Bobcats and Babies

Aack! I can't believe that it is almost Thanksgiving! This month has just flown by. In fact, this year is going fast. I was thinking about it this morning--we started the year with an invalid husband and the twins were little babies and we're going to end the year with an invalid husband but the babies have grown so much. They will be 18 months old in December and they are walking and talking (and rubbing toast into their hair in the case of Kenna at the moment)
Anyway, I thought I'd post a few pictures today of Halloween and our San Diego trip. Last week we went down to TEP Park and got H1N1 vaccinations for the kids. We also went to the zoo for playgroup (oh crap, must mail passes along to next group today!!) and did the normal school stuff.
[side note: if there are typos involving an L, please forgive. Kids have got crap in my keyboard and it's hard to type Ls now]
Sunday I got Charles to help me take the kids to the park so that Laney could practice riding her bike. I helped Laney and Charles walked the twins on their leashes. They are so funny. Griffin likes to hold a hand and walk slow so that he can look at everything and maybe pick up rocks or whatever. Kenna is somehow a McNearney/Phillips combo--she's charging ahead to the very end of her leash and walking as fast as she can. She is on a mission! At the park there was a group of older boys (10-12) and they were actually pretty good about playing with the kids. Especially Kenna, since she's a walking talking "baby doll". Is it that boy children don't inspire the same caretaking tendencies? I wonder about that sometimes. Griffin is never the baby for other kids. They just ignore him and he them.
In other news, we haven't seen our resident bobcat for a while, but I haven't got an update from the neighbors in the last couple days. About a month and a half ago I was woken up at about 3 in the morning by these weird noises outside. And I mean weird. Sort of a creaking sound with some croaks and other strange noises thrown in. Although I couldn't figure out what it was, it made me instinctually uncomfortable. Then a few weeks later we started getting reports from the neighbors about bobcat sightings. The bobcat took our neighbors' small dog right in front of them. Just jumped down and grabbed it about 5 feet away from them in their backyard. It also tried to take the next door neighbors' dog, but he chased it off. One of those nights, Laney woke up in the middle of the night and got in bed with me and the noises started again like they were right under the window. This time with more growling, so I figured it was the bobcat (confirmed by Google the next day. The internet is amazing--you can listen to bobcat noises). He's been eating the local bunny population on my other neighbors' patio furniture and shredding the cushions. Charles has been a little freaked out and I haven't been letting the kids play outside early in the morning or at dusk just in case. Kenna is sort of the same size as a small dog after all ;-) Hopefully the bobcat will move on to another locale soon.