We took Julien and Sebastian out to the Trick or Treat trail this last weekend with Julien's friends, Cedric and Josh. They were dressed as Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Their mom sewed their costumes, and they were beautifully made! Although I did not make Julien's costume this year, I did make Sebastian's Yoda ears, with a little help from Kathy and Julien.
The leaves are turning a bit later this year, probably due to the drought and hot weather. But still, Kathy and Rick were able to have a taste of the fall colors before heading home.
Julien and Sebastian loved carving pumpkins. I guess I did too. Julien drew faces and I carved them out. Sebastian loved being included in the activity.
Sebastian and Grandad both enjoyed themselves outside. The weather was beautiful last weekend. We had a barbecue, a picnic at Oliver Winery and generally spent a lot of time outdoors.
Julien was very very happy to see his grandparents. He was ready to cuddle! At Julien's request Kathy and Rick took him to Target to get star wars figures. He choose Darth Vader and Princess Leia. When he came home and opened up the package he discovered that they came with a star wars comic book! He now brings this comic book with him everywhere...on the bus, to a play date, out to eat, etc. Since he has not seen the movie and has only picked up bits of the story by rumor and innuendo, it has been very useful to have a comic book that gets into the details.
Of course there was soccer. Julien enjoyed showing off his ability to his grandparents. He also enjoyed being a "tickle monster" and tickling his teammates. 
I have new glasses. Sebastian broke my last pair by ripping them off my face during a tantrum. Hopefully my new glasses are stronger.
This last Saturday Julien's soccer club held a soccer tournament, called the Kohl's Cup. It seems crazy at this age, but Julien loved it. They played three short games, with breaks in between. Our coach couldn't make it (she was running a city Latino Festival), so the parents played musical coaches to see who was it . . . we manged to escape the responsibility. After the first game Jun's dad, Andre, started coaching, and he was amazing! He was concerned that the kids wouldn't be able to understand him because of his Brazilian accent, but no worries. Mostly he repeated "look at the ball, look at the ball, look at the ball!" Oddly, not having a coach really brought the families of the team together, and we all enjoyed ourselves. It end up there is another kid on the team (Diego) whose parents had a home birth with the same midwife. Not only that, but she looks after kids of a friend of mine. Small world. Very different community than T-ball.
Julien and I made a solar system as decoration for his birthday party. We like it so well we are leaving it up.
It is amazing how quickly presents can be opened! Now Julien has lots of new books to read, music to listen to and toys to play with. And there are lots of tiny pieces for Sebastian to put into his mouth.
The most hectic moment of the party was the serving of the birthday cake. Maybe it was the noise makers. 
As soon as the big kids were done with the pinata, Sebastian went for the bat and started trying to swing it at the, now empty, pinata. Clearly, he understood the concept.
Julien decided that he wanted to be blind-folded this year for the whacking of the pinata. We tried that the first go round and then let the kids have at it. The pinata was very hard to destroy. I finally had to tear the back end of it to help it break open. 
Sebastian had as much fun as the big kids. Here you can see him sitting next to his friend Max.
Grandmum Kathy sent Julien a bunch of amazing silver balloons for his birthday. Everybody loved them...although perhaps too much. It was hard to resist banging them around. Durring the rocket ship game a couple kids burst open the small sand bag that was tethering the balloons to earth. As they took off into the sky, Julien burst out crying. We all stopped and stared as the balloons lifted off into space. Gretchen (seen here in the lavender shirt) said "don't worry Julien you will get some more balloons next year" and gave Julien a big kiss. It was really sweet. Later I also noticed that she was wearing the soccer ring that she recieved on Julien's cupcake at school. Julien has talked quite a bit about Gretchen. And I can see why. Not only was she very sweet, but she also knew more about space than any of the other kids. She told me all about the different planets and their moons. 
One of the games I led was a rocketship blast-off game. The kids pretended to get in a rocketship (marked off by balloons) and then I would count down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 blast-off! and we would pretend to fly to each of the planets. When we would land I would describe a quality of the planet and we would all follow my directions (ie on Venus there are lots of volcanoes, so when we are on the planet we jump around and explode!). As Richard pointed out, really it was a modern dance improvisation game. The kids loved it.
