Christmas Tree

It is hard to believe that it is time to decorate the tree! It feels like yesterday that we were at the pool! The girls love decorating the tree, and it is always a huge deal in our house! They love hearing the stories of some of our old ornaments for the millionth time. I think everyone in our house is already sick of hearing me play Christmas music. The tree topper always starts a huge fight, so Claire got to put it on and Abby got to straighten it. (I don't think they will always be this easy to appease!"

Human Totem Pole

My sis-in-law and her family came up from Atlanta for Thanksgiving again this year. The kids always have a fun week, with plenty of craziness! Here are some pics of Sarah being a human totem pole. As you can see in the pictures, it was hilarious! I don't think she could mover her head for a couple of days!

Halloween!

This year both girls wanted to go as Disney characters. Claire chose Tinker Bell, which fits her perfectly because she looks like a little Tinker Bell.


Poor Abby had spiked a temp of 103 the night before and had thrown up all night. I took her to the doctor that morning and she has the flu (H1N1) and an ear infection, which the doctor said is very odd! This is the first time she has ever had the flu and WOW was she sick. She was so sick she could have cared less that she was missing Halloween. She did feel better enough that evening to sit on the couch and watch the kids get candy. The picture below is kind of deceiving because she does not look that sick...believe me, she was! We promised her we would take her out next weekend in her costume to do something fun.



Claire and her buddy Gilbert.


She totally got into trick or treating this year!! After every house she would run back to us and say "I got ANOTHER piece of candy!" That girl loves herself some candy!

It got a little chilly as the night went on, but she lasted the entire 2 hours with only one small pit stop to go to the bathroom and get bundled up more. She filled both her bucket and Abby's!

pumpkins and plays

I posted this one just cuz it is cute. Claire had said something crazy (shocking) that made Abby crack up!



Abby's class did the five little pumpkins play on Friday. Abby was the third pumpkin: "but we don't care!" She did awesome. My shy little Abby was not shy as all, and said her line very well. I couldn't get the video camera to work to get video of it :(. It is hard to believe that this is just hours before she got stricken with H1N1!




Here are some pictures from carving pumpkins. Here is Abby all into it. She decided not to carve hers she just drew all over it with marker.


And of course, Claire freaked out and wouldn't put her hands inside the pumpkin!

Big Girl Bed

I put it off as long as I possibly could... but the poor girl could barely move in her crib. So, over Ryan's fall break we decided to put Claire in her big girl bed. I had been dreading this day for a while now. Partially because it makes me sad to think of her no longer as a "baby," and the other part is, I love being able to contain her in her crib :). We took Abby out of her crib much to early and regretted it for a long time. I swore that Claire would have to be able to consistently flip herself out of it before I changed beds. She actually has done better than what I thought she would, and hasn't figured out that she could climb out of bed if she wanted to. She still sits up in the bed and yells for me at the top of her lungs just like she did when she was in her crib.
She is so proud of her new room and wants to play in it all the time.

updates

To say that things have been crazy here in our household would be an enormous understatement. As many of you know, Ryan's principal unexpectedly "left" (um yeah, that is all I am going to say about that!) So Ryan is now the new principal of Heather Hills! He has been putting in LONG hours, trying to get acclimated to the new job. He could use a lot of prayers right now! I am trying to be as supportive as I can possibly be, I am getting a taste of what single parenthood is like. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks, things will get back into a normal routine.

There have been some other major decisions/steps made in our family that started right before he got the new job. We like to clump all major life decisions right together so we can make them as stressful as possible :). Stay tuned for a major announcement when things are a little further along. (no, I am not pregnant!)

Here are some pictures from this weekend at Anderson orchard. Our weekends have become even more precious to us these last couple of weeks. We try to make them as fun as possible for the girls!

Rainy Day