It has been really warm and really busy around here- and we are happy as can be. On Saturday it was so nice we hooked up the new bike trailer and went for an extra long bike ride. It was wonderful. We just rode around the city. Henry loved the ride and just sat in the back and said, "weeee" for much of the ride. The weather has been soooo warm here. At first I was a little bugged, I really like cold weather, but I then realized how much money it is saving us by not having to turn on the heater yet, so I've decided to be happy about the warm weather until Thanksgiving.
Taylor decided to teach Henry about the laundry shoot this week, and he loves it! He wanders around the house gathering clothing and he begs to open the shoot. He has no idea where the clothes go, just that they disappear. Problem is, we don't use the laundry shoot because it goes to the same place as our landlord's shoot and I am just not into mixing dirty underwear. When we let him use it, Taylor always runs down to the basement to prevent intermixing.
We found a very old and freezer burned fudgesicle in the freezer this week. It wasn't really edible anymore so we fed it to Henry. He loved it.
It's Tuesday and I am finally getting around to posting our Halloween picture...life is a little busy around here. We got our picture taken with Mayor Byron Brown. He seems to pop up at all our neighborhood events, I think it is because we live in a very politically active and signifigant neighborhood. This was at our neighborhood Halloween Party. Mayor Brown loved Henry the astronaut.
After the Parkside Party we had dinner with friends and then headed over to a fire station in the neighborhood that hosts a haunted house. We took turns watching the kiddos and being chased by chainsaws. We had a wonderful Halloween and Henry loved the trick-or-treating.
On Sunday Henry had a little mishap. We had the missionaries over for dinner and we were paying very little attention to the little guy who fell and bit his tongue...which bled profusely. It was awful, and I was really glad Taylor was there because I couldn't bare to look at it. He bit almost all the way through his tongue. And here is a picture I took this morning, it isn't nearly as bad as it was on Sunday, but you get the idea. It was so sad. Luckily soon after the incident I had to go to work so Taylor got to deal with the bleeding for the rest of the night. But don't worry...he is fine now. I don't think it hurts anymore, and luckily tongue wounds heal like magic, or so the internet says.
And lastly, our favorite find of the weekend was this lovely sign we saw taped in a car window at the store. You know, bumper stickers and strange political messages attatched to a persons car, always say a lot about a person...they mostly scream, "I am weird and crazy!" But the rest of us sure get a kick out of it. If this person were to park his/her car in our neighborhood, they would surely get their tires slashed. We decided that they must live in the suburbs...or in rural WNY. Thats where all the Republicans live. While we don't always agree with all the political ideals of the city dwellers here in Buffalo, we love where we live, and chatting politics and religion with our neighbors is always very interesting and it has given us a new perspective.
Tonight was the church Halloween party, and aside from the fact that it started at Henry's bedtime, it was a lot of fun. Henry was the world's cutest astronaut. And Taylor and I had every intention of dressing up but we never got to making our costumes. Today was a busy day. I worked, and Taylor had school, and Henry was with a friend for the afternoon which = no costumes. I wasn't very sad.
This is Henry with his little friend Taylor who quite possibly had the cutest costume ever
Henry spent a good part of the evening trying to lift this giant pumpkin. But what is more intriguing than Henry trying to lift the pumpkin is the size of its stem! I promise it really was that big, it isn't just a strange angle. Must be some genetic mutation.
The highlight of the night was the live music: aka Taylor, some guy in the ward who likes to play his electric guitar, and the back-up singers Rachel & Tiffany. I must admit I was very hesitant about the whole idea, and slightly embarassed, but they redeemed themselves with their rendidtion of the monster mash. Everyone loved it, and they sounded pretty darn good. I wish I would have video taped some of it.
Here we are the Happy Halloween Hawes Family:
And probably the best part of the evening was having someone in the back seat with Henry to keep him company on the way there and home. He was in love with these two girls, Marcella and Clarissa. We need to hire some gnomes or elves or something to sit in the backseat and keep the monster baby happy.
And lastly the very best costume award at the Halloween party goes to Richard & Erica. It was one of the greatest comstumes I have seen in all my life. They were Peewee Herman and his genie in a box Jambi. When the box was closed it was covered in jewels. It was just like the show. And to top it off, Erica is 9 months pregnant and that genie face is on her belly.
Henry is obsessed with books. He is crazy about them, and it drives me crazy! All he ever wants is for us to read him stories all day long. I know I should be happy about this, but he wont really read them on his own, he wants to be on my lap while I read to him. Any ideas how to get this kid to watch just 30 minutes of Sesame Street? I know, I know... babies aren't supposed to watch TV, but I just need an extra 30 minutes a day- you know, to shower and blow dry my hair and simple things that cannot be done with a screaming banshee pulling open the shower curtain and soaking himself.
Isn't he adorable. He thinks my IPOD is a phone (and yes he chews on phones. He still eats everything he can get his little hands on). He puts my Ipod up to his ear and walks around the house saying, hi, hi, hi.
Since fall is here and we had a big bag of yummy western new york apples, I attempted a homemade apple pie- crust and all! I did it, and the crust was surprisingly easy. Taylor told me he was super impressed and that the crust was perfect. Speaking of fall, it decided to come back to Buffalo. It was 65 degrees yesterday, I even got a little sunburn on my run. It was wonderful.
And lastly, here is a little video of Henry. It's kind of boring, and It's mostly for my mom who wants to see more of the little rugrat, but at the end I also included a close up of Mr. Teddy's nasty ears for Leisy. I think Henry may get some sort of disease from him.
I am back from my blogging hiatus. It was a long week. However I did accomplish quite a bit including submitting my revised thesis (I am so close to being done I can barely stand it!), I spent way too many hours at the Gap this week, and we got new tires on our car (we also have to fix the alignment this week) uggh. I hate car problems. Anyway, so we had an insane week, and I am not getting enough sleep (which is what happens when you teach seminary at 6am and you are up late writing a thesis and/or working) and as a result of no sleep I have TWO awful, horrible, no good, very bad canker sores. One of the canker sores is under my tongue on the part where your tongue connects to the bottom of your mouth. It makes me want to die.
Enough of the complaints...they make me sound unhappy, and we are actually quite happy here in the Hawes household. Being busy often means being happy for me.
Today was the most wonderful of days. Taylor and I had the whole overcast day to spend together. I love dreary gray days. I was not scheduled to work and Taylor got his studying done so we spent a Saturday together...all day. We were discussing it, and we can't remember the last Saturday we had to sleep in and relax. We decided to take a little road trip to Pumpkinville. It is an hour or so from Buffalo, and the drive was beautiful.
Henry slept most of the way home, and we were happy as can be. He has really taken a liking to sleeping with a piece of mr. teddy in his mouth. It really is gross. I am going to post a picture of the nasty, wet, black ears sometime soon. I sure love this kid.
On our way home we also decided to stop for lunch. We had yet to taste one of Buffalo's most famous restaurants, Big Teds. The locals all love it and highly recommend it, and we had never been. We both quite enjoyed it, and we'll probably go back sometime soon. Taylor got the hot dog, I stuck with a hamburger, and Henry ate our pickles.
Our neighbor and zoo resident Akili the giraffe died today. The zoo people don't know why she died. I personally think that H1N1 has hit the zoo. This recent death of another one of our neighbors only brings me to ask the same question I asked last week...where do dead giraffes go? In my last post about dead elephants, someone in New Zealand (whom I have never met, nor do I know) happened upon my blog and told me that when the elephant died at their zoo, they chose an undisclosed location in the Zoo and buried it there. I can only hope they decide to bury the giraffe on the premises, if they want, I will even volunteer my back yard. But really, I am even more committed to learning the fate of VERY large and difficult to dispose of animal carcasses. The newspaper article about it all, says that part of her will be incinerated and part will be donated. My questions are: What parts? Who cuts her up? And what kind of tool do you use to cut up a giraffe? I will talk to the Zoo keepers soon. I am just dying to know. Until then, you will all just have to wait.
The best part of this new stroller we got is that even if Henry isn't buckled in, he can't get out! Unfortunately he doesn't always love being trapped. His friend Taylor on the other hand didn't seem to mind it until Henry panicked.
I bought the little monkey some sunglasses at the babyGap this week. They were 87 cents. He loves them, and now he leaves ours alone.
Henry loves Mr. Teddy as most of our avid blog readers know, and as of late, everytime we walk in his room during naptime, he has part of Mr. Teddy in his mouth. His favorite place to chew is the ears. The problem is, he chews on the bear, and gets him all wet, then drags him around the house, and now his ears are practically black. Then when bedtime comes again, he chews on the dirty ears. It's gross.
Henry got a package in the mail today...more footed pajamas!!! (handmade by Grandma Hawes) He also got a new story book. He loves them both.
On Monday we went on a little trip to Target to wander through the Halloween aisle. I love the Halloween aisle. At target there is a whole Halloween section. I loved it! We decided to try and scare Henry while we were there, and at first he was somewhat unphased. He just kind of pushed things away.... Then, I put on a very scary mask, and he was horrified! As you can see from the picture below, it was actually really sad, and a little bit funny. I wish we had gotten a better picture so you could see the mask too, but it was just too sad, we couldn't bring ourselves to do it again. I felt bad, and I was slightly worried that some other shoppers would call us in to DCFS for child abuse. Don't worry, soon after we took him to Old Navy to play with the mannequin dog...he was in love.
He tried to drag this dog all over the store. It was really cute.
As most of our blog readers know from our last post, our neighbor Buki the Elephant died this week. Its sad, we may go to the Zoo today to express our condolences, however what I really want to know is...how exactly do you dispose of an elephant carcass? I have been watching the Zoo daily for a large dump truck leaving the parking lot...or some sort of truck, but even then, once you take the animal away, what do you do with it? I imagine they cremate it? Or maybe they preserve it to study it? But there is no way they have body coolers or cremation ovens big enough for an elephant. So do they chop it up? I know that sounds awful, but really, I am dying to know. If they chop it up, who has that job? Ugh. Don't worry, I will find out what happens to dead elephants, and once I know, I will share it with all of you.
Anyway, on to our life. Henry has been quite a little trouble maker lately, and he has taken a extreme love to my scarves. Isn't he cute? I think that too, until I walk into any room he has been in, and I find this: Does anyone want to take him off my hands for a few days? I really do love him, and I really do believe that God made babies take long daily naps so their mothers wouldn't give them away to gypsies. Henry is taking one of those naps right now, and I love him for it. I have cleaned up the kitchen but unfortunately, his room is still in disarray.
Onto a more exciting note, we found one of these at a yardsale this week:
Taylor decided to teach Henry about the laundry shoot this week, and he loves it! He wanders around the house gathering clothing and he begs to open the shoot. He has no idea where the clothes go, just that they disappear. Problem is, we don't use the laundry shoot because it goes to the same place as our landlord's shoot and I am just not into mixing dirty underwear. When we let him use it, Taylor always runs down to the basement to prevent intermixing.
We found a very old and freezer burned fudgesicle in the freezer this week. It wasn't really edible anymore so we fed it to Henry. He loved it.
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