Hi,

Well, one of the many wonderful things about having kids is you start to see certain things differently because you are seeing it through their eyes. It is for this reason that, rather than my previous Halloween-scrooge self, I get excited about this "holiday". Mathieu of course, was very excited for the day to arrive and was very proud to wear his new superman costume to the halloween party at school. His school also did a big haunted house so he thought that was just the greatest thing. Then, the next night, as you can see, he was happy to don his dinosaur costume and go roaring and howling through out the neighborhood. Gabriel, of course is too young to have remembered halloween from last year but he quickly caught on to the hold concept. It was so funny to watch the little wheels turning inside his head (i.e, "Hmm...strangers seem to be randomly putting candy into my bag...what a concept!!") and was quickly walking down the street muttering, "I want more candy...Je veux des bonbons!!.

We were also lucky enough to have a visit from my mom the other week. The boys were very happy to see her and spend some time with her and we had a lot of fun hanging out in the neighborhood, going out for dinner at a wonderful little Moroccan restaurant, going to a halloween fair in the country (despite it being a very rainy, cold day- check out the picture of us taken by the local paper!), as well as checking out the Chinese lanterns in the botanical gardens. She was also a big help for us to have around the house. Vincent and I are not used to having a grandparent around to help out so we really appreciated having the extra pair of hands!! Mathieu had a ped day while she was in so the boys got to stay home with her while I was at work which was nice for everyone. She also took the initiative to completely organize my pantry with new tupperware containers (as we learned we may have a little mouse friend)! Anyways, it inspired me and, 3 trips to the store later, I have been in an organizing frenzy the past few days. If something is not glued down in this house lately I will tupperware it!!! Visitors be warned!

All is well here all round. We are very excited because we just learned that Yuko will be arriving from Japan in the next few days so we will soon be going down to Quebec city to see her. We also got our tickets for Winnipeg so we are looking forward to spending some time there at Christmas (even though it seems counterintuitive to spend a lot of money to fly somewhere even COLDER in the winter time)...ahhhh...what I won't do for family! (and free babysitting!)

Anyways, chicken's almost cooked and papa bear will be home soon!!

Till next time.