Texting While Driving

My friend Angela sent this yesterday, and it cracked me up...

Halloween 2009

The rain held off long enough to make Halloween very pleasant.  This year, the kids all went their separate ways.  Cal's friends had a party at the home of a girl in the neighborhood, and about ten of them ate together and then headed out for brief trick-or-treating. He started out as a baseball player but appears to have morphed into a baseball player/gangster.

Bailey went out with her friend Hannah - her step-brothers Nick and Quinn were in for the weekend from Indiana, so they were thrilled to see each other again.  Should have gotten a picture of the group, but I didn't.

 

Sydney went out with her friend Skyler.

I took AJ out with her friends Katie and Kate.

Mark took care of passing out candy. He had at least one cute customer!

Syd's birthday party

This girl is now 11!

She and a few friends celebrated at the bowling alley.

I arrived with the cake, and that was all I had to do.

I strongly recommend a party at Kegler's!

Cool spider

I may have never used the words "cool" and "spider" together, but check out this guy that was on our front porch:

First day of school 2009

Ok, ok, I'm a little behind!  Yes, school DID start and we DID take pictures (both for your pleasure and the children's dismay). First we had Syd and AJ heading off for 5th and 4th grade, respectively. This was Sydney's last first day of elementary school!

Next we loaded Bailey and Cal on the bus for 7th and 8th grades. They REALLY love getting their picture taken. You can see Cal also loves getting his hair cut these days.

Demolition Derby

Mark was pretty excited about the county fair this year -- he wanted to see the demolition derby. This fair is not even in our county, and it's more than an hour away. I was not excited about any of it, but I had resigned myself to going. And then a last minute reprieve! Reuben was willing to go, and that meant no room for me in the truck. Too bad!

What a nice group shot! No grumpy me to ruin it.

Looks like they had lots of fun.

There were rides:

And tractors:

And exercises:

Food, of course

And the best part of all - the demolition derby!

Out on the Water Again

The best part of RI may now officially be the trips to the pond where Emily's family has a summer home. They drag us around in tubes on this beautiful water, and Mark takes a million photos.

Bailey and Sydney went first:

Next came AJ and Cal:

Notice the wildly different emotions:

Next it was my turn:

I look like I can handle this, right?

And things started out well...

But for some reason I had more problems like this than anyone else did:

That happened three times before I gave up. But it was fun!

And here's a bonus picture of Wyatt because he's so cute:

Time with the nephews

Our RI vacation this year was mostly about this:

That's me holding a sleeping Wyatt.

Sometimes we mixed it up a little with some of this:

Or this:

How about this?

Or this?

One time we let Sue hold him:

But you get the gist. We held Wyatt a lot.

When we weren't holding Wyatt, we were playing with Jackson.

He could be a bit of a rascal:

But how cute is he?!

Vacation in Rhode Island

We were back from the beach only a week when we left town again - this time for Rhode Island.

The first night we arrived, we stopped at this Mom&Pop ice cream shop near Dave

and Emily's house. They had this super-friendly duck who joined us as we ate our ice cream. We liked it so much that we returned the second night - this time without the camera. And it turns out that that gentle swan you see gliding along the pond? He had a whole "good cop/bad cop" thing going with the duck. They were both out of the water, and they were taking nothing from nobody. We could have sent it to funniest home videos. But you will just have to use your imagination.

A Week at the Beach

We are back from a week at the beach, and it was great!

We played in the pool...

and fed the turtles...

and played in the sand...

and dug some holes (rumor has it that Doug did all the work)...

and built some pyramids...

and said some prayers...

We taught Ella some life skills...

and did some shopping...

We played some mini-golf...

drove some go-carts...

and gave Ella some snacks.

A good time was had by all!