White Thanksgiving

We had a white Thanksgiving.

What do you do when it snows in southern Utah?  You go to Zion, of course.











We saw lots of deer, but they're hard to spot in the high-contrast scenery.  Everything is stark brown and white.  I have pictures of the deer, but they don't look any different from the ones I posted here.

Angela bundled up:



Eliz bundled up:






Angel's Landing is up there somewhere:




Probably Elizabeth's favorite thing in the world, eating snow:



She brought along a giant snowball to snack on as we drove home.  She finished it, too.

The peanut butter cup incident

Halloween weekend and I took the kids to Target for a quick errand.  This being Halloween, they each had a piece of candy they wanted to bring along.  Sure, why not?  So Eliz took a Jolly Rancher and Angela brought along a peanut butter cup.

As soon as I parked the car in the parking lot, I heard Angela's little voice: "Um...Mom?  Will you have the rest?"

"Sure, honey.  Hang on a second."

"Um...I need help."

I turned around, and this is what I saw:





She had not eaten a single bite of her full-size peanut butter cup, but had let the whole thing melt in her hands. Now that we were at the store, she didn't know what to do with it.

I couldn't stop laughing.  I took these pictures first.  Then I said, "Let's hurry to the bathroom first."

She said, "Um..."

Oh, right.  She couldn't touch the door.  I let her out and we hurried into the bathroom.

Once inside, I took the peanut butter part from her and starting wiping off her hands with paper towels. "It's not coming off," I said.  "Here, wash your hands.  With soap."

In the meantime, I realized that we were filling up the garbage can with brown-streaked paper towels, and getting some strange and uncomfortable looks from the people passing by us in the restroom.  I covered up the chocolately paper towels lest others mistake them for something much more unpleasant.

I was still laughing.

A trip to the copy store...

...turns into a chance to show love to your favorite baby cousin.

Bowling!

Yes, we're going back that far.

So, we went bowling for Susie's birthday...

Angela would roll the ball as slowly as possible.  Here she is, half a minute after releasing the ball:
 

...and a few minutes later...
 

We had a blast.

 

Angela throws the ball:

 

...and the waiting begins...

















...and goes on...



After a while they just went to play with Holland, who was sleepy at the time.

 

At the pumpkin patch

On the redneck trampoline:

 

Swings:

 

Beautiful girl

 


Lots of splits were done:

 

Corn slide:




Seesaw (I have a great video clip of this which I will try to post later):

 


The other swings:

 

Figuring out the corn maze:




I didn't notice what was going on in the background at the time:

 


Made it to the top!:

 


I wondered this too:

Halloween!

Holland in her costume:
 

At school!  I helped out with the party in Elizabeth's class, so most of my pictures are from there.

Angela parading through Eliz’s classroom:

 

Eliz’s class:


















The parade begins:



More parade (that's a Corpse Bride in front of her):

 

Mrs Carlton’s husband dressed up as her mother:

 

Hedwig and her teacher:



Both girls:






 

Pictures are uploading right now!

NaNoWriMo is over as of this morning!  Goal reached!

And now I can finally focus on other things...like catching up with my poor neglected blog!

I'm getting all the pictures from the past 2 months ready to post.

I may even put up the Christmas tree today, just because I can!!  I love NaNo, but really, it takes a whole lot of time to keep up with that insane word count.  Most of my efforts for the past 30 days have gone into writing.  But, no more!  Get ready for a whole bunch of new posts about stuff that happened a long time ago!

Crazy hair day

We had crazy hair day at school yesterday.  I tried to streak the kids' hair, but when my first idea failed, I had to improvise.

Can you guess how I did it?


Angela’s crazy hair:


Eliz’s crazy hair:


Angela from the top:


Other side:





I used washable markers.  Just plain markers.  It worked really well and washed out completely that night.

Halloween costumes!

A sneak peek at the kids' Halloween costumes:

Hermione!


Hedwig!


Both!




Eliz had taken off the outer robe and was approached by a young boy who said, "Let me guess...Napoleon Dynamite!"

I haven't stopped laughing yet.

Oh, and I should add that it's either Hedwig or Pigwidgeon masquerading as Hedwig, depending on the wearer's mood.  The baby owl provides the owl sound effects.