November 2013 - Wait, wasn't it supposed to slow down this month?

Rob took Veterans Day off (since the kids had no school) and we went to the zoo.

(We didn't let Seth/Alee ride in the van that way - they just think every time they do something funny or cute I should go get the camera. Since I already had it in hand, I took a picture of their sillyness.)

She took quite a while getting all those little squares like a checkerboard. I was proud of her for not freaking out on the girl that came by and swooshed the whole thing to chaos 3 minutes after she finished. She just laughed and swooshed it with her. (Glad it wasn't her sister...the result may have been different!)

Seth turned 11 in October, so we all went to the pack meeting this month so that he could "claim" his final awards, including the scouting Faith in God religious patch and Arrow of Light. (His Webelos leader and assistant leader are standing to his right - they were phenomenal.)

 He'll work with the 11 year old scout leaders this year, but I do look forward to him joining the YM and working with our scout master officially next year (reaching out to shake his hand, welcoming him to boy scouts, in bottom picture.)

We celebrated one of our Nov 17th girls early because of weekend plans...

She wasn't thrilled about the 4 year old shots the next week, but the sticker and crown from the doctor were welcomed.

These two girls are so similar that I think they should have been the ones born as twins, but I'm grateful that instead God sent them on the same day 5 years apart so I could have time to learn from one in preparation for the other! Both so strong willed. That will be to my benefit one day, right? :)

Kaitlyn loves to make things for others and give gifts - and her sisters were so gracious in receiving them. It was a proud moment - and quite humorous!

I love open house week at the dance studio. This year was fun to watch, but disappointing in photos as I had Alee with me for the twins' class (=chaos & unfocused) and my GOOD/fast camera's battery was dead for Carolyn's (most of my pictures got deleted for blurring).

But I love watching all they've learned!

This next one is more of a joke.
But it was a part of our month!









The pumpkins that the twins and I brought home from the pumpkin farm field trip got painted. (Alee painted mine, but I had already washed it in preparation for cooking before I took this picture.)






After I was tired of looking at them and I thought they needed to go soon (wanted to get my money's worth out of them before they rotted) - I cut them up and roasted them.





Kaitlyn was VERY upset by this. (She had told me previously that she did NOT want her pumpkin to be cooked.)

Seth thought this was very funny.



But I did it anyways - it was cooked or trashed after rotting. I chose option A.







The 3 pumpkins made enough puree (3 cups) for 2 batches of pumpkin muffins (which turned out to be more than 2 dozen) and 1 batch of pumpkin cookies.



Sadly for my photo log, I forgot to photograph any of these lovely foods until after we'd eaten them all.

Kaitlyn did stop crying after we talked about why we had to cook the pumpkin and she started looking forward to the treats. :)

In case you're wondering how I ended up in pictures here, I had one of my YW from church with me this day and she took over my camera for a while so I could dance with the kids at the end of their program.

Kaitlyn and Natalie (1st) did Old Brass Wagon and Macarena

Carolyn (3rd) did the Shag (SC state dance) and the Sid Shuffle 

Seth (5th) did a revolution of dance kind of thing (dance through the ages)

Then we have our little diva - I figured out how to mess with a few settings so that when plugged into the usb port on the front of the computer our Guitar Hero mic would output sound through the speakers - Alee was in Heaven!

Hopefully I can pull together some video clips for you to watch from both Dance open house and Country Western day...videos take me a long time - that is not my talent. But I do like to see them.

Happy Thanksgiving. 

(Let me tell you how good these were after just a week of no desserts. I know sad really that a week sounds like a long time to go without desserts.)

We went up to Rob's parents' house.

 The kids played and made messes. :)

And before I move on to Christmas, here's a picture of our Thankful Tree (which one of the girls keeps calling a Thank Thee Tree). I correct her to my title, but I guess she's right - all of our blessings come from Heavenly Father, so in prayer, we do say "I thank Thee."

I've made one before in the past, but this year, I'm going to leave it up through Christmas. Sometimes I think we need a gratitude reminder in December.

We decorated for Christmas today. The kids finished off their break by playing Risk with Rob and I worked on my (way too many!) pictures - and of course the blog. And the house is pretty clean.

(Yes, Carolyn and I decorated too, but we just didn't end up in any pictures.

I think we're ready for December now.