Time with Grandma

The girls love it when Grandma come for a visit.

Rebekah helps grandma get ready...

And always puts on her best dress for grandma...

Emma read all her latest stories to Grandma...

We love you Grandma!

Trimming the Tree

Happy Birthday Rebekah!!

Today is the day! You are now 3 years old!!

While putting her to bed tonight, Rebekah said "I never be two again." Then sadly she added "I wanna be two."

Rebekah's Party

With family in town, we celebrated Rebekah's birthday a little early. All month long she wanted her birthday. I kept telling her it would be after Grandma comes and after Thanksgiving.

Here she is wearing her new pink boots from Grandma.

And here is a princess dress-up we gave her, still wearing the boots.

Rebekah, how old are you?

Rebekah told me she wanted a pink Cinderella birthday, so here is the cake I made.



As you can see, she really like it!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We spent Thanksgiving with the Rosenlunds. We had a total of 8 adults and 10 kids, and plenty of food to go around. One of the best things Melinda does is have appetizers to nibble on while we wait for the turkey.

Here we are with Clay's Uncle Jay (known professionally as J. Patrick Murray).


Here is Melinda, best friend and cook extraordinaire.


Clay preparing his plate.

Rebekah

After dinner we got in a game of Settlers of Catan.

And ate pies. Lots of pies. This is the Carruth family (my mom's side) Pumpkin Pie. It is not a custard, more of a chiffon, sort of. I have made it almost every year since I was 13 (every year since being married), and I will not eat any other pumpkin pie.

Walking through the leaves

Playing with Grandma

Grandma Murray came to town for Thanksgiving. One of her favorite games to play with the girls is a simple balloon toss. This time she got to teach Rebekah the game.

New Moon

I went to the midnight showing of New Moon with the ladies. There were 8 auditoriums sold out at our theater for the midnight show. It was full of mainly 30-something women. What fun to be with all the other TwiMoms. :)

Julie, Kristin, Melinda, Heidi

Friends

Emma's friend, Olivia, invited her to see the Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center. Emma was thrilled to go.

Since both the girls are Brownie Girl Scouts, there is a special patch they can earn for seeing the Nutcracker. We invited Olivia over for a play date so the girls could work on the requirements to earn the patch. For one of the things the girls chose to make up their own dance to the Nutcracker. This is it:

And her is Emma all dressed up for the Nutcracker.

Pig race winner

I was the Chairperson for our schools main fundraiser this year. This was our first year to sell Entertainment books. As one of the prizes, the top sellers got to participate in a mechanical pig race. Emma sold the 2nd highest amount of books.

Here my friend, Betsy Henry (who is the PTA VP of Fundraising) was explaining how the race would work. And there is Emma in her high waters (I've got to buy that girl some new pants!).


And they're off! It was really cute. The pigs would walk a few steps and then stop to oink. We also had to keep straightening them out.


And the winner is...

Let there be light!

Now that the days are getting shorter, we decided it was time to get some lights installed. The bedrooms had no lights, and Rebekah as personally broken 3 lamps and 7 light bulbs. Also, our family room had ZERO lights.

Here is our family room now, with ceiling fan and 6 recessed lights.

In the kitchen 2 blue pendant lights over the island and swapped out the light over the breakfast table.

In the dining room we swapped out the chandelier.

This is the light we put in two of the bedrooms.

Emma got this cute little chandelier in her bedroom.

Leaf Pile

A great part of living next to the woods, is being able to make a HUGE leaf pile. Luckily, we don't have to rake too much because the wind blows all the leaves into the woods. That is where they collect an the girls had a blast jumping in and throwing leaves around. :)

Veterens Day

Our school had a great Veterans Day assembly --thanks Ellie! As part of it, the Girl Scouts sang "You're a Grand Old Flag". Emma sang with her troop. She's in the front row, 5th from the right.

Guys Weekend

Clay was feeling left out that I had a bunch of Girls Nights/Trips scheduled and he didn't have anything like that. He felt like he wanted to do something for a mid-life crisis. I said "sure, go for it."

Clay called up his friend, Jeremy, and made plans. They decided to drive up to Ann Arbor, MI and see a football game at Clay's Alma Mater. They left on Friday around noon and drove 8 hours to get there. They spent Friday night and Saturday night there, returning home after church on Sunday.

Ghosts of Halloween past...

The Halloween that started it all. 1998. I had just come home from my mission and thought it would be really funny to dress up as a Punk GI Jane.

It is hard to see, but I have blue spiky hair, fake ear & nose piercings, fake tattoos on my arms, dog tag, and Madonna type blue dots around my eyes. So out of character for me that I made many adults from church very nervous.

In this group picture from the singles ward you can see Clay laying in front with his bathrobe, Winnie the pooh doll, night cap, and moose slippers.

Clay and I had just started dating and had several different events to go to for Halloween that year. We volunteered at a family ward primary activity, so we decided to tone down our costumes. I went as Alice in Wonderland.

Then on Halloween, we went to a party together. I was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Clay was a Soccer Goalie.

Later we scared our friends by walking around the street as neon stick people. That is really us (dressed in black with the neon tied onto us). Clay would be the taller purple one and I am the shorter green one.

2002-After we were married we took a break from dressing up. Then Emma came along. I found this cute pea pod costume for her. Clay colored his hair green and wore a green outfit. I colored my hair blue and wore a blue suit. Not our best creative year, but still fun.

2003-Wizard of Oz. I found a Toto costume at a yard sale. I already had the Dorothy costume but added hair extensions. So, I just made Clay's scarecrow costume.

2004 -Peter Pan. I had just chopped off my hair so we thought Peter Pan would work for me. I made my costume, but bought Clay's and Emma's.

2005-Hawaiian Tourists. Not the most creative, but we already had everything from our recent trip to Hawaii.

2006-Alice in Wonderland. My sister-in-law had sent this adorable Alice costume for Emma. I was 8 months pregnant at the time. We decided that making a Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum costume would be the only thing to fit my belly.

2007-Cinderella. Emma's grandma sent this great Cinderella costume to Emma, so we went with it. I bought Clay's Prince Charming costume. Then I made my Fairy Godmother costume and Rebekah's Gus Gus costume (he's the fat mouse from the movie, very appropriate for our very chunky baby).

2008-Wizard of Oz. Here we go again! This time Rebekah fit the Toto costume, so we just had to add Emma as Glinda the Good Witch of the North.