Veterans Day Parade

We will celebrate Veterans Day in the McQueen house. No forgetting a holiday that is trying to honor those veterans America has forgotten about. Those guys who preserved our sublime freedom, I will go to a parade and clap for them any day of the week. 

 Jacob waved his flag with gusto. 

 After the parade we walked back to our car and stopped at Voodoo Doughnuts first. This is Aaron's Oreo doughnut.

 Alex sticks to his favorite, the face doughnut. Its a huge maple triangle with more doughnuts attached to the front to make a face. Totally yummy.

Halloween

This picture cracks me up because appearantly Alex was not having fun at the elementary school costume parade. He had this "I hate this/I'm going to be sick" look on his face. 

 We dressed up as Sherlock Holmes and Watson for a costume party at a friend's house. When it came down to the actual halloween night, Jacob really wanted me to wear the Mario costume. So we were a bit of an odd couple.

 These boys look so old in this picture. 

 Alex and Aaron both went trick or treating with friends, supervised by their parents. It meant that Chris and I took Jacob trick or treating by ourselves. It was so awesome to spend time with Jacob experiencing all of Halloween for the first time. Everything was new and exciting. We have a great neighborhood on Halloween so there was plenty to look at and Jacob would have nothing to do with a house that had green, red, or purple lights. Only white lights were safe, the others were "too scary". They came home with a happy amount of candy and ate it all within a couple days.

October Around the House

Jacob is at a hard time in life. He has a love/hate relationship with napping. He hates to do it at 1 pm in his bed. He loves to do it at 5 pm on the couch. We all know the story. They sleep until 6:30 and are wired for the rest of the night. 

 Jacob struggles wearing shirts his size. He says they are "too tight" and so he opts for Alex's shirts as shown below.

 Aaron lost another tooth. His smile is down to 4 permanent teeth in the middle and four spaces surounding them. So cute.

Alex's Birthday

Alex wanted to go waterskiing this year for his birthday. Yay. Something we can enjoy as a family with some good friends (who happened to have a boat) It was the best warm fall day and the kids had a blast. Then for Alex's actual birthday we let him pick a restaurant for dinner and he picked Billy's Boston Chowder House and it was a huge success. Chowder in a bread bowl. Fish and Chips. Heaven. 

I even got on the biscuit and lived to tell the story. 

Santa Cruz Trip

September is the perfect time to go to Santa Cruz. Its so warm and the place is deserted. We had so much fun. 

September 6th, 2013

The day started out so well. Peaceful. My friend gave me flowers and we thought about Andrew and the life he lived. 

Jacob took this picture of me.

My dad sent flowers that we enjoyed together. 

 Then it all went wrong. Jacob was playing in the backseat of the van in the Target parking lot. He was standing on the back bench, holding himself with his hands planted on the two captains chairs, swinging back and forth. Then his hand slipped and he crashed down, forehead first onto one of the metal anchors that are in the floor of the van. His forehead had a large gash. Jacob didn't really cry a lot, but I did. Being the 1 year anniversary of Andrew's death, I was on very thin emotional ice. I looked at his head, saw the gash and tried to call 911 but my phone didn't work. So I started screaming to anyone in the parking lot to come over and dial 911 for me. Jacob wasn't acting normal, he was staying very still on my lap and keeping his head down. The firetruck came, the first responders checked him out and gave me the choice to drive him to the ER myself or call the ambulance. I coudn't imagine driving him by myself with that gash and him acting all limp. So they put him in the ambulance and I followed them there. This is a picture of Jacob coming out of the ambulance at the ER. He was so happy to see me.

 He got his stitches and thouroughly enjoyed his ice cream. 

 Alex and Aaron were so proud of Jacob they gave him candy and lots of hugs.

 To remember Andrew we went to his grave and released white balloons with led lights in them into the sky. We said a message that we wanted to give to Andrew before we released them. Then we watched them float up forever. We could still see the lights, as small as the stars for 5 minutes or so.

Labor Day

Had a big party at our house with...16 kids in attendance. Definitly out numbered the adults. It was so fun! And Jacob only made 2 cans of pop burst by throwing them on the ground.