Happy Halloween!

A cupcake, Darth Vader and a somewhat scary witch had a fun night at the Haunted Hallways this weekend and trick or treating tonight. We had a full day of fun today. James and Ella had parties today at school. Claranna and I watched James in his costume parade and then Grandma Judy babysat so that I could help out in his classroom.

We had a full evening visiting family and then walking the neighborhood with friends. Claranna even sang "This is Halloween" at some of the houses we went to this evening. She earned lots of candy that we will help her eat. And, we learned having her walk a mile or two at bedtime helps her to fall right asleep at bedtime. She was fast asleep without her usual nightly crib concert. Happy Halloween everyone!

Kittens!

We've been caring for two extremely cute little kittens for the past 11 days. They were born to a stray cat who moved her litter of six kittens into a storage shed next to our church. She left these two sweeties behind and we were called to see if we would care for them. Of course, Ella said YES! The plan is to care for the kittens until they are old enough to find a new home. Need a kitten anyone? Send me a message if you do or know someone who'd like a kitty to love.

Since the kittens were only approximately three and a half weeks and only nursing from their mommy when we brought them home, we've had to feed them kitten milk replacer. The gray one, Fuzzy, eats his milk fine from a dish. The little black kitten, Luke Skywalker (Can you guess who named these kittens?), nurses from a bottle and isn't that interested in a dish yet. The kids have been having fun feeding them. And, since they need to eat every few hours, I have been feeding them several times a day when the big kids are at school. We are starting to introduce them to solid food. We have all enjoyed having the kittens to play with and to love, except for our big cats, Thorn and Violet. They aren't too fond of them and still keep their distance.

California

I've finally completed a photo book for our trip to California. Enjoy!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly allows you to customize your photo book just the way you want.

Apples

We have had some yummy apples from our apple tree this year. 2011 marks our first big apple harvest from our little Sweet Sixteen tree that we planted when Ella was a toddler. We've had apples other years, but nothing compared to this. The poor tree was so loaded that it looked like it was going to tip right over this summer. I hope we'll see the same number of apples next year. We've had to wait patiently to pick our apples as Sweet Sixteen are a later variety, but the wait was worth it. Now the apples are nice and sweet. Those who sampled them too early discovered them to be quite sour...except for Claranna. She seems fond of any type of apple.


So far we've had apple crisp, apple sauce and lots of apple snacking. I hope to bake a pie tomorrow!

Golf!

James went golfing on a big course for the first time with Daddy today. They golfed nine holes and James had a blast! I think Daddy did too...
Mark took several little movies of James on the course. Here's one of them:

Little Dancer

Claranna loves to dance. Here is a video I shot of her at the MN State Fair as she was grooving to a live band.

Full Moon

For our anniversary last year, I gave Mark a telescope. The kids love looking at the moon and the planets with Daddy. James is especially interested in astronomy. He often looks to see if the sky is clear and if it is, he asks if it can be a telescope night. Tonight we tried something I had previously read about--taking pictures through the telescope using our digital camera. Below are the pictures we took tonight of the full moon. Fun stuff!