School Christmas events

Clark had his first school concert this week.  All of us were able to attend and see him sing; I took Sabrina out of school for an hour so she could support her little brother.  Clark did great, he looked up and actually sang; he had been singing the songs around the house for the past few weeks.   As you'll notice in the photo, he is a lot taller than most of the kids in his class.  His best buddy at preschool, not pictured, comes up to his shoulder.    It's pretty cute to see them play together.

  Sabrina had some special activities this last week too.  One day was The Grinch day and Sabrina went in with a Cindy Lou-Who headband that I whipped up the night before.  Clark told me to take a picture of him with his "Grinch face."  Yikes!

Special Outing with Daddy

This past Saturday, the big kids went on a special outing with Daddy to see the Nutcracker being performed at a local arts center.  Sabrina went with Manburger when we lived in Charlottesville, but this was Clark's first time going.   It was a kid-geared free performance, only 45 minutes in length.   I had looked into them attending a professional performance, but experienced a bit of sticker shock.   The kids got to sit on a rug right up front so they could see all the action.   It wasn't as fancy as the one they attended in Cville, but both kids enjoyed it and liked getting dressed up to go out with Daddy.    We may not do this every year, but I think we can manage every other year.

These roses are from our rose bush (which Patrick picked out and planted for me)
and my neighbor's garden.  We haven't had a hard freeze yet, so the roses are still going strong.  I love the variety and the different fragrances.  Roses are so lovely, especially when they come from your own neighborhood.

Ohio for Thanksgiving

Well there aren't actually many pictures of Thanksgiving, but we have pictures of stuff we did during our trip. We broke up the drive with a stay in West Memphis both ways. The trip went pretty smoothly. Even though it rained nearly the entire drive home, there was only bad traffic once, though it was really bad.

We realized that we hadn't been to Jungle Jim's for a while, so we had to fix that. The kids weren't quite as excited about it as I was, but that isn't really a fair bar to set for anybody. They had a blast anyway. Here they are dancing to the music of Elvis, who is King (of the Jungle (Jim's)). 

Oh yes, these brave kids returned from the Jungle with bugs to eat. Sabrina has a chocolate coated one in her mouth. Their mom wasn't excited about my suggestion to buy them, but she tried some once the kids showed her how to be brave. 

The weather was so nice, that the kids were able to eat outside some days without jackets! This is under the pine tree in the backyard - the kids adopted this area as their "Kingdom" or "King-gum" as 3-year old Clark called it last year. 

It is so nice to be able to spend Thanksgiving with family. We are glad Oma and Opa were able to tolerate us so patiently for so long. They even made us think they enjoyed us being there. 

The leaves have just barely been falling here in Dallas, but in Ohio they were all down. We were able to rake together a great big pile of leaves for the kids to play in. I even jumped in a few times and the kids were able to completely bury me. Oh man, oh man, I love playing in leaf piles! 

Just a picture of me and my littlest princess. She is such a sweet little baby. 

The kids have already seen Santa this year! We will see if they get what they asked for. I think Sabrina is on his "nice" list. He seemed to be having trouble finding Clark, though.

Other November Things

I was about to post about Thanksgiving, but I realized that other stuff happened in November of which I didn't yet put up pictures

 Can't have November without celebrating the US Marine Corps birthday. Yogurl made the cake and then did an abstract attempt at an EGA; if you squint your eyes a little, you can kind of make it out.  The cake was delicious though. I took a piece to our Marine neighbor across the street. Sometimes we have delivered cake more broadly, but I guess with a baby to take care of I didn't bother getting out as much.

I will let you decide if that is Eliza's drool on my shirt or my own. 

My poor kids were put into pumpkin jail. I think they were caught with squash vine borers - those are no joke in pumpkin land. 

This is at the arboretum - they have a big squash festival every year and the whole family enjoys going. We went at the end of the season this year so some of the squashes had seen better days. But, they already had up their 12 days of Christmas displays, which were beautiful (not pictured here). 

Sabrina had her Turkey Trot at school again. She was paired up with a third grader who she said couldn't keep up with her. Apparently one of the kids in her class ran almost 3 miles during the event. Pretty good for a six year old.

We put the tree up the first Monday after Thanksgiving, so this is out of order for the blog, but oh well. Clark put the star on last year, so Sabrina did it this year. 

With the whole family together why not take a great family photo? Or a terrible one apparently. Expect to see this on a Christmas card in the near future.

Baby Blessing

After Eliza was born, we weren't sure when to bless her at church. Since we knew we would be travelling up to visit Oma and Opa for Thanksgiving, we decided to wait until then to do it. It was a bit of a drive to get up there on time, but everything went fairly smoothly. I will have travel pictures in the next post. This post is just about Eliza.

Our Big Boy Is 4!

Can you believe he is already 4 years old! Or, since he outgrew 4T clothes a year ago, can you believe he is only 4? 

We had a special superhero tablecloth for his birthday dinner, which was pumpkin ravioli with pumpkin pasta sauce and sausage (he requested pumpkin sausage, but we thought pork would be better for the sausage). He had also had pumpkin cereal for breakfast. His birthday is the right time of the year for it, right? 

Big breath to blow out that candle, which is in his pumpkin cheesecake. 

Dollar store glow toys have become a birthday party staple in our house. 

One of his favorite gifts - a balance bike. He is still figuring out how to use it, but he loves riding around on it. 

By the way, there is a dangerous gang of outlaws who are trying to assume our identity. Their names are Godiva the Gun Diva, Explosive Eliza - known for her dirty bombs, Sarsaparilla Sabrina, Butch Clarkidy AKA The Bare-Bun-Dance Kid, and finally Der Father. I don't see any similarity, but some people think they look like us, so be on the look out.

Real Halloween!

We have had a lot of wet weather the last week or so, but it wasn't raining Halloween night! Trick-or-treating was able to proceed as normal, which was fun for everyone.

For FHE the Monday before Halloween, we carved a jack-o-lantern. It is lit up by a couple of tea candles I placed in it. The kids thought it was lots of fun. They are eating their banana peanut-butter  ice cream, sitting outside enjoying the nice weather. 

Getting ready to go trick or treating. I tried something different with Clarkeleton's make-up this time. I think it looked better. It was fun trying different things even if he didn't always hold perfectly still. The jack-o-lantern is also different since the first one we did was totally rotten by Halloween. I scooped it up with a shovel and chucked it in the compost heap. This one was lit up by the LED taillight from my bicycle. It gave it a nice bright red glow.

The plan was that the adults would take turns going out trick-or-treating with the kids, but I didn't get a turn. The kids had gotten a bunch of candy by time they got home and they were ready to just eat some. 

They got to pig out on candy for a little while. Clark declared Butterfinger to be the greatest candy ever. Any candy they didn't eat, which was quite a lot, was taken by the candy fairy and replaced by Aladdin and some silly putty. 

Why is he photobombing in his underwear? I'm not sure, but we will save this picture for his wedding reception. 

Can't have a blog posting without a close up of our newest little cutie. She is growing well and has started grunting to communicate. She still laughs when I stick my tongue out at her.

Early Halloween!

The Princess in Black, Deborah the Witch, Deborah's Familiar, and Clarkeleton.

We had our trunk or treat a week before Halloween, which I guess made for a good trial run of the costumes. I don't have a costume, because I have not ever been into Halloween. I was happy about how much fun the kids had at the church yesterday, and how much they are looking forward to real trick or treating. I also helped out by painting Clark's face. If you don't think it looks good, I will blame it on the fact that he is only four (well really close to being four) and he doesn't hold very still for such things. Or anything.

2 Months Old!

Already 2 months old! She got a few bug bites on her forehead a couple days ago, but she is still adorable.

Camping Out Back

The kids have been wanting to go camping for a while now. Since the weather has finally become nice here, we figured it would be a good chance to camp out. I thought a test run would be good, so we decided to camp out in the backyard. It was a good thing we did a test run since we had a major tent malfunction around 9:30  and went inside for the rest of the night. Hopefully I can get the tent fixed so we don't need to buy a new one.

The kids thought playing in the tent before bedtime was super fun. They also thought roasted marshmallows were fantastic. Sabrina kept nibbling at hers before they really got roasted, but she still thought it was tasty.

And here is a bonus picture! Hope everybody enjoyed conference. It can be hard with kids, but I think they did really well overall.