A Friendly(?) Game of Twister

 

It's a Monday night at the Mercado household and we're all a little bored. Luckily, when Daniel was looking in the closet trying to help me find something he stumbled across our Twister game. Immediately he "challenged" Caleb to a game of Twister after dinner. "Challenges" are big at our house. There is always the raised eyebrow, the head cocked to the side, and the mocking "A challenge, you say?" So it was settled. There would be a family game of Twister after dinner. By the way, this always reminds me of the dinner/food fight scene in the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons, complete with kung fu moves and poor language dubbing. If you've seen the movie you know what I mean.
We took turns playing and taking pictures.
CJ and Caleb were so much fun to play with. They tried hard enough but they had so much fun falling down that they each only lasted a couple of minutes before they would fall over and try to take the other person with them.
When it was Caleb's turn to take pictures we realized that he is becoming quite the photgrapher. He wasn't satisfied with the candid shots. He kept asking Daniel and I to pose, hence the kissing picture! It was pretty cute!
Gabe didn't really know what was going on so he would just stomp across the mat and then fall down!
Daniel, I found out, is a cutthroat Twister player. When it was our turn to play against each other he kept intentionally putting his hand or stepping on the circle he thought I would be going for. He was trying to get in my way or make me fall over! Needless to say, we both ended up collapsed on the floor laughing.
We had a lot of fun and here are the pics to show it....

Gabriel's 2nd Birthday!

As most of you know, Gabe is a Halloween baby. Towards the end of my pregnancy I was put on bedrest and we were forced to induce labor before Gabriel's due date. The original date for induction was Oct 30th. But when we got to the hospital and the obstetrician check mine and the baby's vitals he thought it was fine to wait another day. So, Halloween morning we traveled back to the hospital where finally the doctor decided to induce labor. But he kept asking us if we were okay with having the baby on Halloween. He asked several times. We kept saying yes, if that was what was best for myself and the baby that was fine. We are not superstitious people, honestly the doctor seemed more worried than we were. Alas, everything went fine and Gabriel was born just after noon on Halloween Day 2006.
This definitely makes for an interesting holiday. It is extra special because not only do we get to have a big celebration to include both of the holidays but Gabe gets to get dressed up in a cute costume on his birthday. This year Grandma Mercado got him an adorable Pluto costume from the Disney Store. It was so cute and warm enough that even if the weather had been cold he didn't need to wear a coat. During the day we worked on getting Gabe to say "trick or treat", which came out sounding like "treat or treat"! He tends to have a sweet tooth like his mom and dad.
We went trick or treating at Grandma Dickson's office and then drove to Mountain Home where we went trick or treating in Grandma and Grandpa Mercado's neighborhood. The night ended with Gabe eating too much candy and being grumpy when it was time for bed. But we had a great day with all three of the boys wearing costumes and getting lots of candy!