Christmas Lights

On the way home from Thanksgiving, near the border of Texas we saw a pretty Christmas light show.

Lizzy's Family Birthday Party

While we were in Kansas,we celebrated Lizzy's 6th birthday. Katie was the event photographer and she got some great pictures. Lizzy got her choice of food (mushroom pizza) and cupcakes. She got a new radio player for her room.

Science Help

Katie asked Grandma Greta for some help with her science fair. They extracted actually extracted DNA. (Good helper choice - I'm sure if she asked me we'd have done something involving growing potatoes.)   

Katie's notes.

Gathering Lizzy's cells.

 

Banana DNA bubbles under the microscope. From what I understand (since I was reading a novel instead of paying attention) you can't see the DNA itself with her microscope, but it is inside these bubbles.

 

Now she just has to copy her notes, and make her poster board and she's ready for the science fair!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we went to Grandpa Steve and Grandma Greta's house. We had a wonderful meal. They helped the girls make a cute fruit turkey centerpiece. We got some great pictures of the pretty table and the wonderful soup, and then, instead of getting pictures of the turkey and the family, we chowed down and didn't get any. But we had a great time and enjoyed amazing food!

Bank Robber

Last Wednesday, at work, a guy came in and robbed me. Here's the picture from the video. Not much to go on, but hopefully they catch him. It was very scary, but thankfully, everyone was safe and he didn't even get that much money.

Twilight

Last night, a couple of friends and I went to see the midnight showing of Breaking Dawn. First we met at Romano's for dinner, and then headed over to the theatre to claim our seats and enjoyed chit-chatting through the three hour wait. The movie was fun. Yes, we were the pathetic group of 30 somethings surrounded by teenagers. The girl in front of us was working on math homework! We finally made it home around 3am, the latest I've been out in awhile. It was so much fun, and I hope to do it again next year!

Rainbow

After a refreshing rain this afternoon, we saw a pretty rainbow while the girls were splashing in the puddles. 

New Carpet

We've been thinking about getting new carpet for 3 years now, and this week we finally took the plunge. We got a patterned brown carpet which will hopefully wear well. At least, that's what the sales guy said, we'll see. We had thought about doing wood upstairs, but decided it would be too noisy and besides I tend to fall down the stairs on a regular basis so I wanted something softer to land on. 

Here's the before. The stairs and hall had berber which wore really well since it is almost 12 years old. It doesn't look too bad in the pictures but it was pretty bad in person. Especially the places where I fell down the stairs holding a can of paint last year.

The bedrooms had a cut pile carpet that looked awful now. 

 

Getting new carpet is almost as bad as moving. The back bedroom and dining room are still full of stuff for me to put away. The installers moved furniture, but we had to move everything on the furniture. 

 

Halloween: Costumes

On Halloween, we went trick-or-treating with some friends whose mom actually took some pictures. They had so much fun we stayed out for 3 hours. They got plenty of loot - probably enough to last til next year. 

This year, Katie was a sailor, and Lizzy was a cat for trick-or-treating and supergirl for our Mops party.

Halloween: Decorations

Halloween: Carving the pumpkin

On Saturday, Theo helped the girls carve the pumpkin. He didn't have to do much this year. He cut open the top and the rest they did themselves.

 (Hey -- he has more teeth than Katie!)

While they worked on that, I baked some pumpkin cookies for them to decorate for their teachers.

Overheard

Lizzy: "I had a really hard day at school today"
Me: "what happened sweetie?"
Lizzy: "People were coughing outside of their sleeves and it was making me sick"
Katie: "There was an announcement this morning that you should cover your cough with your sleeves so we don't spread germs"

Lizzy "Momma, katie hit me"
Katie "no I didn't. She just hit herself and then told on me."
Me: "Lizzy, did you do that?"
Lizzy dejected : "yes."

Katie: My class was really quiet today because my teacher had amnesia and could barely talk so we had to listen carefully."
Me: Amnesia???? Do you mean laryngitis?"
Katie: "something like that"