Big Sitters

Ladies and Gentlemen, Liam can sit up on his own!

Liam likes it when Proud Mama takes pictures of her big boys.

But he likes his toys better.

Dash sits up, too!

They're not super stable yet and use mom or dad or even some pillows as guard rails. But if they don't tip too far to the side or back, they can sit for hours! Or maybe more like a few minutes.

How'd they grow up so fast? Wasn't it just yesterday that I had to support their wobbly little heads?

Don't Leave Me Hangin'

The boys learned a new trick during our pumpkin carving party

Can you tell what it is? I'll show you a little more clearly.

My boys are super cute AND awesome.

Punkins

No Halloween is complete without pumpkin carving. At least, that's true for Sean. I'd be content just drawing a face with a Sharpie. But that's not much of a challenge, is it?

This year we had the Hamakers over to join in the Halloween joy. Jeff's a fellow med student, which you may have guessed from his intensely focused face.

He's also a new dad to sweet little Christine. Sweet little Christine didn't like mom and dad spending time on their pumpkins and let them know it.

What? This angelic little girl cry? Nah, couldn't be, she's too precious!

But Jeff was still able to pull out a pretty creepy looking Jack-O-Lantern. My, what big teeth you have!

Angela created an awesome scalloped lid for her pumpkin. That's hard work, people.

But then she sliced her finger off and couldn't finish. Just kidding, she didn't cut herself, but doesn't it look like she's about to chop off her thumb?

Sean and I stuck with our Mario theme for the pumpkins. Sean started with a nice rendition of Bowser.

Then whittled and carved until he had...

Sculpted Bowser! And I made a funny little Gumba.

Thar she glows!

Look at those teeth!

Look at those eyes!

Good thing we had Mario and Luigi around to save us from these villainous pumpkins!

Note: The Hamakers blogged about this too, check it out for some stinking cute pictures of our kids

Nintendo Should Have Sponsored Us

Presenting the video game version of the Bradley family: Mom as the Invincibility Star, Dad as the 1-Up Mushroom, Liam as Mario, and Dash as Luigi.

Liam was the perfect Mario. Well, we'll call him Baby Mario since he's not a mustachioed child.

He tried real hard to sprout some whiskers but he just couldn't do it. He was so sad to disappoint.

Dash wasn't sure about being Luigi but we told him about all the cool things Luigi does.

And he was thrilled to be his doppelganger! Wall jumping, somersault jumps, rescuing princesses? Sign him up!

They sure are Super Brothers.

We had an awfully busy Halloween weekend (made worse by my insistence on taking a zillion pictures every five minutes), working around the boys' napping and eating schedules. Sheesh, it's hard to do stuff out of the house with babies!

On All Hallow's Eve, we went to the trunk-or-treat at church where everyone squealed over the boys' cuteness, thought Sean was Toad, and wondered what what in the world my costume was (to be fair, I didn't hold my arms out the whole time which makes it a tad difficult to tell I'm a star).

Then we headed out early to make the party at Sean's school. Turns out the party starts out with a talent show (with not a very baby-friendly noise level) so we thought we'd just wait out in the foyer area until intermission so Sean could show off his sons. Well, my friends, talent shows take a loooog time, so it was rather late by the time everyone came out. The boys were doing okay but I was rather cranky, heh heh. At least the boys enjoyed 15 minutes of fame as all the students (well, female students at least) swooned over Mario and Luigi. It's not every day they see something so adorable, after all. I was a proud mama.

Then to celebrate the day itself, we went to a friends little party full of cute little families dressed to the nines (Halloween style). While there, we discovered we were the longest married couple. Weird. Good thing we had some kids to show for it.

Upon returning home (after driving all over the greater western Houston area dropping off treats to ward members), we all collapsed in exhaustion from all the delightful Halloweeny activities. A couple of sugar crashes may have been involved for Sean and I.

Let's see some funny faces!

I'm getting a plotting dictator vibe from this face.

And Dash is channeling Daffy Duck.

Now, before we could be through with the Halloween festivities, we had to end it with...

...a Super Smash Brothers Brawl. When the hats come off, you know they mean business.