pablitorun

November Happenings

The first weekend in November marked Abbey's first camp out with Indian Princesses (which is a Daddy/Daughter activity). They went to a camping place in Indiana and had a great time! She really loved it! She's in the middle of this group shot, looking down of course...

By the camp fire (she's in the middle, but it's hard to see)

Hard to see in this picture too, but Paul and Abbey are up there being introduced as new members of the tribe.

Paul said the place was really nice (cabins for sleeping) so maybe we will go back there sometime as a family. The scenery looked beautiful!

They got back on Sunday, just in time for the Pinewood Derby for cub scouts! There, Abbey got to catch up with one of her good friends that wasn't camping with her all weekend.

They had a bunch of raffle prizes to keep the kids' interest and this is what my funny boy chose when he won...

Watching the race.

Ben won an award for design (he had a lego themed car with a lego man inside driving), but came in third in his heat (only the top two in each heat advance to the finals). By the way, Pinewood Derby has come a long way since I remember watching my brother do it. Now, they have it all hooked up to a computer and it times each race. In each heat, each car races in each lane (to ensure that none of the lanes are any faster than any others) and then it averages out the times of each car from the race it did in each lane and determines the order of the cars. So, you can imagine, it takes a long time to get through all the cub scouts racing their cars in each lane! Luckily, they brought in pizza and had the raffle prizes to keep everyone interested and it was a fun afternoon.

This was Ben's first diorama he made for school. He had to do a research project about gorillas (the animal he chose). We went to the library to get books about gorillas, he did research on the internet, he made an outline from his notes and then wrote a paper on gorillas. Then he has to build a diorama showing the gorillas' habitat using any materials he wanted. I thought it turned out really great. I helped him, but he really did all of it.

Next up was the end of season soccer and football parties, which happened to be on the same day in the same location about a half hour apart. So, we started at Abbey's soccer party where we had pizza with her soccer buddies.

And she got her very first trophy!

Then we moved over to Ben's football party, just in time to see him get his trophy! The coach said he was a critical part of the team's success this year and he was very proud of the comments made about him.

\
Ben's trophy!

As you can see, we keep very busy!

Halloween Continues!

Juliette's next event was her school party. She looks all ready!

After her party in the classroom, they paraded outside for the parents to see!

Then they had an adorable singing concert where they sang all kinds of cute Halloween songs!

Next up was Abbey's dance class where she decided to switch things up and dress up as Belle (from Beauty and the Beast). We have tons of dress up clothes, so the girls have lots of options for Halloween.

Abbey is in the back row on the left. She is very shy, so everyone staring and taking pictures made her nervous, thus she is biting her nails in the picture and I couldn't get her to put her hands down. Oh well, that's ok, this picture truly shows some of her personality :)

The next day was Halloween and Abbey got to dress up for school. This day she chose to dress as Merida (from Brave). She looked beautiful!

After Ben got home from school it was time for the actual Halloween festivities! Once again, here are my costumed kids...first up, Princess Sophia the 1st!

Then my pretty witch!

And finally my ancient Egyptian Pharaoh!

Cute picture!

I wore my Halloween shirt, but opted for jeans this time around since they are warmer for being out trick or treating.

Ben took this picture, but you can better see Paul's shirt so I wanted to post it.

And that was all of our Halloween fun! We went out trick or treating and normally I would take pictures of that, but it was actually raining pretty hard. That didn't stop us though! We were out for about an hour and a half and collected way too much candy! And then we came home and had some delicious warm chile was that waiting for us in the crock pot! What a fun Halloween!

Halloween Part 1

As usual, we tend to extend holiday celebrations, so Halloween was actually a few weeks long this year, as opposed to 1 day! It started with the Cub Scout Halloween Party. Ben wanted to be an Ancient Egyptian Pharoah this year!

Good picture!

And the promised silly picture!

My pretty witch!

Princess Sophia the 1st!

The party was a lot of fun, but there was also business to take care of, like Ben getting his new badges!

The girls love going to cub scout events because they also get to hang out with their friends, who happen to be siblings of Ben's friends. It works out well for everyone!

This was Ben's pumpkin entry for scariest pumpkin, which earned him third place.

I actually thought this pumpkin was amazing - that is a carved pumpkin!!! And the french fries are made from the pumpkin pieces too!

Of course candy was given out, which made this princess very happy!

Ben got a prize for his costume, so he was a happy Egyptian!

And parents were encouraged to dress up as well, so Paul and I coordinated skeleton costumes. We bought the shirts and Paul made the pants, which turned out really well (kudos to him). You can't see his shirt well in this picture, but it has pizza and beer in his belly (as opposed to the baby skeleton in my belly). They were really cute costumes and we got lots of compliments on them.

Our next Halloween event was for Juliette. They all got to dress up for dance class and pass out treats. So here is my princess ready to go!

What a cutie!

As you can see, Princess Sophia was a VERY popular costume among 4 year old girls this year...

Stay tuned for our next Halloween adventuring!

Pumpkin Patch

Before we knew it, it was time to go to the pumpkin patch again! The girls got a kick out of riding in the cart on our way to pick our pumpkin!

Then we picked out some gourds! Juliette kept picking little ones and saying they were for the baby!

Ben found the perfect pumpkin!

Good one Abbey!

A Juju sized pumpkin!

My little cuties!

This year, for the first time, the kids wanted to try out the Haunted House! So we all went, which was good because Juliette started crying pretty much as soon as we got in, so I held her and Ben's hand and Daddy stuck with Abbey, who was also a little unsure about this! After we exited, they all loved it, but while in there, we couldn't get through it fast enough!