Thanksgiving Trip to Richmond

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we kept the kids home from school and settled into the car for our drive to Richmond to share Thanksgiving with our family.  The kids were so excited to see everyone again and to get to play in the piles of Fall leaves on the ground that we just don't get here in Florida.  As beautiful as the leaves are, it's still really hard to leave our sunny weather with temperature in the low 80s!  Emory and Ellie just didn't understand why they couldn't wear shorts as we headed north since it was so warm here when we left.

Our last few trips have gone really smoothly  but this was our first trip with both Piper and Owen.  The puppies haven't spent much time in the car but finally settled in for the ride and went to sleep after taking their medicine from the vet.  Ellie decided to take a nap too after we were stuck in a long back up due to road work and ending up spending over 10 hours in the car.

Our late arrival made us miss the dinner that we had planned with Kenny, Leigh-Emma and Jack but Kenny took the next day off so that we could spend some time with Jack.  It was so much fun now that he can talk a little and really play.  The kids had fun reading books with him and playing outside with balls and toys.  Owen and Piper enjoyed checking out someone a little more their size too!

We had beautiful weather on Thanksgiving day  as we headed over to Tammy and Dante's to spend time with everyone.  We took Piper and Owen this year and they had the best time playing outside with the other dogs. 

Gee and Pa brought Thanksgiving presents for the kids and Ellie especially enjoyed reading books to Gee.

Emory and Ellie couldn't wait to get onto Uncle Dante's tractor again and had so much fun driving around and around the house.

Thanksgiving dinner was incredible as usual thanks to Chef Dante.  The dining room was beautiful too.  Here's Ellie posing with the Ledford Lion that she brought home in the Travel Backpack from school.  Ellie wrote journal entries about all of her adventures with the Ledford Lion during her trip to Richmond.

We had one last visit with Kenny, Leigh-Emma and Jack before heading back to Richmond.  Look at all of those cute kids!

After our fun visit to Richmond, it was once again time to load back into the car and head south.

Thanksgiving at School...

November was a fun month with lots of activities at school.  Ellie's class had a Thanksgiving Feast for all of the children and their parents.  It was extra special for the kids because they set up a restaurant on the stage of the multipurpose room and had the feast catered from Cracker Barrell.  The children all made the cutest tshirts and displayed some of their Thanksgiving writings.  We all enjoyed the Feast!

Emory's class acted out a few short skits in the classroom to celebrate Thanksgiving and then enjoyed turkey subs.  Mmmm!  Sorry that I forgot to bring the camera that morning!

Emory's First Visit to the Swamp

On Saturday, Emory made his first visit to The Swamp to see a University of Florida football game.  It was a perfect day to go see the No. 1 team in the nation play football and also his last chance to see Tim Tebow while in college. Tebow attended Nease High School which is just a few miles from our house and is the high school that Emory will attend one day.   Emory has decided that he really likes UF and that for now it's his college of choice.  He's still young though so maybe there's still a little chance that he'll decide to become a Hokie!  :o)

Emory went to the game with his friend Duncan and his dad, Mark.  Emory and Duncan have been in the same class for the last three years, are neighbors and Duncan's dad coached their flag football team last winter.

We're hoping that Tim Tebow and the Gators hang on and become National Champs again!  GO GATORS!

Report Cards

Emory and Ellie brought home their report cards for the first quarter last week and they each did great!  Emory made straight As again and Ellie made all Ms and Ps, which are the equivalent to As for first graders.  We are so proud of each of them!  Keep up the good work, Emory and Ellie!!!

Emory's teacher, Mrs. Tipton, was also just named Mill Creek's Teacher of the Year.  Congratulations to Mrs. Tipton!!!  She has been Emory's teacher for second, third and now fourth grade.  Emory really loves being in her class and it has been so much fun to watch this group of kids grow up together for the past two and a half years.

Happy Veteran's Day

We wanted to wish Pa and Uncle David a very happy Veteran's Day!  At school on Tuesday, Emory and Ellie attended an assembly honoring Veterans and you were both thought of and talked about a lot.  Emory said that he wished that you could have both been here to go up on the stage with the other Veterans in the audience.

Today the kids had the day off from school and were sweet enough to get up and let Dan and I sleep in a little bit.  When I did get up, I found them sitting at Ellie's art table drawing together ( a sweet and rare occurrence!).  The cutest part was that they were singing the Star Spangled Banner together.  While it comes over the morning announcements each day at school, they've actually been practicing it for the last week or so for the Veteran's Day Assembly.  They got most of the words right in the beginning but then started to make up a few as they went along and finally just looked at each other and agreed to give up.  It was so cute though.  I wish that I had had the camcorder handy to tape it. 

Happy Veteran's Day to all of our Veterans. 

We really appreciate all that you have done for our country!!!!!!!!!

Halloween Fun!

October was a month full of lots and lots of fun...

Ellie had a great time at the Bat Bonanza in Mrs. Ledford's 1st grade class. They learned all about bats, did bat crafts and even had a party with food shaped like bats!

The Fall Festival at Mill Creek Elementary came next and it was so much fun!  There were inflatable slides, bouncy houses, a petting zoo and lots of carnival games.  Ellie couldn't resist getting her face painted as a cute little puppy.  Emory was too busy running around to the rock climbing wall and bouncy houses to stop for a picture.

We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch in Mandarin with the Stalvey girls.  Dan and I met the Stalvey's in our childbirth class before Emory and Brianna were born.  Each year Maiko and I have met at the Patch and taken them, and now their sisters too, for pictures together dressed in costume with all of the pumpkins.  It's so fun to see them grow up together-- but how I wish that they would just slow down a little bit!

Emory and Ellie each picked great costumes this year.  Ellie chose to be an artist and together we made her costume.  We loved splattering all of the paint on her smock, making her pallette and candy bucket and finding a cute beret for her to wear.  Emory is really into reading all of the Harry Potter novels (he's on number 5 right now) so he was the cutest Harry Potter around.

To our surprise, Ellie and Emory were both able to fit into the Pumpkin Carriage again this year.  It's always been a favorite and makes a really cute picture but each year I think that this will be the last time that they can fit through the very little door.

They could  even still squeeze into together... but it was a tight fit!  Will they make it next Halloween???

The night before Halloween is always pumpkin carving night at our house.  It's just too hot to do it any earlier here in Florida.  The pumpkins will rot -- yuck!  Ellie chose a bat for her pumpkin since she has learned so much about bats from Mrs. Ledford and now knows how cool they really are.  Here she is poking the holes for the bat pattern into her pumpkin so that we can carve it.

Here's Emory doing the dirty work of getting the seeds and all of that other stuff out of the inside of the pumpkin.  For the first year ever, Emory and Ellie cleaned their pumpkins all by themselves.  It makes the pumpkin carving much more enjoyable for Mom and Dad  :o)

While the kids were cleaning pumpkins, I couldn't resist dressing Piper up in her hula skirt and lei for a couple of cute pictures.  She's such a sweet and patient puppy!

Next it was Owen's turn.  The pirate hat that we had for him was a little too large and kept falling off of his head, but he fit just right inside of Emory's pumpkin once it was all cleaned out!  Look at that cute little tongue sticking out!

Owen was such a good sport.  He let me take lots and lots of pictures.

Aren't these three just too cute???

Here's Ellie's pumpkin.  She named her bat StellaLuna after the children's book by the same name.  Doesn't StellaLuna look cute hanging upside down from her branch?

Emory designed his own scary pumpkin this year rather than using a template.  Daddy helped him carve it after Emory drew the design on the pumpkin.  Look at all of those teeth!

After watching the GA-FL football game (Go Gators! - now that the cHokies are falling apart all we've got left is to cheer for Tebow) it was finally time to head out for some trick or treating.  Ellie made a cute paint bucket to collect her candy in but Emory wanted a pillow case so he could get LOTS of candy.  He quickly figured out how heavy lots of candy could be when you're trying to run with it and dumped some of it into the bag on the golf cart.

What a scary group!  Emory and Ellie had friends over for dinner before trick or treating and here they are all decked out in full costume and ready to head out the door.  Thanks to Ga for staying at our house and passing out our candy to all of the little kids in the neighborhood.  It allowed Dan and I to go out on the golf cart with all of our friends and watch the kids trick or treat.

Notice anything different about this guy?  He went into full Harry Potter attire with the black hair and all.  What a mess that spray on hair color is to apply but it looked great.  All night long I had trouble finding him running around because I didn't recognize the black hair!

Ellie was too cute and this really was the perfect costume for her!  She loves art and is always drawing something for us.  It was lots of fun to make the costume together with her too.  Ellie has lots of great ideas and is very creative.

The kids all took off at a full sprint from house to house for at least 20 houses.  Even with the golf cart it was a little tough to keep up with them because their group got so spread out.  The girls definitely took the lead this year and left the boys to trail behind.  It was a warm night here in Florida and the kids were definitely feeling -- and looking -- it!

The jack-o-lanterns looked great on the front porch and Ga said that they received lots of compliments through out the night from the trick or treaters.

When we finally got home a couple of hours later, Ellie couldn't wait to count her candy.  I'm almost embarrassed to put the final count in print -- 125 pieces of chocolate and 125 pieces of other types of candy.  Emory brought home the same amount.   We'll definitely be taking this to school to share!

Many thanks to Ga for making the long drive to St. Augustine to spend Halloween with us again this year.  It's been about three or fours year since she's done that with us and it was lots of fun.  We hope that she'll make it an annual visit and stay longer next year!  We love you Ga!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  xoxoxo

Bad Dog, Owen!

Owen got caught red handed trying to steal food from the table on the lanai on Friday night after dinner. Although I knew that I should have stopped him and told him that he was being a baaaaddd dog, instead I had to run and get the camera to see just how far he would go!

It's so cute to watch him jump up into the chair. He doesn't do it in the house (that we've seen) but he loves to jump into the chairs on the lanai to get a better look at things. His little legs are just so short but he's able to make it up in one smooth jump.

The terrier nose is working!

Almost there! Look at that cute little pink tongue all ready to go! At this point I did have to remove the bowl from the table but that didn't stop him from trying to check things out just one more time when he thought that I wasn't looking anymore.

He sure knows how to turn on the cuteness even after getting scolded. Those big brown eyes do it every time!

Sand Soccer

Last week we headed out to dinner at one of our favorite little restaurants on the beach and afterwards the boys played a little sand soccer. Being able to do these kinds of things on a whim is one of our favorite things about living so close to the beach! The sun was just starting to set and the weather couldn't have been more perfect!

The game didn't end quite fairly though once Emory convinced Ellie to join his team!

I just loved this picture of Ellie walking out towards the water with the surfer in the background. She is growing into such a big girl!

Soccer!

This season Emory is playing soccer on a travel team called the Creeks Clash. They're off to a great start so far with two wins, a tie and one loss which they received this past Saturday. It's a very talented group of boys with a great Coach who really works them all hard at practices! In their second game of the season, Emory scored a GOAL and we're hoping for lots more to come. In two weeks the team will travel to Sanford, FL (just outside of Orlando) for their first tournament. Go Clash!!!!

And His Name Is...

It was hard to choose because we liked each of them, but Owen just seemed to fit such a cute, little guy. He's into EVERYTHING and loves to chew. We spend a lot of time telling him "no", so his name might end up being "Up-Oh Owen" or just "N'Owen".