Father-Daughter Dance and Pumpkin Carving

Friday night, Katie had the Girl Scout Father-Daughter dance at school. It was a black and white theme, so Katie decided that she must bring back out her flower girl dress from Aunt Suzie's wedding. Suprisingly, it still fit, although I think the sash was a bit higher than the last time!



Here is Jamie presenting Katie's corsage. She was quite excited about it, although I later found out that it only made it to dinner and then was forgotten in the car during the dance. The person who ordered it, went to pick it up, etc. loved to hear that!

Before the dance, Katie and Jamie met up with another father and daughter for dinner at a Japanese steakhouse.

Here is Katie with a few of her friends- Annie and Jessica D.

This picture is really comical to me because it shows one of the dads wearing a ref shirt to tie in with the balck and white theme. Love it! Jamie reported that there were also people wearing convict jumpsuits and a Darth Vader costume.

After the dance, there was an ice cream sundae party. The huge brown spot on Katie's dress may be a lasting souveneir of this moment!

Katie had a bit of a cough over the weekend, so with all of H1N1 mania, we laid low on Saturday and watched the Notre Dame football game at home. As we were encouraging Katie to lay on the couch during the game, she paid closer attention and asked a number of questions to better understand the sport. Her best question (and toughest one to answer) was: "But why is it so serious?"

On Sunday we carved our pumpkins. It's a tough activity for kids because there is a lot of waiting around while the grown ups are actually doing the work.

Caroline was very certain about what she wanted on her pumpkin- triangles and jiggy jaggy teeth. She loved popping out her pieces.

Here are their masterpieces. We still have our two little ones to decorate, which we plan to do later this week. We're looking forward to trick or treating!

Birthday and Pumpkins

On Friday Katie and I enjoyed a day off together. School was closed for a teacher work day, so I took the day off and we did a lot of fun things. We went to the dentist (which the girls consider to be fun due to the flavored toothpaste, toys, etc.) , did some clothes shopping for Katie, met Jamie for lunch, then went to see a movie (the 3-D version of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs). The movie was cute, but a bit of a stretch from the kids book which was a favorite of mine.

On Saturday, we ventured off to Indiana to celebrate Miss Emma's first birthday. The girls were excited to see each other and after lunch we continued our quest to get a picture with all four looking at the camera. This was the best we could do!

Grandma wanted one too. We didn't get many good smiles, but I think this one accurately captures the moment.

Here's the birthday girl!

I let Katie take pictures of Emma opening her presents to keep her busy. There were a lot of interesting shots, including close ups of people's feet, the floor, etc. Here's one that I took showing the girls clustering around the presents in excitement. Thankfully Emma was willing to share because there were a lot of people lined up to play with her new toys.

We stayed for dinner and watched the end of the close, but not quite close enough Notre Dame-USC game and then made it home by about 9:45.

On Sunday we ventured out to get our pumpkins and enjoyed a hayride. We've done this hayride before, but this year they added some "scary" characters out in the woods, who gently startle you and then kindly wave. It made it pretty entertaining and Caroline kind of liked the "monster guys."

Once the wagon dropped us at the pumpkin patch, Caroline found her perfect pumpkin right away. Katie had to look a bit harder to find the big one she was seeking.

It was a fun afternoon and we wandered around the farm after the ride. Caroline was loving the Amish-made wooden play equipment. There was a tractor, train, bus, firetruck (ironic that the Amish made these items, don't you think?) and finally we had to tear her away to get home for a nap. We're looking forward to carving them next week!

Indian Princess Camp Out 3

Report from Jamie: It was time again for the Indian Princess Camp out. This year the weather was a challenge. The forecast was for rainy and cold. Friday night was pretty much as predicted. Saturday was a mix of warm and cold, but everyone had fun.

We started with a cookout by the cabins Friday night. Again Beth and Katie's s'mores brownies were a hit. The picture here shows Katie drinking her orange juice at breakfast on Saturday. What it doesn't show is the pancake, bacon and Cocoa Puffs that she also had.

Saturday we had all kinds of activities. Katie and some other girls played GaGa ball, where you try and hit the ball with your hands and try and hit someone to eliminate them.

This picture is a great one of the Amazing Race contest we had. One of the challenges was to see how long the girls could hang on to a pole with nothing to grab on to. We had the tip that skin on the pole made it easier. Katie scored the highest of all the girls by staying on the pole for almost five and a half minutes.

Saturday after lunch we had our choice of activities. Katie wanted to do the rock climbing again. On our way to that activity, we saw the Giant Swing and Katie wanted to do that first.

You can see that they had their helmet and pulley equipment on. She had to climb up a ladder where she was given another rope with a blue flag to hold onto. A group of dads then pulled her up as high as she wanted to go before letting go. Katie went the whole 40 feet to the top and then she went for a swing. You can see she was up there pretty good. She loved it.

Then it was off to rock climbing where Katie made it to the second level.

After that it was tiem to get ready for the cookout. Katie and I snuck in a game of basketball on the courts. I think it was the first time that I have ever had a height advantage on the basketball court. The 5-foot hoop also made it better.

We had the cookout and played some more before heading home during the campfire ceremony. This was the third camp out in a row that Katie was asleep in the car on the way home!

So after a bad night sleep on Friday and lots of activities, Beth paid the price today with a house full of grumpy people.(Caroline was up three times in the night).

While we were gone Beth and Caroline had a number of special activities. They went shopping and to dinner (the Cheesecake Factory). Beth found that Caroline is a great person to share a piece of cake with because all she wants to do is eat the whip cream, which Beth thought was a good trade.

Sunday we went to the Sauerkraut Festival where we ate lunch. We found lots of tasty treats finished the meal with an order of deep fried oreos which, like the deep fried twinkies, we all loved!

Fall

I'm glad we got ready for fall last week, because it is here! We had our sweaters on this week, and lots of layers. We loved this picture of Caroline because she's looking so grown-up!

We got the first of our fall decorations up this week- our circle of ghosts outside. Of course, as soon as we got them up, we had a very windy day and half of them were knocked down, so hopefully we won't have to reassemble too many times.

There is no significance to this photo, other than the fact that Katie hopped on Jamie's lap and said "take our picture!" and it turned out cute.

One of the highlights of the week was Katie's first meeting of Daisy Scouts. She's pictured here with two friends singing the "Make New Friends" song, which I sang back in my Girl Scout days. Katie has sung it so many times now that I have caught Jamie and Caroline singing it as well.

On Friday night my sister and her family were coming to town. You can see Lily anxiously awaiting their arrival!

Once Jen, Billy and the girls arrived, everyone had to get reacquanited with Lily. You can see Emma wasn't too sure about her.

Katie, Caroline and Hannah decided to get dressed up in princess gear and had fun twirling around, even though we were trying to scoot them up to bed.

Uncle Buddy had the honor of reading the "princesses" a princess bedtime story.

The next morning, the first of the girls woke around 6:45 (Emma) and the rest were up and crowing by 7:15. We began the long process of getting organized to head out the door to drive to Cleveland for a visit with Grandma (or GG, to the kids). The timing of our visit worked out that we could be there to celebrate her 91st birthday. I am glad she's not on the computer becuase she would probably not like me revealing her age! We made it to her house by about 1 p.m. and took her out to lunch. It was a little zoo-y with all the kids, but we enjoyed it and I think Grandma was glad to get out.

After visiting at her house and getting some of the kids to nap, we had birthday cake and the kids were happy to help blow out GG's candles.

We left a little after 6 to come home and the drive was pretty smooth. Here's Caroline enjoying a cheeseburger while watching a movie- and Jamie and I were thrilled that we were able to pick up the Notre Dame game on the radio just in time to hear the call for overtime.

On Sunday we ventured out for a picnic lunch and some apple picking. The kids checked out the animals on the farm- Caroline liked these pigs- and they all liked playing on the little swingset there.

Of course Caroline took the opportunity to visit the port o potty (and emerged with her pants not quite up). Dad's fixing her up here.

After a brief wait in line, we had a hayride out to the apple orchard.

The kids enjoyed picking apples, although we had to keep reminding them not to pick the ones from the ground. The orchard had a fair amount of poison ivy, so that made things interesting as well.

Jamie was trying to get a picture of the girls with me, but at this point Caroline got mad and decided that "she wasn't going to be in our family any more."

She decided to stay in the orchard.
But, eventually, she agreed to come back with us!

Here she is checking out some animals and climbing on the fence.

We tried to get a picture of the four little girls, but it was not a successful effort.

Jen, Billy and the girls left from the orchard and we headed home for some much-needed naps.

Later that afternoon the girls enjoyed a caramel apple. I fear they are about to be "appled out" as we have homemade applesauce and apple pie on the menu this week!