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Hello, everyone . . .
Guess what? We're still here! And one of these days, we'll actually update with some more stories and pictures. Prepare yourselves for strange time shifts, such as Thanksgiving before Halloween, or summer in the middle of winter. One way or the other, we'll be back online again eventually . . . in the meantime, please enjoy the cute picture of Lydia with her friend Kai, who just turned two!

Thanksgiving Weekend 2010

First, a VERY important item . . . something the grandparents have been after for a LONG time: a picture of all of us together.

The photo above was made possible by our unidirectional minivan. What's that, you say? Is our van learning photography to make up for its mechanical issues? No, not at all. It's just that if it hadn't broken down at just the right spot one fateful day, Mom probably wouldn't have met the nice people who had us over for Thanksgiving dinner. In the next picture, we have Dad and the mobile Muffins coming up from the basement where we spent some time relaxing before dinner.

Here we have the lovely Thanksgiving table, complete with yummy food. :)

Amanda made a turkey in kindergarten and wanted to be sure it joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. Ironically, it did not survive the dinner excursion, although for different reasons than those related to our main entree's demise.

Jared was a big fan of the marshmallows on the yams.

Curtis really liked the left overs . . .

. . . because they were stackable. (He also liked the cranberry jello salad.)

As always, Thanksgiving weekend was extra fun for us because of the dual birthday in the family. Here's the cake that Dad made. With the chocolate and peanut butter combination job on the frosting, the cake tasted remarkably like a Tastykake peanut butter kandy kake.

Here's Jared enjoying the cake. Also in the picture is our friend who provided Thanksgiving dinner.

Here's Jared with one of his favorite presents: Spider-man shoes!

All in all, a very nice Thanksgiving weekend.

Amanda's Kindergarten Open House

Amanda's year in Kindergarten is going well. We had fun going to her open house to see her classroom and the things she's been up to. Here she is with the "rocket ship" she made.

Here's another view of her rocket ship, along with the mobile that she made as part of her class's "Day and Night" unit.

Here's Amanda showing Dad some things.

Curtis spent much of his visit with Mom, since it was a bit busy in there with all those parents and students and siblings.

Here's Jared making himself right at home in the classroom he wishes he could go to every day just like Amanda.

Here we have Lydia, exploring the world as much as can be done in a front pack.

Curtis really found his happy spot after we left the classroom. The question is, what draws him to the gym? Volleyball? Basketball? Or just all the wide open space after all the busy-ness in Amanda's classroom?

Halloweek 2010

Halloween, that glorious time of goodies, costumes, and spooks. And here in the land of football, it gets even better when October 31 falls in the football zone. Though the gods of football do their best to squash the holiday to keep it from ruining their game schedule, the end result for us is more trick-or-treating than ever before as everyone chooses their own Halloween. By the time it was all over, Jared had trouble believing that we weren't going trick-or-treating again, since we'd been doing it every day for the past four days.

Our first Halloween event was a party hosted by the nice lady who rescued Mom when our semi-faithful minivan decided to die in an inconvenient location (note to worried readers, the problem was a part on recall, which has since been replaced; van stays running until we turn it off now). The kids and I enjoyed the fun games, the yummy food, and the abundance of candy. Amanda collected a huge load of candy during the candy hunt going on in the picture below.

Amanda decided to be a super princess for the party. (See her cape?)

Jared decided to be Batman. That made Mom's costume ridiculously easy. Lydia came as an absolutely adorable baby girl.

Curtis got to be a dragon. Gotta love that little dragon tail on that cute little guy. :)

Our next event came the very next evening. It was our community's official trick-or-treat night. Here's Jared getting ready to head out. He wasn't always waiting so patiently; one of our neighbors told her friend how she spotted a tiny Batman scaling the building on that night.

Here are the boys off to collect candy.

Mom and the Muffins after some trick-or-treating. Amanda decided she needed a different costume, so she went as a doctor.

Due to budget issues and Mom's failure to buy candy, we actually handed out the candy from the party for our trick-or-treat back. However, thanks to Amanda's last minute raid on the next street up, we got back at least twice as much as we'd given out. And part of it came in full size candy bars, too. Yum!

The next day was the day that Amanda's school, along with other nearby schools, went trick-or-treating at a local shopping center. Mom and the other Muffins tagged along behind the last group of school kids to get in some more trick-or-treating, too. We even got bananas! Note that Amanda has yet another costume. :)

The next day, Saturday, was the library's costume parade and Halloween activity. We went with some friends, and we also got to go kite flying with them afterward. That evening was our church's annual trunk-or-treat and chili cook-off. Here are Amanda and Curtis together at the park during the kite flying time.

Finally, Sunday came, and it was officially Halloween. Jared still wanted to wear his Batman costume. He finally let Mom put his church clothes over top of it. When Dad got Jared out of his white shirt after church, he was amused to see the super hero underneath (Bruce Wayne pulled a Clark Kent, I guess you could say). Trick-or-treating was over, though, and Jared was very dissapointed. Fortunately, Mom had a Halloween cookie kit on hand, and that made things better. The massive amounts of candy we'd collected helped, too.

Epilogue
The kids soothed their Halloween withdrawal symptoms by munching on their candy over the next month or more. Jared continued to wear his Batman costume for at least a week after the fact, but eventually he made do with just wearing the cape. Mom was glad that everyone had a good holiday, but she is a little worried about next year, when we will probably all be forced to return to the dullness of just one day of Halloween. ;)

A little photo story featuring our little boys