It was off to Des Moines for a few days this past week. The kids went to the Des Moines library for a Halloween Party and Jude, ever the gentleman in his knight costume, escorted his cousin Chloe to the party.

All the kids decided to climb the tree in the grandparents front yard while they were there. Yes, there are five kids in this tree with Jude being close to the top with the American flag. Nathan was underneath just in case anyone had a misstep.

Back in Denver we had a Halloween neighborhood bike ride yesterday.  Jude got dressed up in his knight outfit and we went riding round the neighborhood. He is getting much better on his bike these days – I ran beside him most of the way but he hardly needed me. Here he is enjoying a red velvet cupcake, his favorite, on one of the stops.

We also had our weekly trip to the museum this weekend, it is still the kids favorite place to go. I snapped this photo of Jude yesterday as he was riding on the wolves outside.

Anna’s preschool is in a church. One day when Marcy was picking Anna up after school she noticed a piano for sale for $100. We had been talking about getting a piano for some time. Marcy grew up with one and I also had one in my early childhood years.

So we paid $50 for a piano technician to come and look at it and he gave it a thumbs up. He said it was built around 1930 and then completely overhauled in the 1970’s. The woodwork needs refinishing but other than that it was in great shape. Both kids have been playing on it every day since we got it.

Last weekend we went to City Park for the Chipotle Festival. It was a cold and miserable day but Jude was happy as could be. He had on his gumboots and was happy to play in the mud in the rose garden.

In the last post we talked about Jude’s new dinosaur dig – well he bought another one today with some money he had earned. This one was much bigger with more hefty tools and he spent a good chunk of the day digging through clay to get to his two velociraptor skeletons that were buried inside. This was great for us because we spent the day organizing the garage and getting ready for a garage sale in a couple of weeks.

Jude has gone off bike riding lately but he is really into his scooter. And he is getting fast. This afternoon he wanted to go on a quick scooter ride. We got 100 yards from home and he thought it would be fun to go the museum which is about a mile away. So off we went. I had to run at a full sprint just to keep up with him. Just a couple of months ago he was quite tentative still. Not now – it is a great workout trying to keep up with him.