A Giving Halloween

From October 31st:

So here are our Halloween pictures - in reverse order, I'm afraid. But, if I take the time to change them to the correct order, then I probably won't get this posted for another week. :P

We carved pumpkins... and once again Seth was the master carver. His pumpkins always get the best comments!

A neighbor brought the kids a light-up blinking smiley face toy and Benjamin LOVED it! He trucked around the neighborhood carrying it. (Oh, and the gash on his nose is from slipping and falling face first into a wooden step. At least his eyes didn't turn black!)

We had a Bride and a snuggly Bear this year. They both enjoyed dressing up a lot. Benjamin thought the candy was fantastic, but just because it had shiny, crinkly wrappers. He didn't get to sample any. Maybe next year!

Seth decided to "prime" Ella's candy carrying pumpkin with some candy from our stash. Eleanor examined it before leaving. Then she walked around, knocked on doors and accepted candy from others. But, before leaving each house she gave a piece of candy to the person offering her candy. It was extremely touching to watch others' reactions to her giving. Some were so touched. Others tried to reason with her. Others "traded." Seth and I just watched and giggled.

About 3/4 of the way through her march around the neighborhood she told us, "I don't have any more candy in here to give out!" We were puzzled. "You have more candy in your pumpkin now than when we started." "No, I don't have any to give out! Now I don't have any candy to give to Judy!" (Judy is our neighbor who is very special to Ella). We realized then that she was giving the candy Seth had originally put in her pumpkin. She thought she needed to give everyone candy from our house since we weren't there to give it out!

Later she had fun giving candy to the other kids who came to our door. We were glad we went early and were back home because it started raining... then snowing. But, it was a fun family day.

Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow

First day of real snow 2011:

Mommy is so glad the snow waited this year! We've had a few days of snow before now (beginning November 1st) but it has been light and has melted right away. This is a full month later than last year! Of course, Eleanor has been waiting and waiting to put on her "snow geared" and build a snowman.

So, these kids just had a blast! And Benjamin lasted outside for a long time while Ella ran around, tried to build a snowman, threw snowballs and made snow angels. I was impressed. It was a fun snow day. We kind of can't wait until we get another one. :)

The first steps

I think I'll just eat some of this stuff

Running around

Hmm, cold!

But it tastes pretty good...

What's that sister doing?

I should try that, too!

Snow angels

Have a happy November day!

Attempting to Reconfigure

Hello all -

The last few months' break happened for a few reasons:

1. We lost access to the blog.

2. We stopped using the internet for a while due to the hacker situation.

3. I didn't have an email address for a long time (I haven't been able to recover my hotmail address, so I'm sorry if you have tried to communicate, but I've had to totally start over and I lost all my contacts).

4. I continued not feeling really great for a long time.

5. We have a just-over-one-year-old and a 3 1/2 year-old who take up 100% of my time!

We are feeling quite removed from so many of our friends and family... so I've decided it is a good use of my time to get this going once again. Plus, we are generally so busy we rarely see our friends around here in Sheridan, so they will appreciate it, too. :)

So, hopefully I will get good at regularly posting again. We have a lot to catch up on!