Happy 40th!

Happy 40th anniversary to Sesame Street!

"Blue slide"

Dining out

Weekend update

Halloween

Back to life

I finally got to return to my salon (11 weeks after my last cut). I told my stylist that, like Samantha Jones said in the Sex and the City movie, I've been avoiding mirrors.

When Skip's hair gets a little long, he refers to his hair style as "the Blag," after Rod Blagojevich's hair style. I can't think of a female equivalent, but I was definitely sporting "the Blag".

Here I am waiting for a miracle:

Pre-Halloween fun

Halloween party

The Halloween party at preschool was today. The teacher selected an animal theme, and the girls chose to be monkeys. Actually, there was an option for one child to be a monkey, while the other went as an elephant. Since Lauren tends to always want whatever Gracie has, we decided to elect the same costumes and avoid the inevitable crying that usually occurs. The monkey costumes are courtesy of Grammie (thanks, Grammie!!!). Here are a couple of monkeys arriving:



Grammie, we had the best monkey costume! All of the monkeys grouped together:



Sitting in their assigned seats:



Gracie singing along to a "pumpkin song"



Enjoying some snacks:



Lauren has a longstanding dislike of hats. In preparation for the party, their teacher furnished all of the animal hats, and we put together a costume. There was much prepping (you-will-wear-the-hat-you-will-wear-the-hat-you-will-wear-the-hat) the morning of the party and on the drive to school. This is Lauren, resigned to wearing the hat:



Surveying the loot from their trick-or-treat bag:

Sending pics

Skip had to travel some this week for work. Yesterday, I took a couple of pictures with my phone and forwarded them via e-mail. Lauren decided she wanted to send a picture of "pink bear," and I'm sure it really caused feelings of homesickness once he saw bedraggled pink bear. (We spend significant portions of every day looking for various animals, and "pink bear" is a repeat MIA offender.) Notice the intensity in Lauren's eyes below. We had to do about 10 takes to get this picture. Lauren thought "pink bear" would be best captured in motion (so she kept waving him around wildly), and it took a good deal of explaining that he really had to be stationary to get a good shot. You can tell she is focusing REALLY HARD on keeping the bear still for this picture. Here's how it turned out:

Upstairs view

This is the view from the downstairs landing. When we outgrow the gate, I will miss this.



Gracie's adept placement of her hand on the gate means that we will outgrow this sooner rather than later. There is a push-lift combination that they have both almost mastered.



Monkey-ing around upstairs:

Pumpkin patch 2009

First stop, the petting zoo where we saw pigs, goats, turkeys and chickens. The pigs were sleeping in the mud, lying in the sun, and Gracie kept telling them, "Get up!!!"

Next, we went to the field where the girls had fun with unintentional seating, i.e., the pumpkins.

Finally, they enjoyed climbing all over the haystacks.

Happy birthday!

Today is Skip's birthday... Happy 42nd!!!!!