Trip to Williamsburg

Yesterday Grandma and Grandpa Heichel treated us to a trip up to see historic Williamsburg, VA.  We didn't make it up there until late afternoon (even though it's only an hour drive)....getting everyone napped, dressed, fed and ready to go takes a while!  I think G & G have a new appreciation for why I'm perpetually late.  But we had a beautiful fall afternoon nonetheless and we enjoyed walking around and taking in all the scenery.  Jack had fun watching the reenactments and seeing the various "townsfolk" dressed up to play their parts.  It did seem as though there weren't too many buildings open to actually tour but that may have been because we were there during a more off season time. 

The Governor's Mansion. 

I think we all would like to go back and take this tour on our next trip (it costs extra)!

Can I get one of these at home?  Just kidding!

Beautiful horse-drawn carriage.

The twins hanging out in their usual spot.

I dressed the boys similarly in the hopes that I might get a nice shot of them together and this one didn't turn out too bad!  The original photo was really washed out but thanks to the magic of photo editing I was able to make a bad picture look pretty good.

One of the houses in the village. Jack is on the front steps making friends with a cat who was trying to nap in the afternoon sunshine.

As we were leaving we were able to listen to a special performance by the Fifes and Drums which were marching and playing as part of a commercial they were filming on the grounds.

Halloween!!!

Grandma and Grandpa Heichel came down for a visit over Halloween which was good timing because I realized that in order for all the kids to really enjoy the festivities I needed back-up!  I was able to take Jack out trick-or-treating while Grandpa handed out candy at our house.  Simultaneously, Grandma was feeding the babies their dinner and getting them to bed on time. I could never have done all this by myself!!  Jack had originally (long ago) decided that he wanted to be Spider Man for Halloween.  So we made a trip to Target early in the season to ensure that we would have first choice over all the costumes (you see, I have not one single crafty bone in my body so all my children will have store-bought costumes at Halloween...I suppose there are worse things...).  Unfortunately, all the Spider Man costumes came complete with a full mask which was something Jack was not going to entertain.  This made the Batman costume (which only had a half-mask) seem much more appealing and this is how we ended up coming home with the Batman outfit.  Also a bonus, Batman had awesome muscles.  :-)  Jack thoroughly enjoyed the actual obtaining of the candy but tired after walking around our neighborhood for about 45 minutes.  His pumpkin bag was filled by that point anyway so we headed home (sweaty because it was hot!) to check out his loot and help Grandpa pass out candy.  I think Jack may have had just as much (if not more) fun handing out candy to the other kids as he did going around to get it!!

Yay for fall leaves! 

Jack's little pumpkin and our fake lighted one.  I unfortunately failed to remember to buy any larger pumpkins for carving...oops.

Batman!!

(Matthew)

I was too cheap to buy the twins costumes since they weren't actually going trick-or-treating but I did get pumpkin onesies for them so I'm only sort of the worst mommy ever. Well, maybe not because then I forgot to take a decent picture of the twins in their pumpkin onesies. Hence the hasty shots of them in their highchairs before heading off to bed... :-)

(Nathan)