Elizabeth's dance

Yesterday Elizabeth's dance class had a special visiting day and did a special Halloween dance. It was open to family and friends. She did a great job, although she was visibly nervous. I think she felt very special, too, because she had lots of people come to watch her. Luke was away at the Oaks and thought he wouldn't make it back, so I invited our friends Maggie and Danette (WI staff) to come, and they were there and then Luke showed up part way through and Elizabeth was SOOO excited to see him. She chose her pumpkin costume, and not a princess, which was surprising....

Fall in CA

We took a day trip to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks this weekend, in hopes of finding some cooler temperatures and fall leaves. And yay, we did!!! The kids had a GREAT time, running and running and running. We are thankful to have mountains within an hour and a half drive of our house. At 7000 ft. the temps were in the 60's. We have more pictures, if you're interested, email me. Today and tomorrow Luke's gone to the Oaks, WI's camp, to help them with their strategic planning. So the kids and I are on our own. Thankfully it's only 2 days this time.....

Caterpillar

Luke found this caterpillar eating my tomato plant and he loved it....He wanted to post these pictures on our blog. I think it's gross myself, but it is pretty big. Of course, he put it back on the tomato plant to feast away.....

King and Queen

"Look, Mommy, we're the king and the queen!" Elizabeth yelled as she and Caleb came into the kitchen dressed like you see in the picture while I was making dinner. She had put the crown on Caleb and he didn't really like it. She's been having fun with her princess things. Caleb has had his first solo timeout. He's been asserting his will lately, which includes hitting his sister. Usually we have to hold him still for a timeout, but this time he sat still by himself. He's been learning lots lately -- doing wooden puzzles with us, finding the ducky in his Usborne books, and "counting" things. He'll point at three things lined up and say, "two, two, two." They are great.....

Caleb

Caleb enjoyed the party too. He pretty much did his own thing....

Elizabeth's Fourth Birthday!!

Elizabeth celebrated her 4th birthday on Sunday with a party at our house - mostly staff and their kids and also her friends Amanda and Toby. (It's hard to get a good picture of her, she is silly...) We had cake and ice cream and she opened her presents. Almost all her presents were princess-type dress-up things. I'll post some dress-up pictures later. She had a good time, but had some sharing issues.....we had a talk about it and when the kids came to our house again today for staff fellowship she was SOOOO much better.

We have a busy week ahead of us....partly my own stuff and partly Luke's busy-ness. But the light at the end of the tunnel is our date Friday night. For those of you who don't know, we've had this awesome babysitting co-op for 3 years now. Currently there are 3 families involved, so every third week we babysit all the kids (9 altogether) and the weeks in between we get to go out on Friday night from 6-9. Sometimes I think I take it for granted, but this week it will be greatly appreciated. I highly recommend the arrangement for those of you with young kids. A frequent date night is wonderful for marriage!!

Elizabeth hates all the Halloween stuff at the stores. She had a major breakdown at Target this morning when I tried to walk through the Halloween display to get to the Garden Center. I needed to buy flowers to take to a meeting tomorrow. Instead we did our best to walk as far around it as we could and only cut through a tiny corner. She's gotten worse and worse about it and especially hates the "bones" (skeletons). I don't blame her. It's just hard when she causes a scene in a store...

Caleb is bothered by little and throws himself headlong into whatever he's doing. Literally. He often has bruises, bumps and cuts on his head. He can catch the chickens now and likes to carry them around with him. He's very sweet and says "Bye" to everyone he sees. He still loves hugs and cuddling.

Fall here means temperatures in the 80's and sometimes 70's. And eventually rain. But not yet. This week it's actually supposed to be 90 a couple of days. Yuck. The leaves fall off the trees in late November. But anything is better than 100 degrees!!! So I'm enjoying it as much as I can.

Let's Go State!!!

We are just super-excited that Penn State just beat #6 Ohio State! Let's go State!!! Woo-hoo!!! (We do our best to keep track of the Lions from way out here in CA....)