Hannah's Birthday and Halloween

We had a fun weekend..... fall break...birthday...trick-or-treating....

Friday was Hannah's birthday, and since Jacob and Mary were home from school for fall break, I took them to the zoo for the annual "Zoo Boo." They get to wear their costumes and go trick-or-treating at the zoo and other stuff. (Jacob is a bat, if you can't tell)

Friday evening we had a small birthday celebration for Hannah after dinner with cupcakes. I think it's cute that she still has her whiskers and nose on from her costume!

Saturday we had a birthday party.... here's the official birthday cake, with Hannah's new friend, Elmo:

FYI- those of you who shop at Trader Joe's should try their new cake mixes.... I used the chocolate mix for this cake and it was really good!

Jacob and Mary are singing "Happy Birthday" here, and Hannah is all smiles!

The weekend concluded with Halloween, of course. Here we are (or rather, here I am) carving the pumpkins. Jacob is just like Brian when it comes to pumpkin carving.... doesn't like the icky insides, doesn't like the pumpkin smell, doesn't like any of it. Jacob left the room, Hannah got bored, and I ended up doing most of the work. At least Mary hung out with me and tried to scoop out some of the seeds in her pumpkin!

And finally, Trick-or-Treating! Now you can see Jacob's bat wings (made from a black umbrella!)

Hannah was awfully cute going up to houses and saying "Trick-or-treat!" Only she can't say the "tr" sound, so it comes out as "Frick-or-freat!" I wanted to get a picture with her cat tail, so I took this one:

Happy Halloween!

Mary's Dance Recital

Mary's dance school had a recital last week. All the dancers participated- kids and adults. Mary's group is the youngest- she did a ballet dance and a tap dance. Here's "Dreamtime Ballet." Mary is the one on the far right.



Mary's friend Cordelia is in the middle of the ballet line- did you notice she spun around 7 times at the end of the dance?

And here's her tap dance... Mary's in the middle.



At the end of the recital, the whole company joined on stage for the "Cupid Shuffle." Mary's personality really shines on this one!

July

We were very busy all through July.... it's hard to believe it's now August and school will be starting next week!

Jacob turned 8 on July 22. Those of you who are familiar with "The Brave Little Toaster" will recognize this cake right away:
I think Jacob may be the only 8-year old in history to ask for a toaster on his birthday cake. I'm sure I'll never make one again!

We had a nice little celebration, and then moved on right away to the next birthdays of the week:

Grandpa Charlie (dad) and I shared a birthday cake, as we have done many times before. You only need so much leftover birthday cake, you know. I'm sure I could look back in my old photo albums and find many pictures just like this one.

After the birthday week, we went to the Cincinnati area for a few days with some of Brian's family. We got an opportunity to take Jacob and Mary to King's Island for the first time, with Brian's sister Lori and 2 kids, Ben & Sarah; Brian's step-brothers Greg and Alex; and Greg's wife Karen. Bob & Emilie were nice enough to stay at the rental house with Hannah, since we didn't want to take her to the amusement park. Karen took a few cute pictures of the kids on rides:

Mary with cousin Sarah:

We spent most of the day in the kid's section of the park, but after the kids went to bed that evening four of us went back to ride the Beast (roller coaster), because you can't possibly take a trip to King's Island without riding the Beast!

Here we are at the rental house toasting marshmallows for s'mores:

And a very cute picture of Grandma Emilie and Hannah:

I just took these pictures yesterday.... here's a happy sunflower looking over my garden:Can you find Mary? She looks like a little garden fairy:

And a butterfly enjoying the zinnias:

Enjoy the last days of summer, everyone!

More summer pictures

We recently acquired a "playground," as the kids call it, for our backyard. A friend from church noticed that her neighbors were giving this away, and her husband helped us take it apart, haul it to our house, and put it back together. It took most of a Sunday to get the job done. The kids LOVE it, though it's mostly been too hot and mosquito-y to play outside lately.

Last Saturday our friend Tracie got married, and Hannah (her goddaughter) was a flower girl! I hope we get some good pictures of her from the photographer, because I was too busy to take any. She was awesome! She walked straight down the aisle, dropping flower petals from a basket the whole way. At the end of the wedding, she marched out with the rest of the wedding party, and dropped more petals on her way out! I was so impressed. Here she is with Grandpa Charlie, being silly eating cake:

Brian and me with Tracie and Nick:

Hannah in our backyard in a bathing suit, eating watermelon:

We're already enjoying some produce from my garden- some cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. We had peas earlier in the Spring, until the rabbits ate them! I have since put up a fence, which is working so far to keep out the critters. Now I'm battling japanese beetles- the same story every year.

I have cucumbers, red and yellow peppers, carrots, pole beans, peas, tomatoes, basil, and a couple of red cabbages and broccoli.

Oh, and zinnias and marigolds, too!

Summer!

Summer is in full swing, heat and humidity and all! June is flying by, and we're busier than ever, since every day is different.... the tidy schedule that we have during the school year is forgotten! The above picture was taken on a nice evening in our backyard with the timer on the camera. Amazingly all the kids are actually looking the right direction!

This past week we took Jacob and Mary to Clifty Falls State Park for 2 nights. Hannah had a "vacation" at Grandma Dianne's house. She kept saying things like, "is this the vacation?" We felt very bad leaving her, but it was the best thing for everyone, and Hannah did fine with Grandma & Grandpa.

We aren't campers, so we stayed at the Inn in the park, which is very nice. Most of our time was spent hiking or swimming. We lucked out with the weather- we've had a lot of severe storms, but it didn't rain at all and the humidity let up a bit. I think the high temps were in the upper 80's, but hiking in the woods out of the sun wasn't too bad at all. Friday (the day we came back home) the high was something like 92, and the humidity was creeping back in. Here's Jacob hiking along one of the falls.... you can sort of see the falls in the background behind the trees:

You can't hike without trail mix!

Mary took this picture.... a little out of focus, but not bad for a 5-year old:
Jacob and Brian crossing the creek:

Another trail mix break:

Resting against a tree after our last hike:

It's been so hot here, the vegetables think it's July! I've picked some cherry tomatoes from our garden already, and we had our first Indiana corn today (Father's Day)....

An unrelated note... Hannah had her final visit with Dr. Brown (her heart surgeon) a couple weeks ago. She will continue to have regular visits with her cardiologist for a long time, but as far as surgery goes, she's all done! I asked him if I could take their picture, and without hesitating he called to Hannah to come sit with him.... and she actually cooperated! I'm sure I'm not the first parent who's asked for a picture with the person responsible for saving their child's life. Someday she'll want to know who he was and what he was like. So, that's that.