After Church One Day...

Just a little park time with the kiddos and some pictures on Jeff's phone.

Just Playing Together

Tiramisu Tradition

We have a favorite Italian restaurant in our new town, and we love to go there now and then to enjoy our favorite food and indulge in one of our favorite desserts.  The first time we tried the tiramisu, Jeff and I agreed that it was the best tiramisu that we've tasted outside of Italy.  They make it from scratch there at the restaurant.

Now we have a tradition of sharing a piece of tiramisu as a family after a meal at this restaurant.  It's one of those family traditions that is a little thing, but it's important to the kids, and I might forget it if I don't write it down.  We have to eat the dessert in a certain way:  We order the (very large) piece of tiramisu with five forks, and we each take a little bite, one at a time, in order of age.  We rotate through the family over and over until it's gone, and the kids scrape the plate with their forks, all together, until they are satisfied that the last of the syrup is gone…or until we think they've gone a little too crazy and are a little too distracting to the other customers.  Anyway, it's a fun tradition and we all enjoy it!

Veteran's Day

In our new town, Jonathan has joined a larger and more active pack of Cub Scouts.  One of their yearly activities that we appreciate is their recognition of veterans, which includes placing flags at the nearest national cemetery.  As you can see, some of these flags have seen better days.  The Scouts are also planning to retire some flags from the cemetery soon, and some of the flags date back to the days before we had 50 states.

We truly appreciate the sacrifices that our veterans and their families have made and are making so that we can live in a free country!

Pumpkins

Since we weren't home to welcome trick-or-treaters, we didn't get around to carving pumpkins.  But, we did paint them.  Doreen had made some gorgeous and delicious Halloween cookies for the kids, so we shared them - and pumpkin painting - with Jonathan's good buddy who lives in the neighborhood.  Here are the kids with the cookies...

and with the pumpkins.

The paints are a favorite of mine.  I'm so thankful the kids have them.  And now that Grace is in kindergarten and I see how seldom the kids get to do things like painting, I'm happy to provide them for the kids at home.

A Wedding

Jeff and I are in a stage of life that doesn't include many weddings, but we did attend one recently.  My aunt Kathy wanted us to take this picture, and I'm glad she did.  Here are some lovely ladies who are also my relatives.

It rained on the wedding, which I thought made it even more memorable.  Jeff brought Grace's umbrella to my grandma, and I thought it made for a cute picture of her!

Halloween

This year, we had a rainy Halloween.  It was wonderful!  I got these pictures of my little jumping clowns wearing the costumes that Mom made for Todd and me...

and then pictures with their big brother, the self-fashioned Lego guy...

and then it started to rain.  We were probably more excited about the rain than we were about Halloween!  Todd and Corinne invited us for their Halloween party again this year, and on the drive there...

the younger kids fell asleep!!!  The sound of the rain must have been soothing.  It sure made me happy!

At Todd's request, we got a picture of the costumes on the current kids and the original kids…34 years later.

We had lots of fun indoors while the trick-or-treaters got soaked.  I didn't get a lot of pictures, but I did take some of bobbing for apples.

Todd did it the real way, and the kids were delighted.

Thanks for a great time, Todd and Corinne!

More Pictures from October

I got to accompany Grace's class on their trip to the pumpkin patch - a patch that was new to us.  I took a lot of pictures, but they have other kids in them, kids whose pictures I don't have permission to publish as I don't know all the parents.  SO, I'll share this one of Grace from a friend's phone.  The kids got to plant broccoli, which they will be able to check on through out the winter and possibly eat after harvest.  She's "tucking the broccoli into bed," as the leader told the kids to do.  So cute!  Since we haven't done preschool with the kids so far, this was our first large-group trip to a pumpkin patch, and it was really fun!

Benjamin has been talking to the neighbors on the phone a lot lately.

He likes to draw and write more than either of his siblings did at this age.  Which makes me appreciate it even more than I would otherwise.  I'm not sure what he was drawing here.

Grace likes to color a lot, but not always to draw.  On this day, she decided to draw an eagle - a baby, I think.

Jonathan is not usually amused when I take his picture.

Jeff had the opportunity to go to one of the World Series games, thanks to the generosity of a good friend.  I had to get a picture of him and Benjamin.  Benjamin is wearing the Giants uniform that my dad gave to Jonathan once upon a time.

Here are the big kids going to school on "wear red" day for red ribbon week.  To them, red means Nebraska!  Oh, and Grace found out at school that day that this is a cheerleader dress.  So far, to her, it had just been a dress, which was fine with me.

The Wednesday before Halloween, the kids' area at our gym had a Halloween party, so Benjamin was super excited to wear his costume.  He kept telling everyone how Uncle Todd gave him his clown costume.  And I painted B's nose blue, as requested.

On that same day, it was pajama day for the big kids.  I'll be sad when they grow out of thinking it's fun and cool to wear your pajamas to school.

Benjamin still fits into the Cozy Coupe, barely.  Each time I think it's time to donate one of these little-kid toys, he gets in and plays with it some more!

He's been enjoying puzzles a lot lately.  These are a little too easy, but they're from my childhood, so I'm a bit sentimental about keeping them nearby for him.

She's still plowing through books!

Certain people are crazy enough to jump in during October.

Here are Jeff and his graduate school buddies at the game.  Probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience for these guys to be rooting for these teams in the same place at the same time!

At the Pumpkin Patch with Charlotte

Now that Charlotte is home with Corinne, who has retired from teaching like I have, we can go on occasional field trips while the big kids are at school.  In October, we went to our favorite pumpkin patch.  Benjamin and Charlotte both enjoyed it, but it was really funny how they often enjoyed opposite things.  Jumping off of hay was one thing they could agree on.

Benjamin preferred the hay maze, while Charlotte wanted to stay with the animals.

They both loved the hay ride behind the tractor.  There was a big school group ahead of us, so we had to wait awhile for our turn, but it was worth the wait.

Charlotte got some practice driving.

And I must admit, I have been totally delinquent in sharing these month-old pictures with Corinne…but here they are now!  :)