a pair of dice out of cardboard and used white paper and black spots to make the dice.  He cut out a slot for his eyes.  And then he painted his face black and had glow-in-the-dark vampire fangs.  He put on his costume and squatted down so the dice rested on the porch and then his siblings would ring the door and he would wait until the person was passing out the candy and he would raise the dice and hiss at them.  It was very entertaining for Marc and I to watch. But soon the dice became heavy to carry, and then the teeth started to bug him.  By the last few houses he was just a kid in a t-shirt with a face painted black.    HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Sleeping Experiment

Our family has decided to try new sleeping arrangements in the hope that bedtime will go more smoothly over the next little while.  After Cooper stopped nursing, he moved upstair up to his own room and slept great - until he found he could get out of bed and cry out for us by the bannister.  Addison also was sleeping fine until Cooper moved upstairs, and then she decided she needed to sleep on the trundle bed next to Cooper's bed. 

Months and months later we thought things were going fairly smoothly, Coleman and Campbell share a room and Addison and Cooper slept in the same room.  But...as Cooper got older he wanted to play with Addison - EVERY NIGHT!  Bedtime became a battle.  Addison is still refusing to sleep in her own room, prefering the floor in the brothers' room over the nice bed in hers.  So...we made a change.  We pulled Addison's bed into Coleman and Campbell's room.  Luckily, it is large enough to fit all three beds.  We moved her clothes into their room also and turned her bedroom into a large playroom.  The kids have a great area to play in the basement, but this will give them a nice roomy place to make a mess!

I'm so excited to see how it all comes together.  Fingers crossed that things will go smoothly.  Marc heads out of town this month and I need this new system to become routine so that bedtime will be easy while he is gone.  Wish us luck!

Tall Like Lincoln

At the breakfast table, Coleman was talking about one of the girls in his class.  He said he knew how she got to be so tall.  When I asked him how, he said, "Well, her birthday is on the same day as Abraham Lincoln.  So she must get her height from him."  I suggested that she may get her height from tall parents.  I told the kids that they were stuck with a pretty small mom and so, they might just have my small genes.  Coleman said, "As long as I stay taller than Campbell, then I'm ok."  Campbell is creeping up on Coleman daily and we just wonder at what point he will surpass Coleman.  So I said, "There may come a day when Campbell is taller than you."  Campbell broke in and said, "How can that happen?  He's always going to be older than me." 
I brought in the lovely example of my sisters and I.  Sweet Michelle is the very oldest and also the very smallest of us four girls.  Coleman just looked at me and said, "I'm going to be the shortest????"

New York - Part II

After the Empire State Building, our children were treated to a crazy scavenger hunt in Times Square which was truly part scavenger hunt, part shopping spree where they were completely spoiled by Scott & Jesse.  

Afterwards, we rushed to get to the balloons for the Thanksgiving Day parade - as did most of the people in New York.  It was INSANE!  I was so worried that we were going to lose one of the kids.  But we got to see the balloons which DID make it more fun as we watched the parade the next morning and yelled out, "We saw that one!"

 The balloons ended up taking much longer than anticipated due to the crowds and road closures.  We ended up catching a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty from across the water and eating dinner way past bedtime at Scott & Jesse's.  It was a fun and full day but we were ready to get back to Michelle & Laura's and just rest.

I think we arrived back at Michelle & Laura's at like quarter to three in the morning.  

SO VERY LATE - but once again our kids were troopers!

New York City - Part 1

When we knew we were heading up north for Thanksgiving, I was so excited to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City!  What are the chances we would be in New York on Thanksgiving again as a whole family?  But, then I started to truly imagine all that it would entail: get everyone up and bundled to ride the train into the city, find a good place - stay there for HOURS before the parade would even begin and then try to keep our four kids happy and not cold for the many hours it would last.  Our children are not big parade lovers in good weather so I didn't think I'd be able to sell the idea to them.  BUT...they blow up the balloons for the parade the night before.  So, that was our new plan, to play in New York and see the blown up balloons on the day before Thanksgiving.  We couldn't convince Aunt Michelle and Aunt Laura to join us - they were too busy preparing for Thanksgiving dinner.

Marc has a work contact that was eager to take us around New York.  Scott, and his partner Jesse, met us at the train station and they had not only rented a car so that we wouldn't have to lug our stroller all over the subways, but they had prepared an entire scavenger hunt for our children.  They had even stopped at Subway on the way to the train station and picked us up lunch.  On the train ride in, the kids had fun playing with tangoes.  But poor Cooper fell head first into the aisle, which was wet and muddy due to the weather and his clothes were covered in nastiness.  So, one of our first stops in New York was picking up a quick outfit as the extras we had brought were too small for him.  The kids each got their own disposable camera for the trip and I think they had used up their pictures within the first hour. They got so excited they couldn't stop snapping away.

We were so excited to see the Christmas Tree in Rockerfeller Center but it was still being decorated.  So, in reality, we saw a little tree and a lot of scaffolding.  The kids also wanted to go ice-skating, but not only were we lacking in time, it was also covered to aid in the decorating of the tree.

We went to Macy's to check out their Christmas windows - which were a bit bizarre for my taste.  But, they had this cool interactive window where you could make your own ornament.  With the aid of each child, we created the lovely, red Hone Christmas Ornament.  Alas, we couldn't get it to send it to the main computer where it would have created our ornament and we could have purchased it.  Oh, well.  We got pictures - who needs more?  The close ups of Cooper show his healing nose where he fell out of the pod as we were packing and scraped all of the skin off of his nose.  And the red bump on the top of his forehead from his crash on the train.  This child seriously has more bumps and bruises than all of the others combined - minus Addie's broken bones.

Our fun tour guides had gotten us the express pass for The Empire State Building.  We remembered when we had gone with Coleman in July of 2004 and the wait and the heat were awful.  This time, the weather made it so bitterly cold, there was no wait whatsoever - no use for the express pass then.  We nearly froze out on the observation deck and could barely look at the camera to get the obligatory photo taken.  But when we went up even higher - we were buffered from the wind and were able to truly enjoy the spectacular views.