Last weekend was a whirlwind of activity.  All our parents were in town for a couple events.  First, we attended the premiere of Brian's last movie at the Alamo.  Our friend Trevor arranged the showing there, complete with trivia by Geeks Who Drink.  It was a fun and bittersweet time to get together with friends again and celebrate Brian.  A fitting thing to do in October.  Trevor made a poster for his movie and we were all thrilled to see it on the Alamo theater room frame, just like the do for major movie releases shown there.
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That evening we had a fun dinner out to celebrate Amanda's birthday! The boys behaved remarkably well considering all the craziness of the day.

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Sunday we spent the day with the extended Mason family.  Ben's uncle Dave Tyson passed away from a heart attack the previous Tuesday.  The whole family gathered from near and far (Australia) for his funeral service and a family gathering at Berit and Dan's house.  It was wonderful to see everyone together, but Dave was sorely missed.

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Jack has decided to be an astronaut for Halloween.  He has been drawing a lot of space pictures and I thought this one was particularly good. 

He is on the left (brown hair, green eyes) and Sam is on the right (blue eyes).  Ben and are I are in the rocket ship ("with the window that you move around through, and it has a fin and wings and fire").  Clockwise from the top left you have Jupiter, three stars, Mars, the Sun, Earth ("where we live"), Saturn with a ring, and Pluto with icicles ("because it's so cold there").

Jack had his first dance recital today for ballet and tap.  Despite his insecurities about being the only boy in his class, he turned into quite the performer!  I ordered a DVD and will share a video clip when I get one.

Date night is a great night :-)  Tonight the kids got to play at the rec center's watch program (pizza+snack+movie+bounce house+gym play) and we met friends in Denver for Mexican food.  I feel like I don't get to see my friends much, so it's an extra treat when we can get together last minute!  The kids had a blast too.  Here's some photos from the past week. 

Dinner out with the family last weekend.


Disney education in preparation for our Disneyland trip!  The boys were watching Monsters Inc. 


He's still learning the mechanics of steering.  Loves to wear his helmet. 


Last day of summer, I think it was. 
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Our conversation via text:

Rachel: I can't remember when the boys have sat so long without fighting or getting bored. It's been minutes.
 
Ben: ENTIRE MINUTES!!

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Decided I needed to bake something pumpkin today.  Enlisted Sam's help. 
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I took up the camera for this shot, planning to caption "Look how little mess he made!"  Then he upended the bag of chocolate. 

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Jack is quite the student.  He seems to enjoy doing his homework!  He takes it very seriously. 

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Tonight we went out with 6 friends to escape a mystery room!  Brian had told Ben about these games and that there was one in Boulder.  So tonight we went to Enigma on Pearl Street.  I'm proud to say we did quite well!  Well, at first we looking for such subtle, complicated clues that they had to prompt us with an extra hint.  But once we got started with that we did great.  Only 30% of guests escape (and the host said no one after 8pm has done it) so we were in the top tier.  And of those, they said most finish with less than ten minutes of time left.  We had 17 minutes left!  If we hadn't missed the first (rather obvious) lock we would have saved 20 minutes!  Oh well. We will have to prove our stuff some other time with their second room. 
 
Here's a puzzle for you to solve!

Sam is quite the talker now and loves to identify superheroes.   See if you can guess which character he is talking about based on his pronunciation.  The answers are written in white following each character, highlight it with your mouse to reveal.     

Boss Spider-Man, sometimes Iron Man