Halloween 2011

This is the first year we have made the girls' Halloween costumes on our own.  They wanted to be cats, and we had masks and ears and tails already so we thought it would be easy.  Then the school sent home a note that the girls couldn't have any loose parts to their costumes, so we made outfits that included collars, tails, and paws.  We cheated by having them wear their ears (headbands are part of hair grooming, not accessories to costumes, right?) and instead of their masks we painted their faces.

They have definitely had better face painting jobs, but not by a non-professional at 7am!  Mom did her best.

 

All in all, the costumes fit the criteria of warm, fun, and kid-approved - so we were happy!

  
The whole preschool class came to Christina and Steve's offices to sing Five Little Pumpkins and bring us decorated pumpkins - even though you can't see our girls in this picture, you get the idea of how fun that was for all of us on the hallway - people were coming out of the woodwork to hear this little treat!

We did low-key trick or treating this year by taking the girls out with a friend for pizza first, and then just walking down the street from the restaurant to trick-or-treat.  Within just a few houses they had their buckets full and we had visited with many sweet people.  We came back to our neighborhood, where we almost never have trick or treaters, so that we could visit two of our neighbors.  To our surprise we saw a huge group of little trick-or-treaters a block from our house!  The girls were thrilled to go grab our candy bucket and wait for them outside of our house.

They got the hugest kick out of of saying to all the kids "Take as much as you like!"  They repeated it over and over and we considered ourselves very lucky that we'd gotten home in time for this.  That ten minute period was the only trick or treating action our house saw all night!

Lake House

Friends of ours who had twins four months ago invited us up to their lake house for the weekend.  Yes, you read that right - while we were barely functioning at that stage, they are doing a tremendously wonderful job managing all the needs in their family, PLUS hosting 11 other people for the weekend!

The weekend was beautiful, relaxing, and so very fun for all of us.  Clara and Elena had no problem at all adapting to lake life, and played/slept/entertained themselves so well for the most part.

Steve taught them how to skip stones off the dock - they were very eager learners.

They were also very eager explorers - they invented several games between them and their friend Annie - one involved three large sticks tied together that they carried around - we're still not totally sure what that game was about.

And, there was a hottub (or, as the girls call it, hot pool!).  They got us in there every opportunity they had, and although it was pretty cold on the way in and out, it was amazing while you were sitting in there, looking at snow on the mountain and enjoying happy children.

Our intrepid Kevin and Steve worked on getting us a fire each night - of course marshmallows were enjoyed in the earlier parts of the evening, and then it was a great spot for the adults to talk until the wee hours.

The nearby town of Polson was also really fun to explore - they had a great playground that Clara and Elena really enjoyed with Annie.  We think they were horses most of the time, although there was also chasing of a grumpy old troll.

This is how we all felt when it was time to leave...

...but we had to acknowledge that we were just so lucky to have gotten the experience to go in the first place.  Thanks, Meg and Ed (and babies Lucy and Amelia, who are conspicuously absent because we're not sure they are allowed on the internet yet!).

A walk in the woods

There's a little park in town that has a trail behind it out through the woods. The girls were a little nervous of it at first because they asked Christina what the signs said and she answered honestly that they say that bears are present in those woods. They got over it when I told them the solution to that was making lots of noise! Now they like to go there with their "horses" to take them on a "trail ride."

 

It was a beautiful day, and we had so much fun!  Both girls were feeling in a picture-taking mood, which made for some lovely shots of them together.

 

 It even turned out that the girls wanted to be photographers themselves, so they took turn taking pictures of Christina and whichever girl was not being photographer - awesome!

A few more of their cuteness, which just keeps getting more and more adorable! 

First Benson's of the Season

Every year we go to Benson's Farm to get our pumpkins.  Last year we went several times, and we're carrying on that tradition by beginning our visits already.  Our dear friends Kate and Annie took us on an outing there and sweetly bought us pumpkins and mums.  Although we look forward to going back as a family with Steve this was a perfect fall outing with our friends!

 

 

Good Night

Tonight while we were getting ready for bed, Clara very loosely paraphrased Madeline and exclaimed:

"We brush our teeth, we brush our bread, and most of all we brush our head."

Such a silly rhymer!

Rolling, rolling, rolling....

What could these two be looking at?

What could amp them up like this?

What could cause such an outbreak of silliness?

It's the....ROLLER DERBY!

We had seen the roller derby girls at the Homecoming parade last week, and had always thought the idea of roller derbies was fun...so this Friday when they were having a derby in town we took the girls and headed over.

It was nearly impossible to photograph, because these women are FAST!  Also, the lighting is ODD!  Because they're going for drama on the center rink, not people getting good pictures from the balcony, we guess.

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Still, we had a lot of fun watching.  We started shouting out things like "LEAD JAMMER!" and as we left both Clara and Elena told us they were roller girls, and made us address them by saying things like "Thank you, roller girl." "Can I help you get into your seat, roller girl?"  Eventually they started going so far as to say "Thank you, roller Mommy!"  When we got home they had to practice being roller girls on the wood floors in their socks.  Such a funny new set of vocab and play for us.