Stone Mountain Jr

The other day we discovered a great park just a few minutes away.  We spent the morning hiking up a Stone Mountain Jr.  Elliot and Henry hiked the whole way barely taking a break before we stopped for a snack at the top.

Halloween

For halloween the boys transformed into Chris and Martin Kratt from Wild Kratts (a PBS show about animals).  The boys just love that the Kratts brothers can get creature power and become a wide variety of animals.  When they tried on the costumes they both looked up at us quizzically and asked us as they pushed the creature power button "How do we get there?" and sadness set in. It took me a second to figure out what they meant but then it clicked. They thought that by wearing the costume they'd be able to use creature power to become a white shark, for example.  After going through a painful, and luckily brief, acceptance process, they began tapping in to their imagination and creating all sorts of of role plays.

I realize now that I don't have photos from trick or treating but I do have photos of:
First trying on their costumes the night before Halloween.

And their school parade.  I don't know how well you can tell through the photo below, but Elliot lets the gloves hover on his hands which just cracks me up.

I think these costumes will be worn for many days to come.

Field trips

I recently chaperoned Henry's first ever field trip and had so much fun doing so.  Since he is now in a Pre-K program, based at their daycare, this field trip, to the zoo, was through the regular school system, which meant we got to ride a bus.  I had not ridden a yellow school bus in so long!  

 Henry had mentioned a few times over the previous weeks that he didn't want to go to Kindergarten (next year) because he didn't want to ride the bus alone.  Well, when presented with the option on his field trip Henry marched right up to the bus, got on, sat down, and then said I could sit with him if I wanted to. Hmmm, if this experience were any indication, I think he won't have a problem with the school bus next year.

He was so stoked!

 Here they all are:

 I posted this one because I thought it was funny that the photo captured the fact that Henry wanted to be the team navigator, using the zoo map, throughout the morning.

Another fun adventure we recently went on was to a corn maze with some friends.  One of the families we went with is from Kenya and Haiti and had not only never done a corn maze but were intrigued the whole time why we were paying to traipse through a corn field especially since no one would end up eating the corn. It was really interesting to talk with them about these topics and other funny cultural practices namely as Halloween approached.

 Figuring out the clues to solve the imbedded mystery

 Determining our next direction in hopes that we'd make it out before too long.

And then that family that found the corn maze so peculiar (and fun) treated us all to our first fried oreos.