Naughty or Nice??

Well, for those of you who haven't already heard (Evan's been telling everyone he has seen in the last 24 hours), Evan's letter to Santa is officially on its way to the North Pole! This is the first year that Evan actually has written a letter to Santa - if you could call it a letter. It did have a proper salutation - "Dear Santa" at the top and a proper closing - "Love Evan" at the bottom, but the body of the letter was just a list, line by line, of what he would like this year for Christmas. No introductions, no fluff, no brown-nosing. Me, being the English major and all, was thinking along the lines of "Dear Santa, my name is Evan Pelletier and I live on Lowell Ave"...blah blah blah..."I've been so good this year and I really hope you'll bring me a new toy" blah blah blah.. Instead it read:
Dear Santa,
Follow Me Thomas
Logging Adventure
Batcave
Speedway
Love,
Evan
I encouraged him to at least add "I've been a good boy this year" at the end! He did good though and actually wrote every word all by himself - with our help spelling of course. It was really cute! And he could hardly wait until school was over to head to Santa's Mailbox to send it on its way (Macy's has a special mailbox for letters going to the North Pole which also helps fund the Make a Wish Foundation). It was super cute! Nana joined us and we actually made an afternoon of it - eating pizza in the food court and riding the Carousel. It reminded me of our fun trips to Chestnut Hill with my own Nana Flurry growing up. A nice way to start the holiday season!!

Sophia the Chatterbox at 15 months!

Hard to believe Miss Sophia is 15 months old! We took a video of her this week in the tub - chattering away. She has a ton of words already - some of her favorites are cookie, backpack, babybel (the cheese), moon, balloon - kind of random first words. Although I remember Evan wasn't talking much at all at 15 months but a couple of the words that he was trying to say were downstairs and dumptruck. Again...random for first words - certainly not easy ones!!! Anyways, we captured Sophia chattering away during her bath and thought the distant relatives would enjoy seeing her at this fun age! I haven't been able to post any videos in about 3 months so I finally took some time to try to figure out the problem tonight. I believe I needed to sign up for YouTube, as it seemed to only be accepting this type of video. This is new to me, so I think the video does show up but then there are some random videos of Snoop Dog or something afterwards which aren't mine so just disregard and bear with me while I figure out the whole YouTube process. (I am only about 4 years behind, right??!) Enjoy!

Halloween!

The kids had a great Halloween this year, despite the colder temps! Mommy, on the other hand, pretty much missed out on Halloween altogether this year, due to an icky bout of the stomach flu that had me bedridden and quarantined from the kids for 3 days! To kick off the weekend, we had planned to take Evan to the Roger Williams Zoo Halloween "Spooktacular" on Saturday evening but had to scrap our plans. Jeff quickly stepped in and tried to create a very miniature "Spooktacular" of his own on Lowell Ave. and carved a few pumpkins with the kids. Kudos once again Daddy to your artistic abilities! Ev was much more into the "spookiness" and "scariness" of Halloween this year and he and Jeff had lots of fun lighting the pumpkins Saturday night and trying to spook each other in the dark. Jeff said that one of Ev's screams was actually movie-worthy, in fact, I heard it all the way through my closed window and through the cocoon of blankets I was wrapped under in my bed!
I was able to at least get out of bed, take a shower and make it downstairs for a couple hours on Halloween night. I even made it outside to take a couple of pictures and to take Sophia and Ev to two houses to trick-or-treat. Jeff took over from there and I took Sophia inside where she and I had the hard job of sitting in the warm house, watching the Pats game and handing out candy. (Do you think Jeff was upset about that??!!! just a little!) Jeff braved the cold temps and escorted Superman through the rest of the neighborhood. Sophia was surprisingly more into Halloween than I thought she would be. She LOVED her costume and proudly ran to the door each time the doorbell rang to greet the trick-or-treaters...it was really cute! Jeff and Nana ended the evening by taking the kids over to visit Grammy Dot on Alpha Road, an annual tradition that both she and the kids look forward to. Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen were also there with treats for the kids! The one tradition I really missed this year was meeting up with the Carlson/Carpenter/Berube clan for our annual Halloween trick-or-treat on Lowell Ave. Hopefully we can resume that again next year. I did get a peek of them from the doorway as they came up the street and they were a scary bunch, as usual!! ;) Here are a few pics from the weekend....

The green pumpkin on the end was one that Evan planted and grew himself this year! We planted lots of seeds this summer (probably a bit too late) and though we had lots of "possibilities", in the end, this was the only pumpkin that made it - I think if we had planted the seeds a bit earlier it would have ripened in time. Regardless, Ev was so proud of it!

My sweet little strawberry and my big strong Superman!!

The very spooky Pelletier house

Sophia and Ev trick-or-treating at the McKinnons

At the O'Neills

Sophia's back from trick-or-treating, now she wants to eat her loot!

"Please Mommy, just one?"

Sophia rushing to greet the trick-or-treaters!

What a scary bunch!

Happy Halloween Grammy Dot!