Per tradition, the girls went to Grams’s house to bake Christmas cookies. Sadly this year Aunt Caroline was not around to help since she no longer lives nearby. We miss you Aunt Caroline.
Baking cookies with Aunt EA meant they also got to hang out a bit with Charlie. Leah thought that was great, though Charlie seems a bit bored by it all.
Charlie is excellent at staring. Molly’s smile doesn’t stand a chance at getting him to blink.
In addition to our indoor decorations, we even have lights on the outside of our house. Thanks go to Jen for this, as she’s the driving force (and the one who is more comfortable up on a ladder to hang the lights).
As soon as we got our Christmas tree, the girls started asking when we could decorate it. Fortunately, the wait was not long (2 days).
In the beginning, the girls told Jen they could handle the big tree, and she could stick to the little tiny one.
Fortunately, the tree is wide enough to get close to the love seat. It can be a helpful tool in reaching a bit higher.
To reach even higher, you can stand on the love seat arm, though you need a hand to steady you.
And then sometimes you need even more height and have to pull out the ladder.
The girls in this family need as much help reaching up high as they can. And with this big tree, I ended up on the ladder a lot as well.
One nice thing about a tree this big - you don’t have to pick and choose ornaments to go on. There’s room for them all.
Here’s what it looks like all lit up.
Here’s the tree with a bit of the rest of the room for size comparison. I think this is the biggest tree we’ve ever had in terms of girth. I cut a good bit off the bottom and a bit off the top so it would fit under our 9 foot ceiling (barely), but it’s also really big around. Watching TV is slightly more difficult than usual, but we really enjoy this awesome tree.
The big event in August was Aunt Caroline’s wedding. Sorry for the delay in blogging about it.
Caroline and Charles chose to have the wedding in St. Mary’s, Maryland, where they had gone to college. That’s about a two hour drive from where we live. The ceremony was held outdoors in history St. Mary’s City. Unfortunately, it was a bit damp for the rehearsal (but not for the ceremony itself, thankfully).
The rehearsal dinner was held in Solomon’s Island at The Lighthouse.
Molly was excited to see what her dessert would be.
The morning of the wedding, Crystal drove down to do everyone’s hair (well, not mine). She even helped a little bit with the girls’ hair.
The bride and groom took pictures before the wedding.
Here are the four of us all ready to do our part in the wedding. Jen is a bridesmaid, the girls are pinwheel girls (more on that later), and I am the musician. And yes, I wore a hat. I’ve learned that it’s necessary with a lack of hair up top during outdoor events. Plus it fit the entire vibe of the wedding.
Caroline surprised me by asking me to serve as the music for the wedding. She gave me a couple songs to learn, and I did my best.
Mother of the bride
Jen the bridesmaid. All the bridesmaids picked their own navy blue dresses. So, Jen of course made her own.
The girls were pinwheel girls (instead of flower girls). Pinwheels were used throughout the wedding and reception in place of flowers. Also, note the cute dresses the girls are wearing. Jen made them too.
If you know Caroline, you can guess that the ceremony was a bit more comical than your average wedding.
Married
Our side of the family
The four of us
Rather than have a cake, Caroline and Charles decided to have a tower of donuts. So, instead of feeding each other cake, they fed each other donuts.
No surprise - Molly and Leah were first in line to eat some donuts.
The entertainment at the reception after the ceremony was fun as well, including some frisbee.
And of course finishing the fun with some bubbles
Thanks to Noe Todovorich Photography for many of the pictures here. I took several of these, but I was a bit busy most of the time.
In preparation for Halloween, Jen got the girls some giant pumpkins, that we tried to carve at a party. We had some difficulties with tools there, though. Leah elected to paint her pumpkin, but Molly brought hers home to try again.
The biggest preparation for Halloween is of course the costumes, though. Thanks to Jen, these are always awesome.
Since our trip to Callaway Gardens this summer, Molly has been in love with owls. So, she of course wanted to be one for Halloween. Jen planned to make these feathers and attach them to a hoodie, but she couldn’t find a girls brown hoodie. So, she just made the hoodie. She also made the mask, the skirt, and the leggings.
Also note the pumpkin Molly carved in the background. Yes, it’s an owl as well.
Leah had a lot of trouble picking a costume, but eventually decided to be Mittens Fluff ’n Stuff, one of the Lalaloopsy girls. Jen made the wig, shirt, leggings, socks, and vest. She was going to make a skirt until Leah reminded her she already owned a perfect skirt (though Jen did add the waistband to it). Jen and Leah together sewed the pet polar bear accessory.
The pumpkin in the back was painted by Leah as well.
These were all the costumes this year. The girls wanted to pick their own costumes rather than do a family costume. So, Jen and I went without costumes.
As usual, the elementary school has a costume parade. Leah enjoyed her first time dressing up and marching at school. She especially loved that her costume included a toy, which meant she could have that toy at school all day.
Molly of course marched as well. No surprise she was in line behind Jordan.
On Halloween day, trick-or-treating started early on Halloween with a trip to visit Grams.
Thanks Grams from some happy trick-or-treaters.
As we’ve donebefore, we gathered with some of the neighborhood kids to go trick-or-treating. This year we gathered a bit earlier to get a head start.
We stuck with Jordan, Haley, and Madison again as we visited house after house gathering candy.
To close it out, here’s Molly’s lit-up owl jack-o'-lantern after a long night of greeting our trick-or-treaters.
For many months, Leah was requesting a space themed birthday party. So, last weekend we made it happen. It was a very creative venture that led to some fun decorations, including an inflatable solar system and some sewn stars hanging from the ceiling.
Chad did his best at arranging the solar system. Obviously not to scale as that wouldn’t work, but at least planetary distance should be in order of the planets. And yes, they included Pluto as well, which Leah banished to the corner.
As the guests arrived for the party, there was some space coloring.
Next, all the kids donned disposable art smocks (made from trash bags) in order to paint the night sky. They were given canvases that I had pre-painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. Their first step was to stick stars onto their canvas in whatever constellation design they liked.
After sticking on stars, the girls painted the entire canvas black. Once dried, they removed the star stickers, giving them a black night sky with glow-in-the-dark stars.
Next up was Pin the Rocket on Saturn.
We moved on to Outer Space Bingo, created with clip art from LemonadePixel.
Our snack included star-shaped cheese & crackers, rocket fruit kabobs, and Cheddar Rocket Crackers. (Sadly, no pictures of these. The cameraman must have had his hands full helping one of the 16 girls!) The outer space cupcakes with a lemon candy sun, Skittles planets, and sprinkle stars in the night sky were a hit!
And no party is complete without singing to the birthday girl.
Then it was on to the piñata. Leah is quick to tell you that her favorite planet is Saturn, so I made her a Saturn piñata.
Some of the girls had a big swing.
Leah put all her effort into breaking this piñata. It almost broke apart here, but managed to barely stay together for one more hit from Molly.
Then there was of course the scramble for all the toys and candy.
Last, we shot Stomp Rockets into the air. These were a big hit on a beautiful day. If you look closely, you can see both rockets in mid-air.
We were way too busy to open presents at the party, but Leah was ready to do so as soon as it was over. She received lots of very fun presents. This year’s featured gift - DigiBirds.
And if you didn't catch it in the pictures above, Leah was very excited that she was finally allowed to wear her solar system skirt (pattern by Little Lizard King), with a coordinating tank top in her favorite color! She and I collaborated on the birthday outfit (Mom was planning on a dress, but daughter insisted on separates, so we made it work!).
Thanks to all who came to celebrate with Leah! We all had a blast!
Believe it or not, Leah is now 6 years old (as of last week, sorry for the delay in writing this). Happy birthday Leah!
Leah’s birthday came on a school day, so we saved the big party for the weekend. That didn’t stop these girls from having a happy birthday, though.
Leah got to pick dinner and dessert. For dinner, she again picked Chick-Fil-A. For dessert, she decided to forego traditional cake or cupcakes and instead picked some delicious gelato (don’t worry, the traditional dessert was coming a few days later). Her flavor of choice was of course birthday cake.
Her birthday was only the beginning of the celebrating. The big fun was still to come.
A couple of weeks ago, we gathered at Grams’s house to celebrate Uncle Scott’s birthday. I won’t tell you how old he is, but you might be able to guess.
These girls love their Uncle Scott.
Leah still doesn’t quite grasp personal space.
Leah’s got to get her sillies with Aunt Caroline while she can before Aunt Caroline moves to Chicago.
Back in March, when Molly opened her birthday card from Aunt EA and Uncle Scott, I was recording her. Aunt EA and Uncle Scott are known for giving fun singing cards that the girls love, so I wanted to capture their reaction. Little did I know that there was a bit more of a surprise than we were expecting. I wasn't allowed to share this video at the time, but I thought I'd go back and do so now.
Yes, we’re expecting a nephew around Thanksgiving, and this is how my sister told us about it. I wish I had kept recording, but I was so shocked I immediately hit stop. In case you couldn’t guess it, Jen’s next word was “way”.
On the last day of camp there were some award ceremonies. In the morning, we adults attended the awards for the little kids. Leah, Emmie, and JJ were kind enough to sit in together, making it easy to get them all in the shot.
They sang a bunch of songs for us, though JJ decided not to participate.
This song was especially cute.
Emmie won the Miss Creative award, which apparently happens all the time for her. She’s got some serious arts and crafts skills (I wonder where that comes from). She seems pleased.
Leah won the Sweetheart award, which was well deserved in my unbiased opinion.
JJ won the Helper award. Here are all three of them with their awards.
At the end of the camp day, Molly’s group had an awards ceremony as well.
Molly won the Best Smile award.
Molly made a friend at camp. She befriended Daphne on the first day, and they stuck together all week.
The kids weren’t the only ones to get awards. I won the round robin tennis tournament at the end of the week. I didn’t tell the girls about it, so they didn’t find out until my name was announced at the circus. To say they were excited would be an understatement.
My prize for winning the tennis tournament was this lovely t-shirt.
