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.