Holidays

Brooke was dying to make a candy house, so one day we did.

Brooke was very meticulous about putting the candy on her house so that it filled in all the space:

Caroline…not so much:

Dallas decided to get in on the action:

(It’s a die in case you couldn’t tell.)

Spencer was upside-down:

…which reminded me exactly of the top picture in this post from three years ago.

Brooke and Dallas were coloring pictures one day.  Dallas colored the Santa on the right.  The next day Brooke requested that I print off another Santa just like that one.  She then colored it exactly like Dallas did.  We thought it was pretty good.  (She explained that all those scribbles above her Santa were her testing the crayons to make sure she got exactly the right color she needed.)

The girls love hearing Christmas carols on the radio, especially anything with “jingle bells” in it.  However, Brooke refuses to sing “Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.”  Instead she substitutes “reindeer” for “horse.”  I love it.

Being a teacher really got me in the Halloween spirit.  Having family-themed costumes did as well.

This year I wasn’t teaching, and we didn’t do a family theme.  We were given costumes for the kids, and I was won over with the easiness of simply putting their costumes on instead of dreaming up ideas, figuring out how to make them, sewing them together, running to the store twenty times because I forgot something, and then wearing bulky costumes all night.  Yes, it was easier, but it was definitely not as fun as years past.

Now that I’ve thoroughly set you up to be disappointed in our costumes, here we are!

Me:  A ladybug.  Brooke:  A butterfly.  Caroline:  A kangaroo.  Spencer:  A pumpkin.  Dallas:  A zoologist…though my family thought he looked more like Indiana Jones and his family thought he was a migrant worker.  We got a good laugh out of that one.  Maybe next year.

Ward Trunk or Treat:

After Brooke had visited every car, she plopped down on the grass and exclaimed, “Let’s have a picnic!”

And picnic she did.