Pete the Snow Puppy

Most of you know that a little over a week ago, we adopted our first family pet, Pete. The girls absolutely love Pete and I like him alright too. Since I have never house-trained a pet before, I am learning just how much time and energy it takes to train a puppy. This is certainly a lesson in patience...and admittedly, patience is not one of my God-given gifts. Still, I see the joy that Pete brings to our children and I know that all of this training will pay off and one day Pete will be an excellent family dog. He's super cute and he's got loads of potential (even if he is full of pee and must be watched every second to prevent him from chewing up winter boots and swallowing something that could kill him.)

This week, winter finally came to Ohio in the form of a snow storm. It's been snowing for days! It's supposed to stop tomorrow, after leaving nearly 2 feet of snow on the ground in some areas. The girls are enjoying playing in the snow and introducing the newest member of our family to the joys of snow days. Although Pete isn't thrilled about going outside to "go potty" in the snow, he sure likes to play in it!








I took these through my kitchen window on the day that the snow started. Ava wanted to "introduce" Pete to the snow.




I took these yesterday. Emily decided to take Pete for a walk.



Or maybe it was the other way around....





Here's some footage of the girls playing with their "Snow Puppy". This gives me a hope for next summer when the girls are running in the backyard with their new friend.

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Ava Sings 11/28

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, Ava and her choir, The Joyful Noise Angels, gave their second performance at our church. Ava loves singing, loves the choir, and loves her choir friends. And we're loving watching all of her performances. Her choir has been practicing extra hard this month as they are performing at another holiday event (coming up this weekend) and at the Christmas Eve service. I'm sure I'll be posting those performances soon. In the meantime, here she is singing "For the Beauty of the Earth".

Note: She performed at 2 services, hence the 2 performances in this video.

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Polar Express

The weekend before Thanksgiving my parents, drove over for a quick visit to take the girls to The North Pole via The Polar Express. Why so early in the holiday season? Because these were the last tickets available by the time that we'd decided to embark upon this holiday adventure. Apparently, The Polar Express is a big deal in this area and you have to grab up tix as soon as they go on sale.

The girls were thrilled. As big fans of both the book and the movie, the girls were excited to take their own trip on The Polar Express. We didn't tell them beforehand, so when Grandma Sally and Grandpa Bailey showed up at the door, they were very surprised.

A review:

The Polar Express was well done. The onboard elves did their darndest to keep the kids entertained and engaged. However, I think that they could have shortened the trip by about 1/2 hour in the interest of little ones out way past their bedtimes. As the train rolled back into the station after our trip to "The North Pole" several of the younger passengers were "DONE". We ended up going on an un-seasonably warm November night, yet we were dressed for November. The girls were in flannel pj's. That train was HOT! Sickeningly hot. As a matter of fact, after downing a full dinner, a bag of popcorn, hot chocolate, chocolate covered pretzels, and chocolate chip cookies...her full belly, the heat, and the back and forth sway of the train on it's tracks seemed to get to Ava. She turned an alarming color of white and laid her head in my lap en route to the North Pole. "Uh-oh", I thought. "We're going to spend this whole trip in that awful bathroom at the front of this car." Luckily, a little walk, some ginger ale, and some time spent standing in the cooler area between train cars "put her right" and she was feeling better as we rolled into the North Pole and greeted by dozens of happy elves. When Santa boarded the train, she was certainly ready to visit and obtain her complimentary sleigh bell. If we do this again, we'll definitely dress in lighter clothing (and possibly pack a barf bag).

Emily is still talking about her ride on the "TAIN" and Santa. Ava contends that it wasn't the "real" North Pole (it's a much longer trip, of course), and no amount of fast talking will convince her that it was a magical train and that time stood still once we climbed aboard. Oh well. She still had fun and treasures her sleigh bell.

Here is a montage I put together with some pics and video from The Polar Express.

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Welcome Baby Audrey!

A month ago, we made a mid-week trip back to Indiana to surprise Mike's mom, Ava and Emily's beloved Grandma Pammy, on her 60th birthday. The surprise was a big success...she didn't expect it at all. But then we got a surprise of our own as we were packing up to leave the next morning....Mike's sister, who was due with her first baby, went into labor after the birthday dinner and was in a hospital delivery room just 30 minutes away. What luck! We got to celebrate with my mother-in-law AND meet our new niece/cousin in one trip.

Baby Audrey is just beautiful. Here she is just hours old, but tomorrow is her one month birthday and from the latest pictures it looks like she gets cuter every day!



This is Grandma Pammy surrounded by ALL 5 grandkids! Family gatherings are about to get even MORE exciting with all of these kiddos running around.



Miss Emily loves her some baby!



The birth of Baby Audrey tips the scales in Mike's family: now it's 7 girls to 6 boys. We have taken over the majority! GIRL POWER! : )



Now that Baby Audrey is here....I can get my baby fix! YAY!

Playing in the Leaves

So sweet and loving, right?



But then the battle was ON!

Halloween Weekend 2010

Happy Halloween!



I'll probably (hopefully), say this again, but this was like, the best Halloween EVER! We had such a fun weekend.

On Friday, Ava had her Halloween party and parade at school. I have to say that it's refreshing that she attends a school where the children are actually still allowed to celebrate Halloween. As usual, Ava had planned her costume far in advance. She went as Annie Oakley. You might be curious as to how she arrived at her decision to masquerade as this historical sharp-shooter. It stemmed from her newest 6 year-old quirk: documentary watching. The kid loves to watch documentaries. Mostly on The History Channel and Animal Planet. Her latest obsession is Swamp People on the History Channel. It's hilarious to hear her walking around and imitating the bayou accents of the anglers from Swamp People.

Anyway, one day in early September, she watched a whole documentary on Annie Oakley and immeadiately adopted her as a personal hero. Apparently, she identified with Ms. Oakley. "Hey mom, she was born in Ohio, just like me!" For the last month, I've been bombarded with fun facts about Annie Oakley. When I asked Ava what she would like to be for Halloween, guess what she chose?

So, on Friday, I helped her into her costume and curled her hair. "Mom, Annie Oakley had CURLY hair."



Unlike some moms, I don't mind if my kids have play guns (I have a whole platform on this issue, but I won't grandstand just here and now), but I do have 1 rule...the same rule that my parents required of my sisters and I when we went through our childhood Wild West phase: don't EVER point them at another person.

Ava got caught up in the moment (forgot my rule), and pulled a quick-draw. Then she came after me...and my camera, clicking away on her plastic guns.






I finally talked her down and convinced her to take a posed shot or two. Note: she would not let go of her guns. I guess I don't need to push the whole, "stick to your guns" lesson on her.



Hey, Ava....go snake-eyed.



Posing as a cute cow girl.



I have no idea what's up with this pose. She kept doing this with her guns. Maybe from the documentary? Hmmm.



The story of Emily's costume is not nearly as interesting. After going through all of Ava's dress-up clothes, Emily chose to be a witch...and the costume fit. I made this costume for Ava when she was 3. The only obstacle that I had to overcome was that Emily wanted to be an "evil" witch and requested that I paint her green. (Too much Wizard of Oz, I suppose.) I finally convinced her to be a pretty witch, thank goodness!









Here she is demonstrating her newest dance move before our Halloween party: The Robot.




She really was a pretty witch.



Unless you said, "Show me your MEAN witch face." and then she did this:



But her "cuteness" took over again pretty quickly...



After a busy Saturday, we decided to skip our scheduled Trunk or Treat and spend a little family time carving pumpkins.




Ava donned her "pumpkin guts" gloves for the occasion.



Here's my pumpkin. The perfectionist in me hated that the tempra paint started to peel upon drying. Then I reasoned that the peeling paint made the spooky old house appear more realistic. Ha!



Here's some footage from when we lit our pumpkins, just before bedtime.

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Today, after church we rushed home to prepare for the Halloween pizza party that we hosted for 6 neighborhood families at our house.

Ava and I had big plans to make these owl cupcakes.



Here's a closer look. Fun cupcakes for such a little bit of effort!



Ava was an awesome sous chef! Her job was to separate the double-stuffed Oreos and sort all of the orange and brown Reece's pieces out of the bag, then press the brown candies into the Oreos for "eyes".



She did take a little break to "enhance" her costume.



While she was working, she decided that since it was Halloween, we needed to serve up a plate of eyeball cookies. She enlisted her little sister and her friend Anna to help.



While we worked on our project, Mike worked on a project of his own...a pumpkin cooler!



I was super impressed by his pumpkin carving. One neighbor pointed out, "Give a man beer, and he can be incredibly creative." lol.



The guests arrived, and 16 kiddos, dressed to impress and anticipating the year's biggest sugar high went wild in our home after filling up on pizza and snacks.

Here are some pics of Ava's girlfriends around the dinner table.





Luckily, I had an excuse to escape the craziness of the house for the driveway, where I fried over 200 donuts and served cider to our trick-or-treaters.

Here I am, manning a turkey fryer full o' fritters.



We served Apple Cider fritters and Pumpkin Spice Donuts with shots of cold cider. I may have also shamelessly plugged Krista's Kitchen, since the recipes were featured on my other blog. As usual the donuts in the driveway were a BIG hit with the neighborhood. I had lots of returning trick or treaters from last year who stated that they were really hoping I'd be in my driveway again. My favorites were the kiddos that exclaimed, "This is the BEST house! This lady did this last year. We LOVE coming here!" Awww. Totally made the work worth the effort!



Here's the final shot from the night- the girls after consuming WAY to much candy before bedtime.(Isn't that a Halloween tradition?) Check out Em. She changed into her p.j.'s to ride out her sugar coma.



Now I sit here and assess the damage incurred over the past 6 hours: I smell like a fried donut, my house looks like it has been hit by a tornado, and I am completely pooped...but I wouldn't change a thing. It was a great Halloween! I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend too!