Sophie's Fall Performance

Seems like every couple months we have a school seasonal performance. Fall was the third graders and Sophie and her class treated us to a night of poetry and autumn songs.


Sophie in her fall colors.


Tate and Kevin stayed home this time. Tate was having a rough day.


Sweet sisters.


They always have the cutest seasonal artwork made by the kids.






Of the 6 houses on our cul-du-sac, 4 have third grade girls!


The other girls all look like sisters!


Neighbors!

Oops!

I deleted several comments without replying to them or even reading a couple of them! So sorry to whoever they were all from. :(

Fall Highlights

Well I started this post about a month ago and then nothing! Let me see here...

Since it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas and I promised to blog at least sometimes I thought I better to a fall photo dump!

Let me see if I can sum up all the things that might have been little fall posts in about 10 pictures.

Tate came home from kindergarten with a shiner. It wasn't from a punch though, just a dramatic fall on the playground climbing wall. Just as it healed he pretty much did it again. He has a scar there too. Poor kid!


Sophie got her splits. She had been working at them for quite some time and one day she came home from dance and announced she could do them! She was so pleased with herself and I was so proud of her for working towards her goal.


The girls started up dance again. This time 4 classes each. 2 classes they are in together, ballet and acro. Jazz/hip hop and tap are done by age so they aren't together. This mama was smart and lucky and they are in classes that are at the same time though with a friend from around the block so we carpool. It's great!


The boys both played soccer this fall. They enjoyed it, though Tate liked the "snacks" better than the game. Gotta love little boys!


We spent lots of cold Saturday mornings at the soccer fields. Thank goodness the Y is right next to Dunkin' Donuts!

Uncle Jeff and Aunt Melissa came for a visit, but I don't have any pictures worth posting from the trip. :( What's up with that?


We made a couple more trips to the lake.


The kids played and acted like their normal fun-loving and silly selves! (I don't post much about their normal day to day, just major events. But mostly they just have a ball together and are the best of friends.)


Sophie started to write pen pal letters to my good childhood friend's daughter, Sofia, who is also in third grade. So fun!


We walked to school most mornings, until it started to get too cold for us wimps!


Sophie went to her friend's Harry Potter birthday costume party dressed as a perfect Luna Lovegood.


Cocoa season started!


And the dreaming of Christmas gifts began... (That is an American Girl catalog, by the way.)

Congratulations to Randy and Rebecca!

Astronaut Randolph Bresnik and Wife Have Baby Daughter Named Abigail

Randy and Rebecca are acquaintances of ours through Ukrainian adoption. They adopted their 3 year old son from Ukraine shortly after we came home and I was able to talk with Rebecca on the phone to answer questions she had and share experiences and stories.

I was so excited when I popped on the computer this morning and saw this story that I thought I would send them a congratulations on our blog. Not sure that they read it anymore, but worth a shot. So happy for the four of you!

Now as soon as Randy finishes his mission and returns to Earth he will meet his new baby girl, Abigail Mae. :)

Best wishes and God Bless to the Bresnik Family.

Oops!

I was just putting together a calendar for next year and figured out I was a month early on my last post! ;) Oh well. Chances are I never would have made the video the week before Christmas (especially since we will have family visiting then) so we will just enjoy it anyway. I was thinking that the kids had been home 6 months on Christmas Eve last year, but I read last Christmas I wrote 5 months and yes that is correct!

18 months

I just figured out yesterday that today would be 18 months since the day that we first met the kids. :) What a day! So I put together some clips from our home movies to show you a little bit of what it was like when we were first getting to know them.

Wordless Wednesday

Camping?

The other half of Labor Day weekend we spent camping at the lake. Was it really camping though?

We did pitch a tent.


Keaton was happy as could be.


The kids played in the tent.


No need for the spa, the girls gave themselves mud baths.


Here is the incriminating picture that proves we weren't really roughing it though! We were at Kevin's parent's new place and had real baths and showers, and a kitchen.


Still, we cooked over an open fire.




And we roasted marshmallows for S'mores.












And we ate all our meals outside. (There was no furniture in the house yet anyway!)


The very best part was the sunrise kayak rides in our pajamas! :)

We had promised the kids we would go camping over the summer, but we didn't get around to it. So this is how we fulfilled the promise. It was fun family time. :) Hopefully once it warms up again we will really rough it somewhere.

One of these days I may catch up on my blogging and you will actually know what we are up to these days. ;) I uploaded these pictures weeks ago. I need to get myself excited about blogging again.

Carnival

Every labor day weekend there is a carnival downtown.


We decided to go on Friday night to kick off our long weekend.


Being near Lowe's Motor Speedway there are always race cars at these kind of events.


This time there was a pig car too.




Of course we sampled the fair fare for dinner. Footlong corndogs for the boys.


A smoked turkey leg for the girls. I had a delicious Greek chicken salad and Kevin had a cheesesteak.


And being in the South apparently means people like Hillbilly Bob will be at the carnival selling homemade soda in tin cans. Gotta love the South! Isn't he cute in his overalls?


We all drank our weight in fresh lemonade. Yum!


And the kids road a couple rides.



We had some ice cream before calling it a night. We were so lucky this year to have beautiful weather for Labor Day weekend. Usually it is almost unbearably hot and humid. I think this is the first time I really enjoyed the carnival without melting.