Our neighborhood is one of the best places in the county to go for Halloween fun. People come from outside the neighborhood just to go trick-or-treating. It is a safe place and there are kids everywhere. The main street is closed. The fire department brings a fire truck and hands out candy, and all the neighbors walk around visiting throughout the evening while accompaning the children door to door collecting candy.
This year we walked around with friends and had a great time.
The children were SO excited to wake up to a beautiful blanket of snow. They missed it. They missed getting all bundled up and building forts, and having adventures outside.
Well, winter is here and months of fun in the snow are ahead of us.
Brings snow...
and big messes!
What do we do with all of these boots?
...and everyone needs pants, and gloves, and hats, and coats...
This time of year is always fun. Once I get the stuff under control, and it all has a home, it gets a little easier.
I have a list of projects to do around the house and have been crossing them off one at a time. One of the projects was to move the bookshelves over about 8" so that the red chair fit in the corner better. That was easier said than done. The girls and I worked together and got all the books off... moved the shelves... and put all the books back on the shelves. Piles of books were everywhere, but we got the shelves moved and dusted... and now there is enough room in the corner for the red chair!
Jacob has quite the personality. He LOVES wearing Isabels pink boots, as well as anything else he can get his hands on. Very cute.
I am still here, but haven't gotten any pictures off my camera. We have had a birthday, a head injury, and a lost tooth, just in the last 3 days! It was Jacob's 3rd birthday on Saturday, Isabel fell while dancing and hit her head on the corner of the wall and put a 1"+ cut in her head, and Sophia lost her front tooth last night.
Jacob had a great birthday. He loves being sang to and eating sweets, as well as opening presents, so birthdays are good.
Isabel's head is ok. It was one of those that we could have gotten stitches for, but it's in the middle of her hair, and it's happened before to other children, so we did the cut the hair around it, hold it together to stop the bleeding and bandage it and keep an eye on it. The other times we have talked to doctors and they walked us through it. We tried a liquid bandage this time, which worked well so far. She's a tough little girl.
Earlier in the week, she took scissors to her own hair and so her hair is quite interesting.
Sophia has 3 loose teeth, and 1 tooth that has already come in behind one of the loose teeth. Unfortunately, that is not the tooth she lost. She lost her top tooth! She went around singing ..."All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth". Her other top tooth is very close to coming out as well.
Hopefully I'll be able to update more often and get pictures off the camera soon.
We ran out quickly before the storm rolled in Saturday morning to get a family picture. We started to go to the south side of town, but the clouds and snow had already moved in. So, we turned around and headed back towards our house and quickly got a picture by the side of the road. Not bad. And pretty much everyone cooperated.
Friday, I took the girls down to Denver to attend the Colorado Ballet's performance of "Swan Lake". We had 43 people from our homeschool group go! My how we've grown over the last year. The girls enjoyed it, and it was fun hanging out with friends for the drive and the Costco run afterwards.
Well, it doesn't look like this as much anymore, but for many weeks now we have had beautiful fall colors.
FLL is coming together. We had a rocky start, but the group is solidifying and the 5 boys are working well as a team. I'll have to take more pictures the next time we meet to show you the cool table another mom (Deb) and I made on Monday. They are getting into a groove and designing robots to do certain tasks. It is not a trivial project. They have to complete 19 tasks on this 4'x8' mat in 2 1/2 minutes! They won't complete all the tasks, but the more you complete, the more you score. Very exciting...
When we got home from Disney a few weeks ago, Bill's mom was visiting for a few days from Texas. We had a good visit, but really didn't do much except decompress from vacation, and try to get a little better on my part (I was sick). Since Grandma Buddy wasn't able to be here for Jacob's birthday, we celebrated it a little early. Jacob didn't complain. I made him a birthday cake. He opened presents, we sang "happy birthday", and we ate cake! How fun was that! Not too long from now, will be his real 3rd birthday. He is getting big and has a big sense of humor. He makes us laugh all the time.
Just this morning, I was putting something away and I accidently hit the wall with it. Jacob said to me, "mommy, did you hurt the wall?" and then laughed. He's 2, almost 3, but I thought that was a funny thing for a little guy to say.
We finally got around to getting our very cracked windshield replaced. We got a ding before we went to LA last year, but never had any issues with it until we moved somewhere warm. LA was hard on our vehicle. Our ding spread all the way down the front of the windshield, we got long scratches from the shopping carts from homeless people walking down the road where Bill parked the car, and the front left part of the bumper got smashed in from the evil house driveway that had a concrete wall hidden underneath bushes (and the driveway was only about 6" wider than our car, so we BARELY fit into it anyway). Oh well. It's only a car, and it is a well loved car at that.
Well, sometime in the past year we got another ding (yes, I know we should just go fix the dings so they don't spread... we'll be doing that next time) and it didn't spread until we parked our car in another hot place - Denver airport - for 3 weeks in September. We got back from Disney, and now there was a crack the whole way across the car from left to right (in addition to our crack from top to bottom with 2 star dings as well). All of these were just right to block my view or shine the sunlight just so in my eyes.
It was time for a new windshield. Bill was reluctant, but he was ok with it knowing that it would be safer for me to drive without the lines in front of my eyes. :) It also wasn't TOO expensive.
It was a homeschool lesson. I asked the man that came to our house if our children could watch, and he agreed. Our children talked and talked to this man and learned all that was involved in replacing a windshield. He told the children that this is a lesson in staying in school. "Get an education, so you don't have to do this for a living," he said. It took him a long time to replace the windshield because we have had troubles with our moulding before and it was glued down to keep it on. Sorry! We now have a crystal clear new windshield that I am hoping will stay that way. The man who replaced it said that they now use this new "rock magnet" glass, so that we are sure to come back and see them at least once a year. :)
I hope not.
Last night we got lots of rain, some ice, and a little snow, but nothing significant. That is ok with me. Today was beautiful, sunny and "warm" again! I cannot complain about an incredible fall. The snow will come, I'm sure.
