Halloween

Just a quick post, mostly pictures, but I think that they kind of speak for themselves.

Our morning started out a little "hairy", but things started to look up when Grant gave us a lucky charm!

Quincy was supposed to be a tin man, but we ran into some technical difficulties, so at the last moment, she came up with this zombie costume.

The aftermath.

Carving Pumpkins

I suppose this post is a little late since we actually did this a week ago, but I thought that today was a good enough day to post it.


The kids were much more willing to get in there and get messy.
Dan helped with some of the knife work.

Quincy and her pumpkin.



Julia's ghostly pumpkin, Boo.

My gourd goblin.

Grant's three-eyed ogre.

Hurry, Mouse! By Grant Michael Sander

Hurry, Mouse!

By Grant Michael Sander

Be careful, Mouse,
And watch your back,
Or you’ll get eaten
By that cat!

The cat has seen you,
Furry, little Mouse!
Run for your life!
He’s about to pounce!

HURRY, HURRY,
Cute, little Mouse!
SCURRY, SCURRY
Into your house!

If you don’t make it,
You will be killed.
The feline will eat you;
Your blood will be spilled!

The mouse was scared
While he was chased.
But he crawled in the wall,
And he won the race.

“You win this time,”
Meowed the cat,
“But next time you’re mine!
I’ll eat you for lunch,
Your flesh I will munch,
Your bones I will crunch!”

A bird sighting

Grant does all of his schoolwork at a small table beneath one of the kitchen windows, so he has a good view of the comings and goings of the various birds and critters in our backyard. Today he spotted this little cardinal. I love cardinals! They're so cute. This picture was taken from a distance through the window, so it's quite blurry, but I still wanted to share it especially for my bird geek sister

Kevin's Birthday

Look at that little man. Isn't he cute?

Oh, but he's all grown up now.

Kevin's 16th birthday was last week. He spent the day in his typical way, playing video games, but this time he had his friend Fray over to join in the game play.

Kate and I sang sixteen candles loudly and terribly as we lit the candles.
He's sixteen, he's beautiful and he's ours! :oP

I'm back

It's been a while since my last post. I guess I haven't been feeling particularly bloggy lately. Sorry about that.

Here are a couple pictures that I found on my camera. Julia took them when they were out sweeping the leaves off of the deck.

Washington Fun

It has taken me all week to blog everything we did in the five hours we were in D.C. on Monday.

We just saw so many things and took so many pictures, that it was hard to decide what to post. I imagine that we'll go back many, many times over the next couple of years and maybe we wont take as many pictures, but for now, you'll just have to put up with me.

The sun was a little bright, so we re-shot the picture of Julia.



Hey, Mitchie! Julia went to the moon. Look what she found there... astronauts!




The Smithsonian castle is mainly just a information center for all of the other museums, but I'd never been in there so we decided to check it out. It has very cool architecture inside and out and a room with bits and pieces from each museum, so we got to see a little of everything that the Smithsonian has to offer.
Grant in front of the Capitol Building.
He found the sunglasses that Dan was given after he had Lasik. They are old-man, bug-eye, wrap-around glasses and we couldn't get Grant to part with them.


The flags around the monument.


The Lincoln Memorial.

That's as close as we got this time around.

I just fell for this building and took many pictures.

None of them really show what the building truly looks like, but it was so cool.

This was the last picture of the day. Julia took it.

She loved how pretty the sunset was and how it reflected in the buildings.

The unexpected sites of D.C.

While we were wandering around D.C. on Monday, we saw many of the "usual" sites, but we also ran across some things that you don't normally expect to find.

Julia noticed the hole in the tree and was looking at it, wondering if something might live there, when out popped this little squirrel. She was so excited and pretty lucky to have had the time to get the picture. Very cute.

There was a large garden full of late blooming roses.

We found a "to scale" walk through space from planet to planet. We started at Pluto and made it to Jupiter. Next time we'll walk all the way to the sun!

No matter what your politics are, you generally don't expect to find the Death Star in the middle of the mall.

We saw this very medieval looking statue as we were walking back to our car. I stopped to take a picture and realized that this was Queen Isabel, the very queen who financed Christopher Columbus' voyages. How very fortuitous to have run into her on Columbus day of all days! Thank you Isabel.

Expanding our museum horizons

One of the things that I absolutely love about D.C. is all of the museums. Most of them are part of the Smithsonian, which makes them even better because they are free.

Dan took us to this museum, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a small one that I had never heard of.

Just the building itself is beautiful.

These were part of a temporary exhibit of glass pieces. All of it was beautiful, but we loved these "boats" that were suspended in air.

This gallery held hundreds of portraits of Native Americans, but what my kids liked even more were the pictures of bison and bears and some larger pictures of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. I think that they were excited to see something that they recognized and had seen in real life.

The absolute best piece, the one that caught everyone's imagination, was this, Game Fish by Larry Fuente. From a distance, it was a cool and colorful fish, but when we got closer, we saw that it was entirely made of toys. We stood there for the longest time saying things like, "Did you see the smurf? Is that James Bond?" I'd go back just to look at that again.

I think I can, I think I can. I can! I can!

When we went apple picking a few weeks ago, I picked a whole bucket full of "windfalls" or apples that were on the ground. They were selling those for half price, so I only ended up paying 45 cents per pound. Great deal! I bought these with the sole intention to make apple butter. I wanted to make enough that I could can some, but getting the canning supplies turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. Apparently, I was a little late for the canning season and all I was finding were empty shelves where the canning supplies once were. Ugh! Very frustrating! After scouring many grocery stores, my mother's house and improvising a bit, I finally felt that I had everything that I needed.
Both Julia and Grant helped me break in my new immersion blender. Cool toy!
Our kitchen friend, Chinny Chin Chin, watched over us and made sure we did a good job.
The final results!
I even made homemade biscuits to hold the apple butter up. Yum!

What else can I can?!

American Girl Place

Here are some of the pictures that we took at the American Girl store last week. I'm a little behind in posting this, but better late than never, I guess.

Look at the smiles on their faces!

Looking around the next corner to see what else is there.

They were so thrilled that they were practically falling over themselves to get where they wanted to go.



We hadn't planned to eat at the American girl cafe, but we were hungry and it just sounded like fun, so I asked for a table and we were lucky enough to get one!
The girls didn't bring their own dolls, so they got to ask a new friend to eat with them. I think they enjoyed this almost as much as having their own with them. It gave them an opportunity to play with one of the other characters.


Julia was intrigued when she saw the desserts being served to some of the other tables. She liked the flower pot, but when she saw the chocolate mousse that was in the pot, she gasped! "Look at what's in the pot!" she said as she took the flower out and stuck the stem in her mouth in order to lick the chocolate off. It was very yummy.