Parties!

The girls had really fun Halloween parties at school!

Wackadoo Zoo

Thursday night we were treated to a rather elaborate second grade musical, "Wackadoo Zoo." There were seven songs, speaking parts and my favorite, the special dancing monkeys (Mattie was one of them).

Here is the monkey, dancing, in the best photo I could get from a distance.

The kids dressed in colors appropriate for their zoo animal and then wore masks they made in art class. Check out the ears!

Pumpkin Carving!

Knock on wood, we are all well! Monday night we carved our pumpkins. Derick had each girl draw their pumpkin face on a piece of paper and then he drew the faces onto the pumpkins and carved them.

Caroline's Pumpkin!

Pumpkin carving is such hard work...

Scary sisters...

Mattie's pumpkin!

SICK

Soooo, we have decided to get all of our illness over for the fall, winter and spring THIS MONTH. Now Caroline is better and Derick has a stomach bug. We assume Caroline has already had it. So now, Mattie and I wait...

So we'll be in touch once everyone is well ;) Hopefully that will be before the end of the week when we want to celebrate a birthday and Halloween.

Autumn In Leavenworth

It has been a long time since I experienced the full-blown beauty of fall leaves, and Leavenworth may have one of the most spectacular displays I have ever seen. The camera doesn't do it justice, and I waited a few days after the leaves had peaked, but here are a few shots...

This is the view from our back deck.

My favorite view of fall leaves...

The streets were lined with trees just like this...gorgeous!

Week(s) In Review

It's been a rough week and a half. Over Columbus Day, Derick went to New Mexico on an elk hunt and I got a cold. The "cold" apparently was a virus and at any rate, I sort of let myself get too run down I guess. Things culminated with a trip to the ER Saturday morning, but my medicine has helped and I am finally on the up swing. It was one of those nagging illnesses where you think you feel OK, but you really should be in bed.

During that time, Caroline was also sick. We went to the doctor's office on Thursday and Friday, the ER on Saturday and back to the doc on Monday. Luckily, Mattie has been fine. Here are some of the things we have done since Friday the 9th.

Caroline had a field trip to the fire station and I joined her. This fire station was new and so very nice. I was impressed. The kids got to use this water hose to put out an imaginary fire on a wood cut-out building, climbed on the fire truck and watched a movie about stop, drop and roll.

This is before we got sick!!

We have had an incredibly cold stretch of weather that started on the day of the fire station trip. We are talking 38 for the high. I attended the coldest soccer games of my life...
Mattie playing soccer on October 10!!! Look at all of those clothes. Brrrr.

Is this soccer season or football playoffs? Good grief!

Caroline's game was at 3 and still brrrrrrrrrrrr!

Fast forward a full week to this past Sunday. We ventured out to the pumpkin patch. It has warmed up and the leaves are beautiful, but it was windy on Sunday. This cute pumpkin patch is only a few miles from our house. It is nice and small and we enjoyed a hayride to the patch to choose our pumpkins, the girls (and the adults) walked through a couple of haybale mazes, petted a draft horse, fed a goat some raw pumpkin, petted a donkey, saw pigs and sheep and came home with a haybale to put on our porch for our "fall display."

Whew. I'll try to keep up better with posts now that I am feeling better...

Honk-Choo

On days when Caroline doesn't have school, I let her sleep in. On those days, she typically wears her PJs in the van when we drop of Mattie and I figure she can eat as soon as we get back home. One day last week, Mattie is finishing up breakfast when Caroline appears in the living room. Bleary-eyed, Caroline crawls onto the sofa and with a very serious faces says, "Mommy, I was in my room 'honk-chooing' for a looong time."

Honk-choo is snoring.

I hope I remember that moment forever.