My cousin Brooke and her son Kaleb came to visit us this past week. Kaleb is about 5 months younger than M, so the boys had fun together. She lives a few hours away and we have been meaning to get together and unfortunately, "busyness" has won for way too long. Thankfully, we finally made it work and it was nice of her to come visit. We took Kaleb to the zoo (can you tell this is one of our favorite activities?) and just let the boys play a lot. We took them to N's favorite store, The Red Store (aka Target) and our tiny little mall. They are from a very large town, so I hope the small town activities and shopping entertained them a little!
On Thursday, we headed down to my Uncle's house to spend 2 nights. We got to take the boys to their cousin Daniel's basketball game which N particularly enjoyed since Daniel is one of his heroes at the grown up boy age of 13!
It is so special to spend time with family!

M and Kaleb making music together!

M and Kaleb eating "dishies" together. That is one of M's new words by the way!

Rub a dub dub... Three men in a tub! (This will be blackmail one day!)
Brooke and Lydia

The Dan Man playing hoops!

M and Lydia going for a wagon ride... Lydia couldn't resist squeezing those cheeks!

Lake

We went to the lake last weekend overnight with some friends and the boys had so much fun. We had a campfire and roasted marshmellows. The boys were not too crazy about smores, but really enjoyed the marshmellows and the fire! The men went duck hunting early Saturday morning and took the little boys on a ride in the fishing boat when they got back. N thoroughly enjoyed this and was very serious about looking for turtles and alligators the whole ride.

We had a great time!

M especially loved the marshmellows. He would roast one, take a bite, throw it on the ground and get ready for another!

N was all business helping the men get ready to go in the water.

M was super excited about his upcoming first boat ride...

however, the excitement was too much for him. He got in Daddy's lap and fell fast asleep!

Football Confusion

N and M are bombarded with college football. Not only do we live in a huge college football area, but their Daddy is an Auburn fan, I am an Alabama fan, and Uncle Jamie is a Georgia fan. To make matters worse, we have all been competing to win the hearts of the 2 little Jones boys for our specific team! To prove this utter confusion in 4 year old terms:

N and I were watching football Saturday and he said,

"War Tide, Sic 'Em... Woof Woof Woof."

Enough Said!

Halloween

The Cowboy Jones family had a great Halloween! N insisted that we all dress up and it was a lot of fun. We went over to some friends' house with a few other families and had a cookout then took a hayride around the neighborhood. The boys had a lot of fun trick or treating and taking in all of the costumes. This was the first year the M really understood what to do and he was cute to watch. He had no fear and just walked right up to the houses and stuck out his hand or bucket. He always stood there afterwards to say "Da" (Thank you) which was funny. N had a ball and went so fast that I really had trouble keeping up with him. Thankfully we were with a big group so we had lots of helpers!

I had talked to the boys quite a bit about Halloween and how we really enjoy dressing up, getting candy, and celebrating Fall, but that Mommy and Daddy do not like all of the scary and distatesful aspects of the holiday. On the way there, I told N about the fact that he would probably see some scary costumes and some decorations that were not nice, but that he should just ignore them and tell Mommy and Daddy if he was scared. The first house we went to, there was a boy dressed up like a skeleton and N said (in his VERY loud voice), "Mommy, EWWW yook, dere is a boy dwessed up in a berry yucky costume!" My friends all got a kick out of that!

Cowboy N and M... N did his whole outfit all by himself and wanted to look like Woody from Toy Story.

All of the kids before we left.

N told me right after this picture that he was ready to go home... He looks so tired!

M enjoying the spoils of the evening!