Friday, January 31, 2014

35 Years Young

I celebrated my 35th birthday on October 27th.  That sounds a bit old, but most days, that's about what I feel.  I'm not one to hang onto my youth too much anyways (youth is overrated, and only appears supersweet when you are armchair quarterbacking, in my opinion).  James and I celebrated with dinner at Tucano's Brazilian Grill (free dinner for the birthday girl, woo hoo).  On begins the march to 36 next year...

Harvest Party

I love the autumn, but it certainly is a busy time of year, so it was wonderful that the kids' Nana and cousin planned and hosted a party for all of the kids and their cousins.  The littler ones (and the older ones, although of course they have to be a little weird about it because they are teenagers) had an absolute blast.  The weather was Idaho perfect - sunny and warm with plenty of leaves on the ground (which is something we don't have, because we only have a small plum tree and a small locust tree in our yard).  

All the grandkids, except for the youngest (including her, the 10 kids ranged from 14 years old down to 1)

Allegra's the best kid to be willing to play with the younger kids

Cecily

Elinor is a ham

Colin

Ian

More Elinor

Party Games

Bobbing for Apples

Doughnut eating contest

Gotta post a goofy picture of the teenager

Twister!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

October Odds N Ends

September was a bad picture month - the only pictures we took, apparently, were of the first days of school.  We did mildly better in October, so here are some random pictures from the first half of the month (since I can barely remember what happened way back then anyways).

The little girls love their Build A Bears and the piano

Elinor is also a huge Littlest Pet Shop fan - the messes the girls can make with those is epic


We had loads of fresh apples from the orchard, which meant lots of lots of homemade applesauce, yum!

Allegra, Ian, Colin, and Cecily with one of the 4 year old teachers at Shepherd of the Valley, Mrs. DuVall.  They've all had her, and Elinor will make five, once she's in her class next year.  The preschool has been such a blessing to our family.

One of the best parts of being a teacher, for sure!