Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Raggedy Ann and Andy

My sister-in-law, Mary, just sent me the cutest picture of her two kids, Morgan and Kimball. She made these costumes herself. Isn't she talented?

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Halloween

Bea was a witch.
 
Annabel was a glitzy witch. (notice the different styles of my two girls)
 
Noah was a hobo. He designed his costume himself. It was all his idea.
 
This is Jack, our favorite little cheetah.
 

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Winnie is Snow White again this year. I can't convince the kids to dress up as dwarfs.
 
Our pumpkins look pretty good this year. We always get lots of compliments from our trick or treaters.
 
 
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Happy Halloween!

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Trunk or treating

Our ward had a halloween carnival and trunk or treating on Tuesday. We had over 50 cars participating. I ran out of my four bags of candy, giving one per person. I got almost everyone, but not quite.
These are Bea's two best friends in the whole wide world. Emily is above and Cameron is below.

This is the group photo from the carnival. Lots and lots of little kids.

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Parent day at gymnastics

Bea has been participating in a gymnastics class with 4 other girls from church. It has been great because we carpool, so it has been really easy for the moms. Anyway, today was the last day of this session and the parents are invited to watch.


Bea can almost do a handstand by herself. I told her this is a great diving move.

She got to pick out her own ribbon.


These are the little girls we carpool with. Bea can hardly wait for next Wednesday's class.

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Sunday, October 28, 2007

Carving Pumpkins

We usually wait until the very last minute to carve our pumpkins, but luckily Annabel remembered last night that we still needed to do it. So, as soon as we got home from church the carving commenced.

Darren is the pumpkin carving guru at our house. I don't enjoy the goo, the slime or the mess, nor am I very creative when it comes to designing the faces.
Noah has a couple years of carving experience under his belt, now.


Bea designed her face on paper and Darren did the cutting for her.

Annabel is in the in between stage--she can get started on the cutting, but needs Darren to finish it out for her. She is too impatient to stick it out. Her pumpkin has a Harry Potter scar over its right eye.

The only help Noah got from Darren was cutting out the bottom to get him started. It looks like we have another jack-o-lantern artist in our home.

Our pumpkins are ready to welcome trick-or-treaters to our door.

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The Smiths (friends, not the band)


Our friends, Charlie and Allie were in town for the weekend. We got together with the Holmes and Stovalls and went to Dinosaur Barbeque (Texas style) for dinner. As is typical at Dinosaur, it was standing room only at 5pm on a Saturday night, so we got take-out and brought it back to our place. Lucky for me the house was clean!

As can be seen here we enhaled it all. We had 1# each of brisket and pulled pork; a whole chicken; 2 full slabs of ribs; a double order of wings-hot and mild; cornbread; and 6 pints of sides. Delish!

It was good to see old friends and always nice to have an excuse to bring home Dinosaur.

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Scissor Happy

After Noah's recital Friday night, we went out to eat. I am sitting across from Beatrice when I notice that she is missing a chunk of hair. Needless to say, I freaked out. My 6 year old is too old to be cutting her own hair--her beautiful hair!!! To make matters worse, Annabel did the same thing last week. What is it about kids that they need to chop off the most noticeable piece of hair?


Can you find a more pathetic face? She was not happy with the results of her little experiment.

Whereas Annabel is always sure of herself. She has become such a poser.

So, obviously, I made an appointment for them, both, to see what we could do to fix this mess. We have a new place in town called Sweet and Sassy. It is a spa for little girls. Everything is pink, glittery and smells like cotton candy. I was told it is a chain that originated in Dallas by a woman named Dixie. Makes sense, huh?

Bea's hair is definitely better, but she does have very short bangs--at least she is fashionable, if nothing else.

Annabel wouldn't let them give her bangs, so she just ended up with a trim and really doesn't look any different.

I just hope that Bea, at least, has learned her lesson. She is all about how she looks, so I don't think this will happen again. Annabel-who knows?

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Saturday, October 27, 2007

Concert for Old Folks

Noah's piano teacher arranged for her students to perform at an assisted living facility, last night. Noah has performed 2-3 times a year for the last 6 years. He is cool as a cucumber when he plays. I laughed because he sticks his tongue out when he concentrates. He even looked up at me while I was taking pictures and made a face at me--never loosing his place in the music. He played Clementi's Third Movement, Sonatina in C major.


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Upstate NY Diving




Beatrice decide to follow Annabel and try out diving. She was a little nervous her first week, but quickly settled down and is really loving it. We tease her that she looks like a baby giraffe--all legs, arms and neck, but she has finally learned to dive with her feet together, instead of splayed out behind her.








Annabel has been diving for a year with her dive club. She has competed in 3 dive meets and has brought home several medals. She is mostly fearless, or can be convinced to try just about anything.

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Thursday, October 25, 2007

Fall beauties

This is especially for any former Rochesterians. Darren picked the roses from our yard--TODAY--October 25. I wish you could smell just how strong the scent is on these blooms. The temperature is 60 degrees, though on Monday it was 83. This has been a very bizarre fall. No matter what happens after today, winter will be short, because we have had such good weather up to November. Don't you wish you were here!



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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Extreme Pool Sports 2

Another friend brought over his scuba gear to let the kids try it out during swim lessons.


Noah couldn't sink, so Bryant picked up a big rock for Noah to hold to try and get him to the bottom of the pool. It got him to the bottom, but it was too heavy for him to hold. I think he enjoyed kayaking more than scuba.


Annabel had no problem sinking. She loved scuba. We need to get everyone certified and then take a great vacation.

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Extreme Pool Sports





I found some fun pictures from this summer. No one can say that we don't take every opportunity to use our pool. We had a friend ask if he could come over and practice flips in his kayak. Noah and Annabel had a great time trying it out for themselves

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Our Yard in Fall

Darren takes great pride in our yard and has spent the last 4 years planning and planting and weeding and obsessing over the yard. We are proud to say that we had the only green grass in our neighborhood this summer during our extremely dry summer-- thanks to the sprinkler system we had installed last fall. For those of you thinking we were wasteful of a precious resource, NY doesn't suffer from drought--we have plenty of water here. It just didn't rain for about 6 weeks, and very few people here have sprinkler systems.


This is our new Autumn Blaze Maple tree. It was the reddest tree on the street. This was our first year to have leaves on the ground--granted there weren't many, but it was enough for Bea to feel the need to go out and rake leaves!



Darren and Noah mowed every 3-4 days. Noah even had a summer job mowing for our friends, Scott and April. He mowed their yard for $2 and time on their XBOX 360. He couldn't have been happier about his job.

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