This girl...

knows how to relax. And clearly hates her puppies.

Halloween

This year we had a ladybug, Iron Man, and Mario (surprised?) We went to our close neighbors and then hopped back to our old 'hood. Its always fun to see everyone out, the kids had a great night!

Punkins

We were terrible procrastinators this year (we may have also been slightly busy this October) and didn't even buy pumpkins until the day before Halloween. Luckily the kids were excited either way.

We brought them home and got to work. The kids each drew the face they wanted onto their pumpkins, and Luis got to work with the messy stuff. I took pictures, I'm kind of a pumpkin party pooper.

I do love the way they turned out.

Darius - Mya - Taye

Catch Up

I totally slacked on taking pictures while Fran(k), Penny, and Emma were here. And in keeping with the theme, I've totally slacked on blogging as well. Well, here I am now to right some of the wrong.

On my birthday, the Utans (Utonians? Uts? Utahnaiaivejahsns?) spent the day at our house. We went into the woods to play. The kids hopped all around the stream, found an old bee's nest, climbed on the fallen tree, they had fun.


(As a side note - Mya adores Uncle Bunny.)


Just when we thought we had done all there was to do in the woods, Uncle Bunny got the idea to build a bridge across the stream. He and the kids collected a variety of materials and got to work.

It was a pretty nice looking brigde, with several layers of material. Emma and Darius did try it out, but couldn't quite make it across. Perhaps rotting wood wasn't the strongest material choice, but there's always next time!

Salem

On Sunday, our tour guide took us all on a trip to Salem.



Seeing as we were in Salem, there were loads of witches around:



and since it's fall, there were leaves galore!



There were graveyards...



and criminal types (His crime? Stealing Mom's heart...)




there were even debil duckies:



Since my kids were with us, there was loads of climbing. I think they climbed everything one can climb in all of Salem...



everything.

There was a Ferris wheel...

(Darius opted for the lower altitude tug boat):

and there was a CrAzY bUs!!

There was a lot of unauthorized picture-taking of me:

OK, there was a lot of picture-taking, period.

Perhaps most exciting of all? Luigi was there:

The brothers had a nice time catching up :o)

Just Pictures...

Oops, we did it again!

Um, yup. We've done it again. Another puppy (well, 4 year old dog) for our family! I've been browsing Craigslist frequently, looking for the perfect pup in need of a new home, and this weekend I found her. She is a 4 year old Aussie mix (just like Frog). She is housetrained, spayed, up to date on shots. Her family couldn't keep her because their other dog (who they had first) was afraid of her. We went to meet her today, and everyone loved her, so she came home with us.

I tried to take pictures, but she was just so busy keeping Frog occupied (which is basically what we got her for!) that I found it hard to get good ones. Plus, her coat is silver-grey with black spots and patches, and the flash just makes her look bad.


Up until today, her name was Maya. For obvious reasons, we thought we'd better come up with a new name for her. We all had fun coming up with ideas on the ride home. Some of the names which were not chosen were:

Mario
Luigi
Princess
Bowser
Taye
Fork
Spanish
Lima
Ya-ya
Kaya
Luna
Nana
Bite in the butt
Moonface
Grape
Henry the Hippo
Sasha
Hey You
Libby
Hispanic
There was also an assortment of non-word suggestions, which I can't remember, but got a giggle nonetheless.

As great as some of those names are, we finally decided on Lola. The kids like it because there is a Lola on one of their favorite kids series'. I like it because its short and sweet. Luis likes it because he just likes everything I do. And (hopefully) Lola will like it because is kinda-sorta similar to her old name. It's two syllables and ends in "a" - that's close enough, right?