Pre Christmas Joys!

We have been in full swing with our Christmas celebrations! 

 Crafts, parties, books, cookies, movies, songs, etc.....

Here's my boys all playing with their building blocks.   They are into blocks right now.  Levi loves to eat them.   Joel loves to make robot birthday cakes with them.   And Clark makes robots and cars.   Here's a little secret: they are getting  Legos for Christmas!!!  I know they will love it.  I just have to figure out a way to stop Levi from eating them all.

 This will be Levi's first Christmas!  Hard to believe.  It feels like he's been part of our family always.

Levi loves to eat the Christmas lights. 

Several times, I have caught him with the bulb disconnected and in his mouth.  Scary.

Here's our cookies we made yesterday during our party.  The kids had fun cutting and decorating their cookies.  And by the way, royal icing is the easiest to use because it dries out and can be transported without a huge mess.

A Creative Way to Use Gummies

My son found a new way to use gummies--ear plugs.

Joel's Firefighter Birthday

My little hero turned three. He wanted a firefighter party for his third birthday.  So we whipped out a fire truck cake and some fiery decorations!

We had Firefighter Mike come and talk to the kids about fire safety.  The children learned how to call 911 and stop, drop, cover, and roll.  They all earned their honorary firefighter hats after.

 We worked together as a team just like firefighters and collected loose balloons in a balloon game.

 We played Hot Potato with a hot "potato sock". 

Afterwards, we had smokin' hot dogs and five alarm chili for lunch.

Happy Birthday to a little boy who I would not be surprised grows up to be a fire fighter,  police officer, or soldier.  He has a strong spirit and heart to serve.

Firefighter axe!!! 

Fall Fun!

Fall is the Loftons favorite time of year.  Apples, pumpkins, leaves, sweaters, chai tea, chili, fires in the fireplace, trick-or-treating, chilly cold winds are just some our favorite things.

Here's Joel and Levi enjoying the leaf pile!!  Levi also had a leaf snack while he was there.

Clark is into climbing trees now.  Broken bones are soon to follow. :-)

The boys love being pushed by daddy on the swing set.

The view from our backyard is so amazing to me.  I love the colors and mountains so much.

Joel is having a ball digging out pumpkin seeds. Put that boy to work, and he's happy!

The boys and their pumpkin this year.

 Clark thought it was gross and backed off immediately.

The boys and I planned a pizza theme birthday for Michael with a pizza from Papa Johns and a chocolate chip cookie pizza cake too.  The boys had fun making fondant mushrooms, peppers, pepperonis and decorating the cake!

Bowling and Standing for the First Time

Here's the boys bowling for the first time at a friend's birthday! 

To be very honest, I think the boys had fun, but it was stressful.  Clark kept falling down as he let go of the ball.  Joel kept trying to throw his ball when it wasn't his turn.  He ended up throwing it into the crowd once. :-)

Here's Levi STANDING at the table train!  He's already in love with trains!  He's growing up too fast.

Our Computer's Funeral and MORE

Oh, how we have grieved the loss of our old faithful friend, Mr. Computer.  He was already up in years.  Michael built him in 2003 from scratch.  I am sad to say that while I was on the Internet, I picked up a wicked virus that completely killed our machine.  Praise God that we felt the "need" to run a back up the night before!!  (Thanks, Holy Spirit)

 We have been blessed with a laptop from incredible friends!!!  But I just haven't gotten back into the swing of things like downloading photos and blogging.  In the meantime, we are saving to buy another computer.

On to family news....
My baby, Levi, has learned to crawl and sit up on his own!!!  I can't believe it.  He's now seven months old.  We started him on solid foods right after he turned seven months.  He is loving his new privileges and abilities.  Another part of his new development is that he is addicted to his mommy.  He will not let me leave him with strangers in church nursery.  :-( 

Joel has entered the scared zone.  He is afraid of the dark mostly.  We leave all of his lights on while he goes to bed, but we find our middle son often in the middle of our bed at nights.  That's one of those things I always said would never happen before having children.  Ha....now I am eating those words.

Clark is loving homeschooling.  Over night, he has woke up to a world of words.  He is constantly asking me to read and spell words for him.  He's reading basic three letter words by sounding them out.  And he is really trying  hard to read.  It's so exciting to see him develop as a reader.

Michael is loving his new job as an outside adjuster.  And we are enjoying the new company car!

Fall is in full swing here.  The colors are splendid and the temperatures are chilly.  Oh, how I wish I could freeze time and make it last longer.

Super Hero Party

I wanted to embrace my boys love of super heroes,

so we threw a super hero party and invited some super friends.

 

Sparkle, Super Baby, Spiderman, Batman, Luigi, and Batgirl  are ready for action!

The first thing the Super Hereos did was complete an obstacle course.  They had to climb stairs, slide down a slide, jump over a building in a single bound, jump over hot lava, walk over a balance beam, knock down a giant, crawl through a tunnel, and finally climb a wall and go back down.  Once they complete this obstacle course, I knew they would be ready for a real challenge.

Here's Batman and Luigi climbing over the wall.  This was probably their most favorite part of the course.

Here's our friendly neighorhood Spideman jumping over a building in a single bound.

Our heroes after the course just playing around.

After the obstacle course, we got an urgent call that Mr. Bad Guy had kidnapped some people and had them trapped in his evil lair.  Using lava safe kitchen towels, the supers worked together to cross hot lava to rescue the people in need.

Soon the water balloon bomber was caught by the somewhat wet superheroes.  He was handcuffed and wrapped up in toliet paper to keep the world a safer place. 

Mr. Bad Guy was very sorry and to repay society for his crimes, he allowed the superheroes to have water balloon target practice on him.  And that by far was the highlight of the day!!!

After the battle, all the super hereos had cupcakes and snacks to replenish their powers.

Family Pictures

 We got to see our old friends, the Ameys, from Texas on Labor Day!
We had so much fun catching up and introducing our little ones to each other.
I asked Colette to take some pictures of our family, and she did a great job.
Here's are some of the ones she took.  Thanks Colette.

I think I'm going to have this one made into a large print to put in our bedroom.  I love my little family of five.

Old Fashion Fun at the Drive in Movie Theater

 

If I haven't said this on my blog, let me say it now.   I love Chattanooga, and I think this is a great place to raise a family.  One more reason I love my home is the drive in movie theater.  A couple of weekends ago, we all went to see Cars 2 and Transformers 3.  It cost about $20 for the whole family to watch two new blockbuster movies and eat a HUGE bucket of popcorn.   I should have taken a picture of the screen.  They boast they they have the largest and most unique screens in the world.  I believe them.

The weather was perfect--just right for snuggling and blankies when the sun went down.  The boys preferred a bed on the ground while they watched their movie.  Clark fell asleep toward the end, but Joel was ready for the second movie at 11:30 pm.  He's our late night owl.  :-)

I can't wait to come here just with my husband on a date! 

So needless to say, I HIGHLY recommend you try it out too if you live in the area! 

Apple Pickin'

I love September for many reason, and one of those is it's apple month.  So we hopped in the car and headed to a local apple orchard.  I wanted the boys to see where apples come from and get to pick their very own apple.  A team of wild horses and any threat I could make would not have stopped them from plucking a delicious fruit from the tree.  My boys' need to pick an apple reminded me of the temptation Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden. 

 

No farm is complete without a tractor.  And to be honest this is more popular than the apple tree. 

There is something about boys and horse power.....

 

Here's the cute little store.

The boss--holding the real power (the money)

 Each boy picked their own apple or two, and I bought 80 pounds or two bushels of number #2 Galas and Empires.

Applesauce, apple pies, apple crumble, apple oatmeal, Waldorf salad, and crisp apple snacks are on the menu at our house!!

Super Cookie Woman and Sidekicks

My boys are so into good guys and bad guys that I am constantly in a major battle or swapping from one secret hero identity to another.  Today I was Super Cookie Woman with the powers to make incredible cookies.  We baked a cookie the size of the house which was a gigantic feat.  Then, we defended our giant cookie from the bad guys that wanted to eat it all up.  And yes, Clark usually decides my super powers and name.  I decided that I would risk public humiliation to share our little adventure in hopes to inspire the super hero in all of you.


I hope you too will get caught up in a child's imagination, and go on an exciting adventure.

Heros in the Front Yard

Today the boys wanted to play in the front yard.  I asked why the front, and Clark (I mean Super Police Officer Clark) explained that there were people to rescue in the front.  So that sealed the deal.  

Who am I to stand in the way of Truth, Justice, and the American way?

Immediately, they found a bad guy--the lady with the camera.  She is always suspiciously following the boys around.  Hey! Spider Man come quick and help get this bad guy.

 The super heroes conquered all the odds to defeat the bad guy.  

They had to even climb into the Red Volcano.

 

With all epic battles there are tradegies.  Our friendly neighborhood Spider Man took a tumble during the fight.

 

No worries, his buddy comes to the rescue.

 

Hooray for the good guys.  Another day safe because of the hard work of our super heroes.

 

"It's really nothing ma'am.  Just doing my job."

 

This is just an innocent bystander enjoying the show.  I'm sure the whole neighhorhood did too. 

These super heroes were LOUD! 

Off to dinner and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  These super men need their super powers recharged.

Labor Day

Awww....Labor Day. 

  Today started out just right!  All five of us slept in late and woke up to beautiful rain pouring down and grey skies.  Michael made us breakfast: eggs, bacon, and toast.  Then I started working on finishing up a project upstairs.

I caulked and painted around a window that Michael installed a few weekends ago.  As I was finishing up, I heard Clark squeal, "Daddy, I am so excited I could do the happy dance."   I walked downstairs to find the two front rooms had been turned into roller coaster train track!

 The boys were having a blast watching their trains fly down the incline of their monster track.

 

We took advantage of the weather and played in the rain.  So far 7 inches of rain and counting.

 

After dinner they took a nice warm bath.  It was a great way to end a perfect day!

 

Levi the Lion

 

Here's Levi in his first ever pajamas!!