November

These first few pics were actually from October. These are from Red Ribbon Week. Curtis and his best bud wore matching clothes for "Twin Day".


Bella was a 'twin' with her basketball team.


Bella and our principal on "Mismatch Day".


Graydon reading a story to Mabel. She seemed pretty interested!


Lots of leaves in our yard.












Basketball started up again for the boys.


Mimi Jane came out for a visit.




Graydon left school early because he wasn't feeling well. He fell asleep at the doctor's office. Poor guy.


A member of our church caught wind of Graydon's interest in junk and tinkering with things, so he brought over a broken lawn mower for Graydon to play around with. (If you look closely at his face, you will see a bunch of scratches he received from falling off the monkey bars. It was a rough week for this kid).


Graydon and Curtis started taking karate lessons.


Bella loves any chance she can get to drive the gator.


Curtis visited with Santa at Christmas of Yesteryear.


Papa and Gaga came down for a visit.


We also got our tree and then had a few Benetti's visit as well. More photos to come. November just zoomed by!

Bella is ELEVEN!

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Our firstborn is eleven-years-old!

Isabella is such a fun girl who is oh so sweet and also really silly. She is growing and, although they're still a little too big, she is starting to get in to my clothes and shoes. It won't be long before we can start sharing!

I feel like our relationship turned a little corner this year. I am definitely still mom and she is still daughter, but I have really noticed our friendship starting to grow. We sing along to the same music (Mandisa, For King and Country, Toby Mac, Francesca Battistelli, etc.) and enjoy some of the same TV shows (HGTV and Packer games). And we just enjoy spending time together. I pray that this trend continues because I am loving it!

She still keeps herself pretty busy with basketball and gymnastics. She's a pretty good runner and wants to do Track and Cross Country, but she'll have to wait until 6th grade to do that.

I am so thankful for Bella, for who she is and that God chose her for our family.

Happy Birthday, Isabella! We love you!

Halloween!

The day before Halloween, we carved our pumpkins. We actually got these back in September at Brocktoberfest and the kids wanted to carve them right away; but I knew they wouldn't make it to Halloween if we carved them that early. Especially since the weather has still been very summer-like. But then things got busy and we realized on Oct. 30th that if we didn't carve them that day then they wouldn't get carved.




The kids did pretty much all of it by themselves this year! Andy and I were around for supervision, but they pretty much flew solo.




Curtis lost his other front tooth earlier that day.








Halloween was a beautiful day here.


We had a witch.






A green ninja.




And Darth Vader.








Andy was a cheesehead.




Every witch needs her cat.


Posing by their pumpkins.


The past two years, we  got a late start to trick-or-treating. This year, we were ready too early. Fortunately, the museum on the square always has Halloween crafts and snacks on Halloween night, so we stopped there first.




Then we walked a block to the Baptist church and went "trunk-or-treating".










There's not much trick-or-treating on our area of the street, so the past couple of years we've been looking for our spot. This year we found it. The streets were alive this night. So many families out trick-or-treating together. I think since so many people live in the country and can't trick-or-treat out there, it naturally brings everyone together in town.


We didn't have to ring any doorbells. The evening was so nice that everyone was out sitting on their porches.


After some time, the kids got tired and we went home to eat candy, light our jack-o-lanterns, and watch Spooky Shrek Tales. I loved this Halloween. :)

Basketball Season is Here

Bella is playing 5th Grade basketball for our school this year. Back in September, they started practicing for an hour-and-a-half each night, Monday thru Thursday. Their first game was October 24th. Bella was soooooo nervous for that first game.


It is so much fun to watch her play, but I must confess that I feel nervous myself.


Now that they have a few games under their belt, she is starting to feel a bit more confident.


It's neat to see my kids excel in things that I was never any good at. :)