New Fall Pictures/Halloween/Vala's Pumpkin Patch

These are from Vala's Pumpkin Patch. It's too much fun and we go every year. I couldn't get a good picture of Kaitlin's jump. I took many but.....

Summer Ends

Kaitlin is loving school this year and I am so happy and relieved. I know it is just the beginning of the year but I have great hopes for this year for her.

Carmen had a rough beginning but likes school now. It is still long for her but she's adjusting.

End of School Activities

Carmen's Preschool Field Trip. She got to ride on the bus and she was so excited to ride a real school bus. (She is soooo ready for kindergarten in her mind).




We went to the zoo with our friends and neighbors. We had a grand time. Carmen and Kaitlin like them a lot and so do I.




We went to the park as a family one nice Saturday. Everyone had fun. Summertime, summertime, summertime !

End of School Field Trip

I went to the Zoo with Kaitlin last Friday for the last field trip. I met a very nice person who was the grandmother of a school friend. We had a great time. Here is Kaitlin and her friend.

Kaitlin wanted to do a display at the Show What You Know Fair at school. She wanted to do the human body and we convinced her to narrow it down to muscles (believe me this took some convincing). I had to include what she wrote, you'll see why:

Muscles in the Human Body

There are three kinds of muscles: Cardiac, Smooth and Skeletal.

The skeletal muscle is a muscle that is connected to your skeleton. The Cardiac muscle is the muscle of the heart. Unlike other muscles, it is not mostly connected to bone or tissue, but to itself. The smooth muscle got its name because of its non-bumpy texture. Skeletal muscles has lines through it (or striations) and those lines help it do its job.

You know when you flex your muscles to show how strong you are? The muscles that you are using is called the "Biceps Brachii (pronounced biseps brake ee i). But, even though when you use the Biceps Brachii and the bump on your arm looks big, it still isn't the area with the most muscles. The area with the most muscles is the face (when including chewing muscles). I know! It's pretty exciting to know that! All those big, little, contracting, controlled muscles make about 639 muscles in the human body!

(I did very little editing - except adding the pronunciation guide and striations). See what I mean? What a mind!

snow and cold weather

We have had crazy amounts of snow and crazy cold weather since before Christmas. We had a blizzard Christmas Day. Our high temperature the other day was -4 degrees WITHOUT counting wind chill. The poor dogs haven't wanted to go outside--and neither have we.

The picture above is from the earlier snow. It was warmer then and the neighborhood kids and Carmen are playing. The boy on the left is sitting in a tunnel he dug that goes under the snow to the boy in the middle. That's how deep it is and this was the first snow. We've had two or three days of it since without melting in between.


This is our house. I have two steps up to my porch. Notice the snow drift up to the window box.

The picture below is the sidewalk with the sides of snow on each side. Just in case you are wondering. It's about 2 feet on each side. Where the drifts are high I have to raise my arms when walking the dogs to keep my elbows from hitting the snow.

This is my Dad's "friend" two houses down. Notice the snow drift goes halfway up his door. His porch is two steps up, mind you.

Christmas 2009

So Kaitlin did a very sweet thing this Christmas. She gave up something to Carmen that Carmen had really wanted since Kaitlin's birthday in October. She did it without prompting. You have to understand that Kaitlin has a hard time giving up anything. She did it once with a necklace and now once again. I was so proud of her I could cry. She was also so sick with stomach flu that she opened presents then laid on the couch the rest of the day. Poor thing.



We had a very nice Christmas. All of our family and extended family were very nice and generous. The girls loved all their gifts and although we each took a turn at the stomach flu. Kaitlin then Carmen, then me and then Archie. However, we were happy and sharing time together.