Ya gotta love the way kids think!

So haven't had a chance to post much lately, but these little gems got quite a few giggles when I sent them to the fam as quick texts. Emma's 2010 Christmas letter to Santa: Just read Emma's letter to Santa. At the end of her extensive and expensive list, she graciously included what the rest of us wanted in her letter... "Dani wants a webkins jr and a pair of sneakers. Natalie wants less homework. Mom wants peace on earth. Dad wants a gun." ROF LOL! Have a cheerful day! The Race (1/2/11): So the girls decided to race to see who could get ready for bed the fastest. Dani decided she couldn't win on speed so she comes running back into my bedroom with the toothpaste. Her rationale being her sisters can't win if they can't brush their teeth! Pretty good strategy for a 5 year old! Well it kinda backfired when her sisters found other toothpaste and finished before she started. She called them cheaters and about blew a gasket when we told her she was the cheater. She then tried to barricade Emma in the bedroom. That just got her a spanking. I believe her last words were "this is the worst day of my whole life!" ahh, the bedtime drama!

Princesses, Pumpkins and the Flintstones? Oh My!

So here's the rundown on the memorable Halloween costumes of 2010:

Emma = Black cat. She picked out/made her own costume. Mom just sewed the tail and drew on whiskers!

Natalie = Pumpkin. Once again, another made-her-own costume. Pretty good pumpkin paint job!

Dani = Princess Leia. So her's was easy enough too, since it was a recycled costume of Natalie's from a few years back. I just had to do a little (ok maybe a lot) of hemming. But what a cutie! Her hair was plenty long enough for the classic cinnamon roll hair buns. She did insist upon spraying her hair black - have to be authentic here!

Jeremy = Well who else do you know would make the best Fred Flintstone?! Of all the costumes his (and Kellie's) were probably the hardest to make. BTW Jer won the best male costume contest at our friends' Halloween party Saturday night!

Kellie = So if Jeremy is Fred, obviously Wilma isn't far behind! Had a fun time fixing my hair into the Wilma-do and spraying it very orange. No, the picture doesn't do it justice!

The weekend was busy with the ward truck-or-treat on Friday night, the grown-ups' Halloween party at the Nallira's on Saturday nigh,t and the neighborhood block party Halloween night. We all have a decent haul of candy and are trying to motivate ourselves to take down the decorations and throw away the molding pumpkins before Thanksgiving. Aghhh! Thanksgiving!? Already????!

(Check out the cute slideshow pics from the weekend's festivities.)

Halloween Fun

Last Monday the girls had the day off school, so we made the drive again to Marble Falls to Sweet Berry Farms for some Fall Fun. We went with Christy and Abby VanDerwerken and spent the afternoon on a hayride, running through the Texas-shaped cornfield maze, and finally posing with the pumpkins before picking a couple of perfect ones for our porch! See the picture slideshow on the right.
We finished the afternoon as only you can in a small, Texas town - stopping for dipped cones at Dairy Queen. It was a fun, weather perfect was to get excited for Halloween. Do you have your costumes ready?

Oh yeah, School's back in session!!

So one last quick post to end the catch-up... On August 23rd Natalie and Emma started school again. Natalie is now in 7th grade at Henry Middle School. She has some pretty intense math and language arts classes. And to just round out her busy life, she's practicing and fundraising like crazy for her band trip to Chicago in December. It sounds like it's gonna be a really fun trip! Performing pieces for the composers, seeing Wicked and Blue Man Group and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are just some of the highlights.

Emma is now a 3rd grader - I can't believe it!! She's actually the only one I managed to take an official "first day of school" pic.

She loves her teacher, Mrs. Meeks and has started in the advanced math curriculum at Reagan Elementary. She's getting used to riding her bike to school and back again, but she can't wait for it to cool off soon. The ride home up the hill in 100 degree heat is a killer.

Here's to back-to-school and football and cooler weather! We Love the Fall!!!

This Summer's pictures are finally posted!

Okay, so I've failed miserably to keep up on the blog this summer, but I've finally got the picture slideshows loaded. So I'm hoping that if a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm almost caught up now!!
But just in case you need a little clarification on some of our fun:
One boring day in July we found out about Chick-Fil-A's Dress Like a Cow Day. If we dressed like a cow, and went to CFA we each got a free meal. We talked LaDonna and the girls into joining us. Keely did a great job on Maggie's cow makeup and my girls got creative with their cow spots!
On Aug 3 we took the whole family to San Antonio for an overnight trip that included a fun day at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. We had fun despite the ridiculous August heat and stayed cool in the afternoon at their waterpark. At the end of the day we stayed overnight in a hotel and dinnered at our favorite pizza spot - Costco food court! The next day, Jeremy and I spent some time at the S.A. Temple while the girls watched the big screen and lounged around in the hotel room. Definitely a fun overnighter!
Finally, I mentioned in my last post that I was training for a sprint distance triathlon. Well the training paid off when I finished in about two hours with my training partners, Madi and Christy, on Labor Day morning. Christy and I decided to skip the big crowds and fees of the downtown Austin Tri and do our own. When the word got out we ended up having about 10 friends from our church (youth and adults) join us. Jeremy and the girls were awesome to take pictures and track our times. The weather was perfect with a wonderfully refreshing downpour during the run. (Little did we realize that was the beginning storm of T.S. Hermine which did some serious flooding to our local creeks and rivers two days later.) We had such a fun tri that we're all agreed that more homemade tri's are on the way! Come join us for the next one!