{happy fall}

Here's a collection of photos from our various activities during the month of October. Our camera is on the fritz, so we haven't taken as many photos lately as we would like. One thing we haven't been able to photograph are the beautiful leaves in our neighborhood. It's been beautiful around here--even when it's rainy! We've spent a lot of time at the soccer field this season. Scott has started refereeing and Shannon was assistant coach for Sierra's team. Both girls played their last soccer games of the season yesterday. Sierra's kindergarten class took a field trip to a pumpkin patch and had a harvest party. They have been busy studying pumpkins for weeks now. We also enjoyed our fourth haunted gingerbread house party at James and Adrienne's. Check out our houses from October posts (actually November posts) in past years. And of course we went tick-or-treating!

{native?}

I meant to upload pictures of Sierra's first day of kindergarten, but these came up instead. And they make me laugh. This is Sierra dressed up as an "Indian." It has become her favorite dress up outfit and she designed it herself!

{calling all campers}

Rachel celebrated her eighth birthday about a month ago. She loves to go camping, so we had a camping party in our back yard.

Complete with campers....

camp songs....

S'mores...

and campfire cupcakes!

{summer adventures}

Here's a wrap up of our summer adventures so far.

The girls and I met our friend Laura at the replica fire look out cabin for a night. The view was great and the cabin had windows all around.

Then it was off to Denver to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We explored downtown and the Denver Museum of Art.

We played in water a lot. Not pictured is the huge waterslide park that we spent an entire day at.

We played badminton in the backyard.

And we climbed to an incredible vista overlooking Boulder.

That was the fun part of the summer. The not-so-fun part is that Scott was laid off from his job a few weeks ago, so now we are job hunting. Anyone know of a software engineer job? In Corvallis? In the Willamette valley?

{turning 5}

We threw a "Fancy Nancy" party for Sierra for her fifth birthday. It was so much fun to plan and put on.

As you can see, the whole family got into spirit of the party. If you are familiar with the Fancy Nancy books, you'll notice that Scott is dressed up just like the dad in the story.


All the guests were so cute all dressed up. During the party we made fancy wands, read one of the Fancy Nancy stories, and played "fancy, fancy, plain," just like "duck, duck, goose" and "pin the tiara on Nancy."


Sierra really loved her party, and it was a surprise for her because we didn't tell her what we were planning. When she woke up that morning the house was all decorated for her party!

Our fancy five-year-old.

I'm not sure why we've taken such a long break from blogging, but there is hope that we'll start again soon!

{freezing}

We chose to ring in the New Year by participating in the annual polar bear swim at the local pool. Yes, it was cold. Yes, it was raining. And yes, it was windy. The outdoor pool temperature was about 49 degrees.


At least the slide was open! The worst part was standing in line with the wind blowing.


And here they are making a beeline to the indoor pool to warm up. Thank goodness for the 90 degree kiddie pool!

They even gave out toy "polar bears" at the end!