The busy basketball season is starting at our house. Bill and Kate are gone a lot and it's just me and the boys at home together. I am trying to take this opportunity to consciously BE with my kids. Too many times I try to get them interested in something so that I can do something else. And not usually something fun- usually I'm doing laundry or dishes or paying bills.

The Friday before last, before Halloween, Bill had basketball practice and Kate went to a friend's house. Henry played on the computer for awhile and Tommy and I played with the winter hats and gloves and scarves! We pretended it was snowing, and we were building a snowman and throwing snowballs and making snow angels. (All of this was Thomas' idea, of course. I can't come up with ideas like that!)

I don't know if I can convey how fun Thomas' imagination is. He is obviously more imaginative than Henry, but I think even more so than Kate was. Well, maybe that's not accurate, maybe I just don't remember Kate being 2.5 anymore. But we had fun together. Sometimes his imagination can be exhausting, but still great!

That Friday afternoon my sister-in-law had alerted me that It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown would be on at 8. So the boys and I snuggled up on the couch to watch it. I was a little concerned that they might not "get it"--that these old cartoons wouldn't make sense to my modern kids. But they really loved the program. They laughed a lot at Snoopy and wondered whether the Great Pumpkin would appear. Most of all, for me, it was bliss to be on the couch with an arm around each boy. Was there a happier mom anywhere that night?

Saturday morning we headed out for "Boo at the Zoo". The kids wear their costumes and sponsors set up "treat stations" throughout the zoo. The weather was COLD and WINDY but not so bad as we went in and out of the buildings. The treats were kind of lame- lots of mini tootsie rolls. And I was irritated to find several groups handing out gum and jawbreakers- not really safe for little ones. (I noticed this AFTER Thomas had chewed and swallowed his first piece of gum.)

We went on the boat ride and that was extra fun because we had to snuggle together to keep warm. Me and my sweet little blond Darth Vaders. (They look like innocent young Anakin somehow predicting his dark future.) I'm sure that Henry liked the boat ride most of all. (The picture up at the top is from the boat ride.)

This past Saturday we visited the library, did some shopping, and visited Daddy at work (sometimes he has to work on Saturday mornings). Sunday we went to church and then walked to the playground. The trip to the playground was a little forced- Henry really didn't want to go, and made that painfully clear the whole time. The only part he enjoyed was walking through all the piles of leaves along the way, and I was afraid that some grumpy old man would come out and yell at us for messing up his leaf piles.

I'm struggling a bit right now to find some common ground with Henry. He doesn't seem to like doing puzzles as much anymore- something that was a guaranteed activity together a year ago. He likes playing games on the computer a lot, but that is such an isolated individual activity. Especially in our house, where the computer is shoved down in a basement corner. L's husband is one of those guys who finds deals on e-bay all time, and she said that he could help us get a cheap laptop. I am thinking about doing that, so that Henry could at least sit at the dining room table to play his games. Any thoughts about that or other new activities for us to do together?