Doing Christmasy Stuff!

Sean's company party last night...
eating lunch inside a fort on a rainy day....
building our biggest train yet (yes, the table broke again)....
hanging ornaments on the tree outside...
...and we made three different Christmas cookies, took a walk in the rain, and started to make a wreath but didn't finish!

School Pictures 2008

Election Night!

I am hoping that we will look back on this election not only for the obvious historic reasons but to be reminded of the old days when people had to actually leave their houses to vote. I am so glad that Oregon is so far ahead of the curve with our mail in ballot system. Imagine standing in line for hours with two small children, that would be so ridiculous!

Halloween

I have a lot of fall and Halloween happenings to catch up on around here! We went to the beach last weekend and it was so nice and warm, it was unbelievable. We rode the carousel in Seaside and then played on the beach. This one of Nora is a keeper for sure. Sean and Ruby are flying the kite in the background. The whole trip was instigated by Ruby asking to fly the kite day after day. Its usually reliably windy at the coast except for this perfectly sunny fall day. But they did get it up in the air for a few minutes so Ruby was satisfied.

On Halloween, we started out going to Sean's work after school and they got a ton of candy with very little effort. Later on when we went trick or treating for real, it was a lot more work to go door to door instead of cube to cube. Nora wore her princess outfit in the afternoon but switched to the jaguar later on.

I decided to do the candy fairy this year since they got so much stuff. We sorted out all the candy and donated everything they don't like to the candy fairy's stash. Then they got really excited about it and started throwing in all sorts of candy so they ended up with only about 10 pieces of candy each. They left their candy out that night and in the morning they got some new art supplies from the candy fairy. Ruby had a hard time getting to sleep, she was very excited to catch a glimpse of a fairy, eventhough I told her it was just me that would leave her a gift, she didn't quite believe me. She was also bummed that Halloween wasn't several nights in a row. I think she was getting mixed up with Hannukah cause she was convinced that there was more than one night of Halloween. The girls are enjoying their candy but its almost gone already (ahh but the candy fairy has plenty of late night treats for self). They ask for their bag a few times a day and like to line up all their stuff and look at it. Then they only pick one, put it all back in the bag, and we put it back in the cupboard. They are doing a good job self regulating and its nice not having to constantly negotiate over how much they are eating.

Ruby and I went on a field trip with her class to the pumpkin patch earlier in the week.

This is her new friend at shool, Miya Kai.

Getting Ready for Halloween

Trip to the Fire Station and Ruby's Birthday Pics

End of Summer Update: Trillium Lake and the first day of school