Pumpkins

Allen's sister, Lindsay and her finance, Michael, came over yesterday to visit. Allen and I were working out in the yard...mowing, planting panies, weeding, transplanting day lilies...etc. when they arrived. The yard looked incredibly better once we were done. I'm so glad to get that out of the way. Afterwards we ordered pizza and did some pumpkin carving. I thought the pumpkins turned out pretty well. It was fun, but by the end we were all glad we were done. I roasted some seeds this morning. None of them liked the thought of eating pumpkin seeds, but we always did that growing up and I love the tradition of it. If you're interested, here's what you do:

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Rinse and drain pumpkin seeds. Dry on paper towels. Spread onto an ungreased cookie sheet and salt. Roast for 2 hours stirring every 30 minutes.

Here are a few photos of our pumpkins:

Joiner News

We went to Columbus this past Saturday. It was a good visit. This was one of the pictures we took on a playground there. It was a beautiful day and a good visit with my mom.

Everett has started taking more and more steps on his own...finally! On Sunday he took the most consecutive steps ever, across the kitchen with Allen and me both watching. It was about 5-6 steps. Since then he's been doing about the same. This morning he had his eye surgery, for his blocked tear ducts. While we were in the waiting area another mom asked Allen, "How long has he been walking?" It was pretty funny, because we still don't consider him a walker. It's a lot less paramount than I thought it would be. Even though many of my friends have told me this, I still expected him to take his first step and then no longer crawl from that point on. I don't know why this was my expectation...everything else with babies is a progression, especially with my son. So, I guess Everett is walking now, although he's still also crawling a lot too. :)

His eye surgery went really well. It was tough watching him go under anesthesia, but everything was fine. I'm glad it's over. He's taking a good nap this morning and should be since we had to get him up at 5:30am this morning!

Boys will be Boys

I know boys and girls are different, but it sure is funny once you have your own. My two friends with girls Everett's age were talking about how they are just now having to use the word "no." I was suprised because that's a word Everett is quite aquainted with. Like now for instance, as he pulls all our books and cds off the bookshelf while I type this blog. :) I think boys are just more exploratory and like to test limits a little more. Like today at playgroup as my son climbs in and begins to stand up in a bouncy seat to which my friend (who has a girl) says, "Wow, he's such a climber...my daughter would never try anything like that."

Everett and I were just playing outside and I snapped some cute photos that I think demonstrate what boys this age are like.

Preparing my attack...

On guard...

On the move

Everett has really started to love his walker the past two days. Once I get him going he takes off until he hits a wall or the coffee table or a toy, etc and I redirect him. He will go back and forth across the room at least 10 or more times. Hopefully this will help him in the walking department. Our friends lent us an outdoor ride on toy that he is really loving too.

Even though he's not walking yet, we just put a pair of overalls on him and let him crawl around outside. He's got the cutest crawl, with his left knee tucked in and dragging, he uses is right leg and left hand to scoot around. We sure that the left knee in his overalls will be completely worn out very soon, but they were only $3 at a consignment sale...so who cares! We've been putting shoes on him a lot more now that the weather is getting cooler. He's still not too fond of them, but they sure look cute. He spends all his time trying to get them off and once they're off, he loves chewing on them. He's very interested in shoes in general now.

This weekend was great. We went to the Duluth Fall Festival. We all split a funnel cake...yum. You just can't beat it. Then we went to Eats in Midtown for dinner. All that good food for cheap...you can't beat that either. Sunday we spent the whole day mowing, fertilizing and reseeding our yard, as well as planting some hostas. It was a lot of work, but Everett cooperated and slept almost the whole time. It felt really good to get all of that done.