A lover and a fighter

I think I may have intentionally put off blogging about Duncan's birthday because it is just so hard to figure out what to say about Duncan. He is so many things and often sometimes I wonder if he might be schizophrenic. He is so thoughtful and loving and considerate and helpful and responsible and creative and crazy funny and entertaining and annoying as crap (I think this is mostly a product of his age). When I am not with him life is a lot quieter, but boring. He wears his feelings on his sleeve and will totally punch you for hurting those feelings, and then hug you and tell you how much he loves you. Even when I try to spank Duncan, I usually end up laughing because he will say or do something funny without even trying. He wakes up and he is "on." Sometimes he sits up in the middle of the night and just starts telling a story-I assume it to be his dreams- and then lays right back down and sleeps. The things he says when awake and sleeping vary from "not of this earth" to "extremely creative" to "prophetic." He loves to be wild and loves to drive his toys and ride the four wheeler and then go make some cookies in the easy bake to have with our afternoon tea. He is definitely my helper. When I vacuum, Duncan comes along beside me with his toy vacuum. And he never forgets anything, much to my dismay, sometimes. Duncan loves his brothers and tries very hard to take care of Henry and slave for Roland. When we first brought Henry home, Duncan would have these rainman moments when the baby would cry and Duncan would wake up grabbing his head and freakin' out. He has since stopped, but he still tells me that it hurts him when the baby cries, and I believe him.
I tell Shane that I always thought that we are a product of our environment and circumstances, but Duncan has proven me wrong. Like Lady Gaga says, we are born this way.
Duncan keeps everyone else in check, including and especially me. I call Duncan my replacement.
Happy 4th Birthday Duncan!
(shoutout to Aunt Erika for the great pic)
Getting woke up by Daddy on birthday morning
Birthday at Pawpaw and Grammy's
Birthday at school


You'll never guess what Duncan got for his birthday
Happy Birthday to our Duncan Butters!

Fall Fun

Even though I have seemingly skipped a whole season, I have not given up on blogging about the rest of our 2011. I have been frantically making costumes and frantically cooking for parties and frantically going to school presentations and frantically shopping for Christmas and trying to meet deadlines at work (which are always over the holidays for some reason) and literally have to wear my tennis shoes every day because I don't know when I will need to run. But...it has been so much fun and the boys make it all worth it.
Fall here was beautiful and we had a lot of good times. I personally like fall because there are so many exciting activities to use as lubricant for our daily grind.

Roland and Duncan dressed for Awanas' cowboy and indian themed trunk-or-treat.

This is what BFF is all about. This is Roland and his friend Dallas in the corn maze.

Roland taking a rest in the corn crib.

Classmates: Henry, Juliette, Samuel and Gunnar (another BF).
Duncan and classmates on their way to find their pumpkins.

Searching, searching...

Found it!

While Henry didn't get to go to the pumpkin patch, he did get to experience his first state fair. Here he is enjoying his free "you are so cute" elephant from some friendly carnie folk.

Jurrasic Park.

Couldn't resist getting a picture of my handsome guys with their babysitters.

Gentlemen, start your engines!

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,
Engines pumping and thumping in time.
The green light flashes, the flags goes up,

Churning and burning, they yern for the cup.

- Cake "Going the Distance"

Roland and Duncan participated in their first Pinewood derby. We let the boys paint the main car color and then we helped with the decorating.

I think our group effort paid off. We had good looking cars and both the boys consistently placed 1st and 2nd in every heat.

Story: For those of you who don't know, there are limitations placed on size/weight/wheel type, etc. Right as we get ready to walk out the door, we decided to weigh the cars (insert shoutout to Alan here for the postal scale b-day gift) to see if we can add any weight to them and thereby make them faster. We were about 2oz light of the maximum, so I decided to hot glue quarters to the bottom of the cars. Bad idea because they don't have enough weight. So Shane goes to his shop and brings back some small pieces of steel that he has been storing for about 10 years. The steel plates fit on the cars like they were made for them and brought our weight to the maximum-exactly. The point of this story is that I always give Shane grief for dumpster diving and bringing home stuff from work, but this was his moment to shine.

Roland's ride. He was missed a trophy by literally hundredths of a second due to a bent axle. We'll know next time not to use a hammer.
Yeah for Duncan! He placed 2nd in boys. Good job!
1-2-3
The pits.
The raceway.
Roland and Duncan's cars (far left, blue and black, respectively).
Here's to my speed racers!