Tday 2011

Tony and Carol hosted Thanksgiving this year, which was exciting for us as it meant not only a short drive, but also a fun time in the pool/hot tub/sauna before the feast!

There was also fun to be had with family, clowning around under the table, special sodas to drink, and with new coloring and an active bingo game:

 

The kids, especially Q helped craft the place settings for the fam this year, he wrote out all 19 names, yeah Q!

The meal of course was tasty, I personally had eyes much bigger than my stomach. I'm full just thinking about it.

Q had fun with my camera after dinner:

And there was more fun, up on the roof seeing the lights of the city, eating pie and my sneaky cookie "pie", making a family "thankful tree" with fingerprint leaves (with this lovely tree), and looking at Cassie's Mexico pictures on her phone:

I'm so thankful for family and friends this year, an especially hardworking husband, a cozy home, healthy active kiddos, an expanding Froggy Holler program (with wonderful students!), and a fun extended family to spend the holiday with!
Oh and this scene on the way home, have to be thankful for that too!

Helping Earth Corps

   

We headed to Hamlin Saturday to help add some of the 3,000+ native plants Earth Corps was planting to help regrow the ground cover in a test patch of 1/4 acre. At FH this fall we'd been watching the irrigation system and then the fence go in at this site, and of course we'll be at the park for hopefully a long time to come to watch these plants grow, so it felt great to be a part of the effort!

 Q was a phenomenal worker! He was like a little rock star and plated tons of oregon grape especially. He really liked working with our Earth Corps leader Jess, she was so encouraging! We also brought Olea along and she had fun naming her plants, as did the rest of us.

 Helen the huckelberry, Sally the salal, Franklin and Francis the ferns, and many others will be watched over lovingly for years to come!

If you might be interested in helping with a project like this Earth Corps has a number of projects going on regularly in our general area, and our family will certainly be doing more.

In fact, at FH this week we'll get to help out, which is lucky for Q cause I had to tear him away this weekend!

A Little Vashon Visit

We needed a little island time so the kids and I headed over to Vashon! We needed to congratulate the Olive family in person for their exciting news of, "It's going to be a girl!" and play too. 

 

the artists at work with a paint roller and wet chalk

circus girl visiting the chickens

So we helped Anna rake up a pretty large amount of big leaf maple leaves, 

 Q was pretty pumped to get to use another leaf blower (he's fond of using Andre's as well!)

Miss H "Leaf Princess" was pretty chill and just watched the action

The boys were actually mostly really helpful, gathering up huge handfuls of leaves to dump in the pile.

gazing up at the mostly empty big leaf maple

Anna should have a big leaf raking party next year so we can all help her out!

 Then we vegged out in the garden, 

 

these goofs were eating the broccoli flowers, 

and gorging like dinosaurs on the kale,

and then marching about as green mouthed warriors with their expired sunflower stalks.

These boys have such dirty fun together, it's wild!

We also stopped and said hi to Ella and left some lilies for angel Lily on her birthday. We need more girl playtime soon!

Then we headed over to see Nami and Danpa. We had a quick dinner together and Nami went off dancing while Danpa was master story reader. Tis the season to read together all snuggled up by the cozy fire.

 

Attack of the kids!

It was nice to spend a lovely fall day with friends and family!

Halloween, Jedi and Butterflies!

This year we were intending to be a Star Wars family, however a certain little gal in our home has some strong opinions about her attire thee days, so she would not go for the Princess Leia idea. So, she and I became butterfly fairies together and the boys held onto their Jedi plans. Q has been growing his hair out for some time and makes a pretty cute little Luke Skywalker and Papa was Anakin (as a kid). We got lots of complements from our neighbors, whom I was glad enjoyed our costumes! 

I also had to capture Papa's impressive pumpkins:

 

you might not be able to tell his bottom one is growing another head, and you definitely can't tell that top one designed by Q has two sides, so it's 2 pumpkins in one. Those pumpkins got compliments too!

 

We trooped all around our neighborhood, which I like doing since we don't know our neighbors that well yet,

and down the road a bit there's the church which hosts a little festival and this year Q played a bunch of games for candy, and H and I did the cake walk and she won! Down the road there are also some pretty great Halloween houses:

the spider house is our favorite though!

Gigi came over to hand out candy from our house, and take pics of us, and to see the kids' loot at the end of the night!

 

It was the end of a week full of Halloween occasions, what a fun time of year!

Luke Skywalker Quin

Q has talked about being Luke Skywalker for Halloween for months now. He's been a die hard Star Wars fan since sometime this past summer (though no he has not seen the movies yet, but has read a lot of Star Wars books). He had fun modelling his very home made costume for us,

It was really complete with this fancy light saber Gigi got for him!

(Well really it's complete with the long hair too ;))

 Testing out the light saber in the evening light was pretty fantastic!

 Papa loves teaching Q light saber moves.

And I like trying to capture them with the camera!

McCardell's Halloween Party

We were invited to the McCardell/Howard Halloween party on Saturday and had a great time! We were running behind since I needed to make Q's Jedi robe (please ignore the rough look it had that day...) and we were enjoying a lazy Saturday at home in the morn. Jess took our pic when we arrived:

 The kids and I had a great time! Just while we were there they did Halloween stamping and sticker art, cookie decorating, the bean bag toss, bobbing for apples, some bike riding, general running around in costumes fun, festive snack eating (including a rat made out of chocolate!), and a little down time with cartoons.

Thanks McCardell and Howard families for inviting us!

Dress Up Events!

 The kids each had their respective dress up events this year, first up with the Fall Festival at H's school.

 We had a potluck, book fair, open house in her classroom, and the little carnival action in the gym. We got to visit with Olea there too since her pm K program meets at the Children's Center!

 

 Then a few days later, H had a "Fall Celebration" in her class for which I made a batch of pumpkin cookies:

H shyly wore her fairy butterfly costume (something she would wear on a normal day...;)) though it was also picture day so she couldn't do the face paint that goes with:

I loved seeing all the little kiddos in their costumes, so cute!

Then at Q's school though he had the week off (conferences) his class was still invited to the school's "Literacy Day". All the kids brought a book to coordinate with their costumes, there were some pretty cute and creative ideas! I wasn't sure if being Luke was kosher for this event, so I had him wear his knight costume:

It went well with "Good Night, Good Knight" and H and I came dressed as his Queen and Princess just for fun! After the assembly the kids met back in the class for a little snack and we took their pic:

which I needed to remove from this spot due to privacy concerns, let me know if you'd like to see it and I'll show you a print someday.

We'll all look forward to this event next year for sure!