Fall Family Fun Festival @ First Presbyterian Church

Our church held a fall festival on Sunday. This was an event that a girlfriend and I hosted two years ago and it was a huge success.  This year the turn out was much less and it was really geared toward kids ages 2-4.  My girls were kind of bored and let down a little bit. We brought Riley, our neighbor, with us and I honestly felt bad that she was having a bad time.  I think I thought it was way more lame than they did. They all said they had fun in the car on the way home, but I think they were trying to be nice.

The activities included pin the nose on the pumpkin - set up at knee level for them (lame), toddler/miniature bowling (lame), dangling donuts (ok), rate race (lame), touch and feel decaying body parts at a station called Grossology (fun), a cakewalk (fun) and baby cone ring toss (another lame one). Six volunteer families opted to decorate a doorway in the hallways of the second floor and then kids trick-or-treated at each doorway. The year my girlfriend and I hosted the festival, we had 12 families sign up to decorate doorways. Having more was so much more fun for the kids.

Riley, Sophia and Lilly each won the cakewalk twice so we brought home a lot of cupcakes.  Not as many as we donated for the event, but close.  We had fun making chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, gluten-free brownies and a batch of cupcakes.

Here are the girls before we left.  It starts off with a nice, smiling photo and then they take a few goofy ones.  I think one is "mad" and one is "sad" and one is "super happy".  Enjoy...

 Riley, Lilly, Elizabeth, Sophia:

Farmer's Market

This past Saturday we went to the Farmer's Market Fall Festival. It's an event that we go to every year.  This year I realized that the girls have outgrown a lot of the attractions. They didn't even beg me to let them play on the bounce houses.  They both entered the coloring contests. No luck there. 

We discovered this Kodak moment and took advantage of it. I love their faces here. Nowadays when I take their photo...they want to do a nice, smiley one first and then a goofy one next.

We all played this game.  Knock over the milk jugs.  

Guess which one of us knocked them all down? Twice! 

I'm not telling - because it wasn't me.

 

This is the smiling face of the girl who knocked down all the milk jugs not just one time. She did it both times she tried.  I think she's going to be a wiz kid at basketball this winter. I gave her the option of playing basketball or swimming and she choose basketball. She's a really good shot when she's stationary, but I'm not sure how she'll be when she's mobile.  Maybe even better!

There is a craft fair there too. I had $23.00 in my pocket.  

I let Lilly buy a duct tape wallet for $3.00 so I had a 20 left.  The girls decided that they each wanted to purchase a homemade American Girl outfit.  Sophia picked one out for $12.00.  I tried to get Lilly to choose an $8.00 outfit or even a $10.00 outfit because the seller/sewer told me she would knock $2.00 off the price so they could each get something they wanted.  That was all fine and dandy, but Lilly wanted a "set" that came in a plastic box and cost $18.00.  She wasn't budging either.  She wanted that set and she wasn't going to settle for anything but the set. In the end we ended up walking away without the set and without any outfit for her at all and I had $8.00 in my pocket.

We stumbled on some really fresh looking corn on the cob so I bought six ears for our dinner so I think I was down to four dollars.

Our last stop was at the the Confectioner's Shop to simply ogle at the delicious-looking homemade, fancy desserts and candy.  I allowed Lilly to pick one thing. She choose a yard of gum.  In this photo you can see that it's almost as tall as she is. 

I came home with $2 and some change.

Peaceful little girl...still...even at 7!

Eleanor's Birthday Party

Eleanor is one of our friends from church.  Well, she's in Lilly's Daisy troop and her older sister, Mary Price, is in Sophia's Brownie troop.  Eleanor just turned 6 and both girls were invited to her party. It was held at their house and in honor of the season it was themed "fall fun".

Eleanor's mom and my friend, Julie, had her sister plan the party. She planned fun activities like painting a pumpkin, bobbing for apples, getting tattoos, a hay stack candy search, face painting and, of course, cake and ice cream after opening presents.  Sophia was the only kid who snagged an apple! I was proud of her, but so grossed out.

Both Lilly and Sophia had a great time searching for goodies in the haystack. 

A morning out with Haley and Carlie

We went to a place called Color Me Mine with Haley and Carlie a few Saturday's back to paint some pottery. Haley and Sophia were earning the Pottery Girl Scout badge which is to be worn on the front of their vests.  Only earned awards are worn on the front of the vest. Everything else is called a "fun" patch and is worn on the back of the uniform.  Carlie and Lilly will receive a fun patch for participating in "pottery fun". 

Sophia and Haley got a quick tour of the facility and learned about the process of creating a finished piece of art.   I think the tour-giver said the ovens heat up to 1,300 degrees and after a green glaze has been applied the painted pieces get "fired" for 24 hours.  Then they cool.....for a few days.

Sophia chose a cat piggy bank and a DAD piece to give to Will for Christmas.  She painted it in Redskins colors. Lilly chose to paint a snowman ornament for baby Caroline and a cat piggy bank for herself.  

The store just called me and the pieces are ready for pickup.  I can't wait to see how cool all of it is.

The girls also had to get some hands-on experience with clay so we bought some modeling clay (that never dries out!) and made a few things.  Sophia did the Rudolph and I did most of the little figures. 

Lilly's class photo

This is Lilly's class photo.  Her best friend is the girl in the middle wearing the blue dress.  Her name is Sydney. 

Yep, it's only three weeks old!

I dropped my phone face down on the driveway yesterday and even though it was wearing a rubber protector it still shattered!  Of course, we never buy the insurance coverage.  You would think we would have learned our lesson with the number of ovens we've had to buy in the last four years. 

I immediately got in the car and rushed to CPR (Cell Phone Repair) to see if they could fix it.  Will and the girls weren't home so I was going to get it fixed before they even found out!  Well, when I walked into the store the employee didn't even know what the phone was called. I found out that it's so new to the market that he won't even get the new screen for a few months. So indeed I had to break it to Will (no pun intended).  He was surprisingly very calm and cool about it. I was in tears, but he wasn't mad at all. Probably because he did the same thing about two years ago.

Playing outside

The girls have been playing outside with all the neighbor kids all weekend. Our next door neighbors have two little kids.  I think they are 2 (Jillian) and 4 (Rylan) years old.  A girl named Kennedy was riding her bike around the loop yesterday and decided to stay and play and she was back again today.  Of course, Taylor and Riley were in on the fun both days and Summer and Lilia (sisters) that live way down the street showed up today. 

I was able to get a picture of Riley, Taylor, Sophia and Lilly before I had to run inside because it's soooo cold outside - it's 69 degrees right now!  It's been raining and super windy for about a week and there isn't any relief in the forecast until Wednesday when the sun may peek out from behind the clouds for a little bit. I already miss summer and am not looking forward to the cold weather.

The start of pumpkin season

Lilly and I stopped on the way home from school the other day to pick up some fall flowers, a hay bale and some pumpkins to decorate our front yard for fall. It's been raining all week so I haven't been able to plant the flowers yet, but at least they are getting lots of water.  Lilly asked me to take a few pictures of her with the pumpkins.  This is the start of our fall pumpkin picture-taking season for me.  I always seem to take a lot because the kids look so cute surrounded by pumpkins.  O like dressing them in orange so they kind of blend in.  We found out about several fall festivals that we plan on attending so we'll get some good photo opportunities.  Fun Fun!

Playdate with Norah

Lilly invited Norah home from school with her on Tuesday. The girls had a great time dressing up and using my camera. There were some very interesting poses among the pictures, but I'll only share the "safe" ones.

When Sophia got home from school she entertained them for a few hours before we had to take Norah home. Norah said she had such a good time that she wants to come over every Tuesday. That's always nice to hear.

Mystery Reader

Every Friday Lilly's class has a "Mystery Reader" come in during the last 15 minutes of class and read a few stories to the kids. 

I was the mystery reader yesterday. Lilly couldn't have been happier when I walked into the classroom. She got to sit in the chair next to me.  Can you see her grin?

I had to give three clues about myself that Mrs. LaSalle read to the class throughout the day.  Lilly guessed correctly after the last clue which was "I have two daughters".  The other clues were "My favorite color is blue" and "My favorite food is chocolate covered bananas".

Girl Scout Park Clean Up

Last Sunday my Girl Scout troops had a joint park clean up. Three families (including mine) has a girl in each troop so it ends up being pretty convenient.

Here's a few pictures and a video of the girls at the park...

Here's some of  my girls from the older troop. Paige, Mary Price, Sophia, Elizabeth, Kaleigh

 This is Lilly and Eleanor from my younger troop.

 

And here they are doing a slide train.

Are you scared?

Sophia has strep throat for the first time this season. She felt it coming on yesterday at school and informed me when she got home that she thought she needed a trip to Patient First.  After our trip to visit the doctor we ordered a pizza and waited to pick it up.  While we were waiting we went to a store that has tons of Halloween things for sale. Here's Sophia being scary...

Obama Stinks!

The girls have gotten into the habit of Will bringing something home for them after each of his business trips. It's usually a toy, but this time is was a Barack Obama Chia Pet that he was gifted from his boss.
 
The seeds were actually growing after a few days of "planting" them and it appeared that it would be a successful adventure.

It was super funny to see the seed sprouting from inside his nose. It looked like a booger. The girls really got a kick out of that. 

A few days after it sprouted it started to smell really bad. It was so bad that I had to throw it away.  I know of at least one person in our family who will be thrilled that I threw it away.  You know who are you! (smile).   

Juliette and Penelope's 1st birthday party

Last Saturday we hightailed it up to Street, Maryland for Juliette, the older, and Penelope's first birthday party. It started at 1:00 and we rolled in around 1:40.  Not too terribly late considering it was a five and 1/2 hour drive.  Penelope is on the left and Juliette is on the right.

The twins are absolutely adorable and look absolutely nothing alike.  I didn't get a good picture of the two of them together from the front.  I have tons of them from the side like this one. Here they are not really enjoying their huge cupcakes. It was funny to watch Penelope take globs of icing and flick them on the floor. 

Will was throwing around the football with the guys while Sophia, Lilly, Nana and I chatted and ate food.  Actually, the girls did a lot of coloring and playing with the ball too.

At one point I actually got to hold Penelope.  It's too bad she wasn't looking at the camera because she's so darn cute.

 I think it was a little overwhelming for them (in a good way).

My girls had a great time....and an even better time when the cake was cut for guests.  Just check out Sophia's face here as the moment arrives - the cutting of the cake!

 
After a while Sophia and I found ourselves relaxing outside. I was trying to book us a different hotel for the night rather than the one we had already booked because Meg basically said ours was going to be in "da hood". Sophia was reading one of the books that Nana gave to her.  When Will saw this picture he called us nerds.

Another picture of Penelope. 

I uploaded the wrong picture in an earlier post. OOPS!

I'm lovin' it.

I love the fact that Lilly's teacher, Mrs. LaSalle, takes so many pictures of what's going on in Lilly's Kindergarten classroom. These are a few of the really cute ones I saw just this week.

Today Lilly went home with her friend Norah. Norah's mom is a good friend of mine. Charlotte, her 7-yr old daughter is friends with Sophia.

Lilly and Norah had a short play date and then both took Rebekah's group piano class. Lilly said she really enjoyed it and wanted to practice a bit tonight after dinner, but before she could Sophia wanted to show us all of her skills and cut to the front of the line. Oh well.  Lilly brought home a book so we'll have to take a peek at it over the weekend.  She told me she has a bit of homework.  

Taking a walk

Sophia and I were taking Sadie for a walk tonight like we've been doing.  On these walks she likes to hear herself talk the entire time! I can't even think about it being relaxing because she's always talking. Tonight her topic was "fashion".  I would ask her what's the latest fashion trend in shoes or what nail polish colors are in this season.  It was so flattering to watch her glance at me and then answer back as if I was the fashion expert. At one point she even asked me my favorite color and then pronounced that aquamarine would be the most popular color this season.  Too cute.

She calls our walks special...and they are....because we have some alone time. We are the "S Girls" because both of our names start with "S".  Sadie is also in our club.  Will and Lilly are the "ILLS" because they both have I-L-L in their names.  Together we are the "SILLS".  Gotta love the way a child's brain thinks.  

Another tooth

Lilly lost her second bottom tooth at school today.  She came running up to me with this sticker on her shirt. Her teacher has a giant tooth hanging on the wall and Lilly was so excited because now she would be on the tooth wall - even though it's the third one she's missing.  I'm guessing that she was too shy to say anything at the beginning of the year.  She's made a friend named Sydney. They are too shy to say anything to each other in the mornings, but they are always together at the end of the day. 

Sophia is doing well in school. She's got a lot of homework every night.  She's got a language paper, a math sheet (front and back) and she has to log her reading and read at least 15 minutes per night.  It also counts when someone reads her a book. You can guess which one she likes best.