Two weeks ago, we started seeing Halloween decorations during our evening walks and thought Max would enjoy working on some craft projects. During a visit to the store, I picked up some fabric and string and some styrofoam balls and we were well on our way.

Ghosts! (or, as Max has been saying, "Ghostes!")

He had a good time "helping" us get them up in the tree.

Christy also picked up a kit for him so we could finally make use of one of the pumpkins we picked up.

Not a day goes by that Mr. Pumpkin Head isn't moved to some other section of the porch.

The week itself was pretty calm, owing to the fact that we spent much of it preparing ourselves for our planned trip to see Emma on her birthday. Bags were packed, cars were loaded, video screens were set up, and a very large bucket of toys was strategically placed.

Max made good use of the toy box.

His brother, on the other hand, mastered the art of retaining toys for extended periods of time.

The boys were mercifully reasonable throughout the drive, despite being stuck in their seats for 7 hours. I guess we're just lucky. When morning came, we discussed whether we should go to the aquarium or the beach.

We did promise him he could build a sand castle…

Bonus shot with extra cheese.

We were a little worried that the beach would be kind of tough on the little guy, since he can't exactly build sand castles yet and we didn't want him crawling all over the sand.

Turns out all he needs is water that rushes up over his feet.

We even got him to smile for photos!

…of course, Papa also served as an adequate distraction. Note the wet hat…Papa tried to put it on his head. Lesson learned.

I guess the sand was a little loose for a sand castle, so the effort turned to digging a hole.

Afterward, we managed to get a decent photo of most of the cousins.

And they're almost all looking! Hooray!

We did have one holdout, though. Poor Kyle was having a rough weekend. Maybe we'll catch her next time around.

Shortly after that, we headed out to Emma's birthday party, which (predictably enough) included several bounce houses.

Max didn’t mind that a bit.

Owen clearly hated it.

Ahh, tired time.

Yeah. I think we wore them out.

The party unfortunately came to a close with an unexpected injury to Emma. As follower's of her blog already know, she wound up with a minor fracture in her arm, which is now covered in an appropriately pink cast. Here's hoping she heals quickly and is back to causing trouble soon. She's a tough kid, so it didn't take much to get her out and moving again.

Having a motorized means of transportation helped a bit.

While they were driving around, I managed to get someone in a good mood, which gave us some hope that she might cooperate for another group photo.

Keep the smiles! We can do this!

So close.

Sadly, after all the fun we had to start the trip back home. Thankfully Nan and Papa were kind enough to give us a room for the evening (and some babysitting service), so we were able to split things up a little. The first leg was uneventful, save for a stop at a fairly popular rest stop with a buck-toothed rodent on their sign. It started simply, we'd just get Max a little stuffed animal and if Owen showed some interest we'd do the same thing for him.

The size was negotiable. Apparently so was the ownership.

Pretty good week, I'd say. If you want to see the rest of the photos from the trip, you can click here. We'll see what we can do about getting another post up this week to catch things back up.