goodbye Blogger. for real.

Finally, here is the new blog. I won't be posting on The House of Jack and Gail anymore, so change your links and feeds. The new address is http://sketchbooksnapshots.com/blog/.

jacks and treats

Jack was fascinated by the pumpkin eating the smaller pumpkin (they no longer represent the kiddos), and he wanted to spoon-feed it its own seeds (toasted) through its eyes.


He came up with a story, which he kept telling of how the little pumpkin tried to run away from the big pumpkin but the big, "shary" pumpkin got it and put it in his mouth.


Fairy Gail floated around the neighborhood, charming all of the older men and women into giving her more candy. She was a sneaky little thing, with her tiny fist-fulls of the stuff. She even tried to steal Jack's.


And Jack was just as sweet, saying "Oh ah. Oh ah," waving his arms for his treats.

The Punks.

three

Happy Halloween from the Ryan children, represented as pumpkins.

dress-up

I've been sentenced to a non-Windows computer, which makes resizing and uploading pictures, and thus posting on the blog, a pain. I hope to acquire required skills soon. Until then, I'm behind on posting things I'd like to post about-- like the consecutive-weekend-visit from Mike's parents, wherein we went to Chuck E. Cheese and Ikea and had all kinds of fun with Grandma and Grandpa Ryan.
Above is Abigail being Abigail. I've been going through all of our old cloth diapers stuff in attempt to purge of most of it and start afresh. All-in-Ones are less-than-impressing us. I cut eye holes in the vinyls- because that's the kind of family I come from, but I didn't grab the camera in time to catch any of that. Mike looked by far the best-- Nacho-Libre-esque.

Jack wears his monkey costume everywhere. "Hi. My name is George. I'm a monkey. I like to swing from trees and hang upside-down and go eeee eeeee ooooh oooohh. I like bananas!" Every time after I put it on him: "I need a banana."


Ballerina Missy Boo.

Gail at 10:12 pm

She begged to sleep with the "babay" (my old baby doll, Stacey) last night, so I gave in. When I went in to take Stacey out before I went to bed, I found this. She's so sweet with her babies.

little bird

Jack has been "catching" little (make believe) birds in his hands lately. It started after we went to the zoo, and there were a bunch of little hoppy birds landing on our table, begging for crumbs. This was going to be part of another project, but I don't like it for that anymore. So now, Jack is excited to have a "real" bird.


When I handed it to Abgail, she looked disgusted and threw it.

my last van key...VANISHED.

I decided to drop off a box at Goodwill that's been in the back of our van for a while now after I ran some errands with the kids this morning. I took my single van key-- not on a chain, mind you, as I lost my entire chain of keys somewhere between Wisconsin and here on our way home two weeks ago-- unlocked the back van gate, got my box out, gave it to the man collecting donations and got back into my van. Jack then asked to be unclothed of his especially-warm, layered monkey costume (which he needed to wear on our excursion) since the back-seat was now super-toasty in the sun (70 degrees outside). I acquiesced and then turned back around to start the van. My key? Who in the world knows? Please tell me where my key is.
For an hour, I turned our van upside down. I looked in the shoes that had been on my childrens' feet the entire time, in the glove box, which had not been opened that day, on the complete other side of the van. I looked through the box of stuff I had donated, in both kids' clothing, under all van seats. I climbed over the seats multiple times, scouring ever nook and cranny and dicovered that our van is a pretty filthy place. I kept thinking, It has to be here somewhere. How do I always manage to do this? (sometimes it's cellphones). I think I do get it honestly-- I remember digging through the back of my mom's van on a similar key-vanishing occasion.
Nevertheless, I called Mike at work- several times, on random strangers' phones, until he was finally at his desk. And he came and entrusted me with his van key-- the very last (out of three) one. What a silly thing to do. I suppose this would be an even better story if I ended up losing that one somehow on the way home, but that intelligent man took it from me and placed it back on his chain as soon as we pulled in front of our house. I hope he lets me borrow it again so the kids and I are able to get out once in a while. We really need to get a copy made before his vanishes too.

gorgeous day

We've been couped up inside- sick with nasty colds- for the past few days, so I told jack last night that we would do something a little more fun today. His eyes lit up as he told me he wanted to go to "the blue fing... the blue fing with the toys." He kept saying this, and I'm so glad that "Ikea" finally came to him because Mike and I were clueless. I told him maybe we'd go there when the weather wasn't supposed to be so nice (last night, they were calling for 70 and sunny).

He was even more excited when I mentioned the zoo. I'm surprised there weren't more people taking advantage of the weather, but there really weren't many people there at all, which was nice for getting good views.

The animals were all very entertaining-- getting in the water, roaring, rolling around, being cooperative for the camera. It seems most of the times we go, we can't even find them, especially the rhino.


I think Abigail's interactions with the animals added to that. This seemed to be the first time she really got much out of them. She was riding on my back in the Ergo and got a great view, whereas she's always been in the stroller before, not really showing any interest. She yelled "Hi! Hi! Hi!" to just about all of the animals we saw, waving enthusiastically. There was no one else around when we came to lions, and Gail began her loud greeting.

He turned to see her commotion.


I love baby elephants.


And giraffes.


Abigail also got the gorilla to turn and give us a smile.



Live baby Jack.


Jack wanted to walk after lunch- the only animals left to see were the sea lions, which Gail had a good view of in the stroller.

We've always been in such a hurry to get out of the zoo before that we had never even seen the sea lions before. But since we got there early and Jack was in the stroller most of the time, we made it through everything with plenty of time to spare, and we ended up spending about a half-hour watching them. They were so entertaining.

The baby was so cute- kept trying to nuzzle up under Mom.


We were lucky to be there during feeding time (which means tricks time). They were jumping way out of the water, dancing, standing on their front flippers, barking and clapping, etc.

Jack sat with his head pressed between a little opening for a better view, and when I said it was about time to go, he said, very sweetly, "I'm just watching the sea lions. I'm just gonna watch them do tricks." So we stayed a little while longer, went down the slides a few times, then headed home- with our windows down.


Such a beautiful day! We're headed outside again after nap time.