The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

School Days

It’s the most wonderful time of the school year! School picture time! ha! We actually showed major improvement this year on one kid! Let’s remember where we’ve been…

2011…

2011

2012…

2012

2013…

2013

2014…

2014 school photo

and this year!

school picture

Go Maxwell go! That’s a really cute picture! Here was the other one…

school picture day

Clearly someone realized between that picture and the other one that his hair needed a little fixing. I’m going to thank Mrs. Edwards for that! 🙂

Spencer continues to really win at this school picture thing. He started off strong with 2013….

2012 school photo

Then we didn’t get one from 2014 because he wouldn’t sit for the photographer. Yep, his teacher said he just wouldn’t do it. Oh well.

Then this year we get this…

school picture

He looks like he’s having a great time, huh? He’s really letting his happy, joyful spirit show through! ha!

school pictures

Maybe next year will be his year…or maybe not!  🙂

Sunday sillies

Even though they feel like this about taking pictures…

sunday smiles

I make them do it anyway because they look too cute all dressed for church not to.

So, happy Monday from my totally silly yet completely dapper dudes!

sunday smiles

sunday miles

sunday smiles

See you tomorrow!

3 years and 9 months

Last week I did double duty up at the doctor and took Spencer for his 3 year check up and Samantha for her 9 month checkup. Fun in the waiting room…

dr. walley

and then there was plenty of time trying to occupy both of them in the room before Dr. Walley came in. Not the easiest task but, thanks to YouTube videos of Lions on my phone, we made it!  🙂

Spencer looked great. Dr. Walley immediately commented on how great his speech was and there’s zero concern there anymore. Hooray! Spencer is 38 in tall (around 82nd%) and 36 lbs (around 88th%). He’s growing right along just as he should. Please also note that when I took Maxwell to the doctor 2 days later for strep, he weighed 36.8 lbs despite being 4 and 3/4 inches taller! ha! My skinny mini Maxwell and my sturdy Spence! They’ve always been totally different body types. At Maxwell’s 3 year check up he was the same height as Spencer -38 inches tall – but only 30.4 lbs!

3 year checkup

We’re keeping Spencer on the daily Singular to keep the asthma away. He did have to get a flu shot but that was it. Yay for 3!

3 year checkup

It was then Samantha’s turn and she looked great as well. I’m still in shock that she survived all of the congestion she had the last few weeks with no ear infection! Dr. Walley said her ears and everything else looked just fine. She was 27 3/4 inches long (75th%) and 18lbs, 11 oz (75th%). He did recommend adding in another meal of “real food” every day to keep her chunking on up! 🙂 Her head was 17.5 circumference.

9 month checkup

Maxwell at 9 months – 28 inches long and  18lbs, 10 oz with head circumference of 18.5cm

Spencer at 9 months – 29 inches long and 21 lbs, 12.5 oz with head circumference of 17.5 cm

So, my babies are all proving to be very different! Yet somehow they are all perfect. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Thankful for good doctor reports!

Halloween!

Thankfully Maxwell was feeling much better by Saturday afternoon and was ready for a fun Halloween night! Unfortunately, the weather forecast was not in our favor! We were planning to go to the parade, the neighborhood party, and then trick-or-treat. But, with the rain coming, the neighborhood moved the party up to 4:00 so we went straight there and skipped the parade. But, we obviously had to get plenty of pics on the porch first!  🙂

Piggy was ready!

piggy

and so were her chubby cheeks!  🙂

piggy

Spencey was being a little pouty at first…

halloween 2015

But then he perked up and gave me a good lion roar to match tiger Maxwell!

tiger maxwell

We walked over to the party and it was fun – they had two bounce houses and little train to take you on a ride around the neighborhood. In hindsight, I think we might have had more fun at the parade but….live and learn. The party had a lot of “big kids” and it made it difficult for the boys to enjoy things. Here they are crammed into the train car with lots of “big kids”…they look a little overwhelmed! ha!

halloween 2015

Still, they managed to climb and bounce and enjoy themselves for sure!

halloween 2015

halloween 2015

halloween

Samantha enjoyed the party from our arms! She really, really wanted to get Robert’s bottle and was almost successful a few times. She’s got a grip!

halloween 2015

halloween pig

halloween 2015

Around 5:00 it was starting to rain so we headed out to trick-or-treat before it really started to come down. Maxwell and Spencer walked up to the first house right beside the party and as soon as the lady came to open her door, her two giant dogs bolted out the door barking their heads off and scaring the boys so bad I wasn’t sure they were going to make it. Maxwell was terrified. It was scary. From them on, we had to check to make sure there were no dogs in the house before Maxwell would go up to the door! ha! He got braver as we moved along though and managed to hit up plenty of houses for lots of candy!

trick or treat

trick or treat

By 6:00 it was raining harder and we were wet and headed toward home! The boys were super excited to sort through their loot…

halloween

halloween

but I was super sad to realize I had dropped Maxwell’s mask somewhere in the last block before home. Robert went back out to try and find it that night with no luck but, the next morning, look what we found laying in someone’s yard! hooray!

mask

It was soaking wet but totally fine!

Overall, it was a fun Halloween but, man oh man, I’m hoping for dry weather next year!

halloween 2015

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Fun

Well, we had a fun – albeit very soggy! – Halloween! Before the rain came on Saturday, we had a fun day on Thursday with Maxwell’s Halloween parade up at school! That morning, when Maxwell put his costume on for school, Spencer wanted to get dressed up too so I threw Samantha’s hat on as well and we actually got a cute picture of all 3 dressed up!

Lions and Tigers and Pigs! Oh my!

halloween

I was really proud of Maxwell’s costume. I found the neat mask and tail on Etsy. We tried to just buy a tiger costume but…the colors didn’t match and that was not ok with Maxwell! So, I searched high and low to find an orange shirt and pants that matched and cut all those tiger stripes out of black iron-on fabric. Unfortunately, the fabric didn’t stick that great. Fortunately, GJ was in town and came to the rescue by sewing on all the black stripes. I thought he looked AWESOME and he LOVED it so it was a win-win!

tiger maxwell

Since Maxwell was a tiger, Spencey decided he wanted to be a lion! I ordered him a similar mask off of Etsy and then we found a lion costume at Target. The mask was hard for Spencer to see out of so, again thanks to GJ, he had two options for Halloween. He could either wear the custome as it came above with the face on the hood. Or, he could wear the mask with the face of the lion removed from the hood….

lion spencer

For Halloween, he ultimately decided not to wear the mask but I was glad I got a few pics of him in it anyway!

tiger and lion

Rooooaaaawwwrrrr!

lion and tiger
The parade up at school was only for the 4s and 5s and it was precious. It took all of 10 minutes but it was a pretty cute 10 minutes! IMG_1970

IMG_1987

Maxwell had the best costume, if I do say so myself!  🙂

tiger

tiger

I thought Blair’s birthday cake was pretty cute too!

blair cake

Here he is getting mad at me for taking too many pictures. Typical.

tiger

After the parade I went to pick up Maxwell from his classroom and could tell right away that he didn’t feel good. By the time we got home, he was burning up with fever. A trip to the doctor on Friday morning confirmed strep. Ugh….but very easy to treat! He looked like this on Friday…

bedroom

But a few doses of some pink bubble gum amoxicillin and he was no longer contagious and ready to go by Halloween! Pictures of the main event tomorrow! See you then! Boo!