Nursing home visit

with the homeschool group this morning.

All the saints ready to visit the residents!

little Saint Francis liked his rope belt a lot!

St. Elizabeth of Hungary (queen who gave bread to the poor)
St. Francis of Assisi (you might notice the bird on his shoulder)
and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (American wife, mother, widow,
and foundress of teaching order of nuns)

Now we're resting up for the Halloween fun!

Teaching them to find the positives

After I knocked over a ~2-liter glass bottle of Mexican vanilla extract ALL over the pantry. It shattered and sprayed everywhere, taking me about 2 hours on and off to get it all clean!

Mary Clare: "Well, at least the pantry won't smell like dirty diapers anymore!"

You know you're a tired mommy

when you come out of the grocery store at midnight BY YOURSELF and notice you parked in the "Customers with Small Children" spot without even realizing it! (I do have the excuse of talking on the cell phone while I was parking though ;)

Too funny

She's going to be a toothless Tooth Fairy for Halloween!

And a fun week of babies!
Congratulations to Lillian!
Congratulations to Stephanie!
Continued prayers for Roxanna!

This weekend we saw this movie, a wonderful Christian movie about marriage. I recommend it to everyone and all my close-neighbors...I can babysit for you if you'd like a date night! Way to go Kirk Cameron...my childhood TV crush is doing great things for the world :)

We've still got a lot to do in preparation for Halloween and All Saints' Day, namely a Tooth Fairy costume and accessories and a St. Elizabeth Ann Seton costume, plus some things for our nursing home visit and All Saints' Day festival booth. Better go get busy!

"The Zoo Boo" by Mary Clare and Ellie

We went to the zoo. The zoo was so fun.
Oh I can't wait to go there again!

There was some kind of festival thing going on.

The tigers were sleeping.

The apes were pretty red, kind of orangey.

The elephants are big and fun.
Mac has tusks now! Mac is getting very big.

We went to see the giraffes.
I wonder why the giraffes like pumpkins?
I saw them eating one.

I saw the meerkat that was on the lookout!

The bunnies were kind of by the flamingos, near the water.

We went to see the flamingos when we were start going to leave.
They were pretty pink!

Komodo dragons were cool. The last thing we saw were the zebras.
There was some kind of gazelle thingy at the zoo.

The end.

Before and After

Before

After

Before

After

Ahhh. Much better.

This week

Crab walking

Ellie is still the two-finger-sucker!

Another beautiful ballerina

Making some kind of leaf-soup,
Fantastic weather for outside play!

Crafty day

And finally....
The horrific schoolroom "before" picture
It's almost re-done.

To be continued...

Technical Difficulties

If I appear to be MIA, or if I'm not responding to emails, please note that my internet connection is not working well, my home feels like another hurricane blew through, and I'm hoping to have a productive family weekend, to include a date-night to see "Fireproof" which I've heard is a wonderful movie about marriage! I'm also hoping to re-arrange the out-of-control schoolroom (If only I could upload my pictures right now...you'd be horrified!), figure out costume plans for next weekend, and put away the weeks-worth of folded laundry. One thing that's good...this one's a no-birthday-party weekend, preceded by a double-birthday weekend and anticipating a double crazy weekend of Halloween and All Saints' Day next weekend! The busy holiday season approaches and likely won't calm down until 2009 begins! This weekend should be good for things like spending time at home...or at the beach or zoo...whatever happens to feel right tomorrow morning. I'm sensing I could be starting Monday off with the clothes still folded on the couches and the train wreck still covering the schoolroom. We'll see. Hope you all have a great one!

Sunday

At the park for a birthday

Tired baby spent most of the time here,
after I took him out I realized he nibbled the paint off all the screws on the stroller,
guess I need to call Graco

Mary Clare and her friend made a little sand village,
complete with a garden of trees and flowers

Ellie working hard in the sand

Ellie and NeNe at dinner--
another Mystery Shopper night at our favorite Irish pub :)

I've been playing around with Blogger, trying to make a new banner and make the screen more appealing. But it's not working out with my slow wireless connection. Takes me forever just to load pictures! Today a friend and I babysat 10 kids (including ours) while the other moms went to a morning retreat. Went pretty well. Ellie and I took a mommy-daughter outing to the library tonight. We had a talk about living and non-living things on the way there after she commented on how cars don't grow...I think she has it down pretty well now ;)

Well, I'm back on a late-night kick...it's now Wednesday and I better get to bed! Hope you all had a terrific Tuesday!

We love

Play-dough!

Fall Friday Foto Fun

in NeNe and PaPa's front yard!

Me and baby

PaPa with my little man

Tree climbing

Hope the branches don't break!

Gymnastics time!

Digging

Eating all manner of leaves and bark

Talking to the neighbor girls

Umbrella in the sprinkler!

Resting with NeNe

"Talking" on the phone :)

Playing with PaPa

Sweet sisters

I love close-ups

Playing with Holly

And Ellie's finale!!!

What a fun Friday afternoon!