Welcome Alexis Lorraine Demsey

On October 26th right before midnight Alexis Lorraine joined our family! She was born 20.5" long and 8 pounds 4 ounces.

Jill and her are both recovering and resting after the big event. Evan has been quite welcoming to Alexis and seems pretty interested in her.

Expect some more updates over the upcoming weeks. Here's one last photo for you before we try and go to sleep tonight!

Pumpkin Carving

After looking at no less than three pumpkin farms and two grocery stores picking up prime pumpkins when we saw them it was finally time to carve our Jack-O-Lanterns. We of course wanted to make the event a family affair - but alas it turns out that Evan thinks the insides of pumpkins are "yucky" and he didn't want to have much at all to do with the process. Here he is removing the top of one of our victims.

And here I am with Evan getting the "goop" out of the pumpkin.

Jill asked Evan what he wanted the face to look like and he described what he wanted. Jill drew it on a piece of paper and then transferred it onto the pumpkin for me to carve. Evan designed the small pumpkin's face and Jill was responsible for the large pumpkin's face.

We were also going to have some pumpkin pie but one of us (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out who) got over zealous and put their finger in the pie a few times during the caring process without us noticing so we just ate pie after he went to bed. Maybe when he's four he'll be more interested in getting his hands dirty.

The Last Pumpkin Farm of the Season

Two pumpkin farms just isn't enough for us - we had to go for three this year. Evan and Jill met Zoe and Liam for their last farm outing this fall. Here's Evan striking a post in the pumpkin patch.

And here he is with the scarecrow.

Fall has been pretty dry and fun this year. We've certainly had our fair share of hay rides, pumpkin patches and corn mazes, and they were all a blast. Can't wait for next year!

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Last weekend we took Evan to his second play (his first was Where is the Green Sheep) - a stage adaptation of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie". Here he is with his ticket in anticipation of the big event...

It turns out the anticipation in this case was more fun than the actual event. Evan was pretty scared of the entire show - seeing a person in a little mouse hat running around the stage was unsettling for him. He kept asking to leave. We wound up staying the entire time but all in all the play was over his head. Two points for trying but we'll probably wait a while before taking him to his next play.

Cheesy Cowboy Cornbread

I think I've mentioned it before but Jill got Evan a magazine called High Five. He absolutely loves when a new one comes every month and we read it constantly for a few days after it shows up. Each issue has a recipe in it. If you recall, the Popsicle Evan and I made this summer were from a recipe in his magazine. This month, it being fall and all, they had a recipe for Cheesy Cowboy Cornbread. We must have read through the recipe and directions 20 times before Jill and him actually made it one afternoon. I must say when eaten with a bowl of chili it was pretty good! Here's Evan following his recipe and stirring his cornbread batter.

Family Day at the Pumpkin Farm

Jill and Evan already went to a pumpkin farm but it's something we do as a family every year so we went to another one last weekend. The farm we went to has a tractor hay ride, a pumpkin slingshot, some farm animals, and a bunch of boats, tractors and other large objects to climb on. Evan did it all. He loved playing pirate in the large wooden boat they had and had a blast with the slingshot. Here's a rare family photo of all of us on the hay ride.

Once we were done with the activities we headed out to the pumpkin field which is where Evan found this pumpkin.

We scoured the pumpkin patch for a pumpkin of a more reasonable size and after a pretty exhaustive search found the perfect one. Stay tuned to see what we do with it!

Once upon a mouth story...

Evan has been using his imagination a lot lately so we thought it was worth a post to fill you all in on his imaginary world. Every day Evan asks for a "mouth story" containing his various characters in scenarios he lays out*. Sometimes he even tells entire stories on his own. So here we go - enjoy your glimpse into Evan's imaginary world.

• Peep owns a restaurant that only serves stew. Peep cooks it and serves it. He makes meat stew, chicken stew, vegetable stew and his top seller is fish stew.
• Shamu is Peep's #1 customer and consumes massive quantities of fish stew daily.
• Peep has a fishing boat that Evan drives to go fishing for the fish that goes in his stew.
• After complaints about a constrained menu, Peep began serving ice cream made by Light Up Ladybug in the restaurant.
• Light Up had so much success she opened up her own ice cream parlor and how has locations in Seattle and on Bainbridge Island.
• Light Up drives around a big truck with a picture of a red eyed tree frog on the side of it to deliver her ice cream to restaurants across the city. We sometimes see the truck when we're driving around the city and Evan says "There's Light Up!"
• Evan takes his babysitter/friend Megan on the purple street car and drives it to Wildwood, NJ for small vacations almost daily.
• When Evan drives the street car he has to stop at Thomas Street, named for his friend Thomas the Ladybug. This is very very funny to Evan and everyone on the streetcar.
• Evan takes Peep to the orchestra sometimes and then takes him to Starbucks on the way home for a treat. Evan gets chocolate milk, hot chocolate and a muffin. Peep gets a vanilla latte and a doughnut that Evan eats half of.
• Sometimes the ladybugs have a picnic by the locks and see Evan and Peep in the fishing boat and come along for a ride.
• When Jack-In-The-Box runs out of eggs for eggy sandwiches, Evan calls Light Up on my iPhone and asks her to go to Fred Meyer to bring more eggs to the restaurant.

It goes on and on. There's something new and funny and creative every few days. It's fun how consistent his world is and how it builds on itself. For Halloween this year we got his ladybug Spider Ladybug a light up web that she now sleeps in. I can't wait for this to be incorporated into his world.

* As a footnote, due credit should be given to Grandma Nansteel for starting the whole mouth story thing with Evan during their many visits.

It's Pumpkin time!

It's that time of year again. Last time I think we hit four farms throughout the fall in search of the perfect pumpkin and glass of cider. To start it off this year Jill and Evan joined their preschool class at a farm this past week. They took a bumpy tractor ride and picked out some pumpkins. Although Evan is pictured here with a fantastic orange pumpkin, he decided to go get himself a green one and bring that one home.

Evan's friend Anna was at the farm as well. They hung out together, went through the hay maze had a great time. Evan did however spend a lot of time trying to convince Anna to let him "try on her awesome boots".

Making Bread at Preschool

Evan recently started a new preschool on Thursdays and Fridays and he's loving it. There's a lot of outside play, circle time, games, a garden to tend to and even a gigantic puffy rabbit that hops around outside and plays with the kids named Prince Mushkin. One fantastic thing they do is on Fridays the kids make their own bread for snack. Here's Evan chowing down on his handy work.