Our Christmas Card

Here's our Christmas Card that we are sending out this year.

I like the idea of keeping electronic versions of all special things, rather then cluttering up the house with them. I'll have to go back and scan our Christmas cards from previous years as well.

Our Christmas Tree

After all the Tree lighting festivities outside were finished and everyone was in bed, I rearranged the furniture in our living room, trying to find a way to make room by the front window for the tree. I spent more time then I'm willing to admit on moving our couch, love seat and an arm chair around the room, only to come with the conclusion that there's no way to make room for the tree by the window without removing the love seat from the room, which wasn't an option. I went to bed thinking that at least I tried.. In the morning, everyone in the house was laughing at me, because all of the furniture was back in the regular spots except for the arm chair. Sigh.

Yesterday we spent a good part of the day setting up and decorating our Christmas tree. This is the biggest, fullest tree we've ever had! It smells amazing and looked really beautiful even without any decorations! While the kids nap, I put up the lights on tree. Typically I'd wrap every tree branch with lights (Last year our tree had 3,000 lights!). This process takes about 8 hours and at the end I need a day or two to recover from the back and shoulder pain.. This year, I went with a simpler approach, I ran strands of lights up and down the tree until it looked like it had enough lights on it. I was a little skeptical, but I think it came out alright :) Ashley was really into decorating the tree this year. She put unbreakable ornaments all on the bottom, so that it's safe for Katelyn, and then helped me with the glass ones.

We usually hang our stockings over the fireplace in the family room, but since Katelyn is such a trouble maker, we decided to put our stockings on the railing above the piano this year. All our indoor Christmas decorations have to be 100% baby proof. If there's a way, Katelyn will find it and try to eat it and if doesn't take good, she'll destroy it, so a preemptive strike is the best approach for us this year to keep our house festive and safe for all :)

Here is a picture of our tree all done, minus the tree topper, it was too high to reach without a ladder and we didn't want to disturb Katelyn with the noise since she was already in bed.

Lantier Tree Farm and Tree Lighting on Our Street

Every year since we moved to this house we've been getting a live Christmas tree. We've been going to Lincroft Tree Farms in Lincroft but last year we decided we wouldn't be coming back. The place didn't have any trees that were big enough to cut down that we liked, so we had to get a precut douglas fur which was beautiful but cost us an arm and a leg and defeated the purpose of going to the "Cut Your Own" farm. This year we decided to join our neighbor's Tree Picking party and go to the Lantier Tree Farm in Englishtown (http://www.lantiertreefarm.com/). This place as it turns out is the biggest tree farm in New Jersey! They have 50,000 Christmas Trees that you can pick from and any cut your own tree costs only $50!

The weather was great, about 50F, sunny and no wind, but we bundled up in case it got chilly. Turned out we were a little overdressed (except for Mike who doesn't wear jackets or coats ever). It took us about half hour to get to the farm, and once there, we took the wagon ride into the section with bigger trees,

and walked around until we found a few that we liked.

We found one about nine feet tall that looked perfect, so Mike cut it down and we carried it out carefully not to break any branches.



After our neighbors got their tree, we got some hot chocolate and funnel cake. Ashley and Katelyn had fun with Emma and Liam. Here's a picture of the four of them:
(You can tell my how they are dressed that it was a rather warm day for December!)

Our neighbor's brother came with a pickup truck, so we didn't even have to tie the tree to the roof. He drove it home for us and it was on our front door steps when we got back! Everyone had a great time.

Later that day festivities continued with the Tree Lighting Party on our street. We have a tall Christmas tree in the middle of the circle that guys put the lights on. You can see the tree coming down the street and it looks beautiful! After Santa arrived the lights were turned on and people continued to roast marshmallows by the fire. Ashley's still a little scared of Santa.. As soon as she saw him coming down the street, she ran inside the house, and didn't come back out. Only Mommy and Daddy got a picture with Santa.


We ended the night back at Stacy and Bill's house next door. Ashley had more fun with Emma and Liam. (Liam was teacher her how to play hockey, and then she was practicing rollerblading) Katelyn only took a short nap on the car ride back from the farm, so she was tired and checked out by 7pm.

Here's a view of our house with the lights. Mike and Dan worked very hard to get the lights up on the second story, but the wind storm we had last week pushed them inside the gutters. Nevertheless, the kids love the way the house looks. Katelyn keeps going "Wow" when she seems more lights, it's very cute :)

Ashley's Art Work

I finally got around to taking some pictures of Ashley's drawings. She really likes to color and is getting better at it.




This is a picture of Busenka and Grandpa Chuck that she drew for Grandpa Chuck's Birthday.

Taking Pictures for Xmas Card..

Yesterday I attempted to get a nice picture of my two crazy monkeys for the Christmas Card. I had to bribe them with sweets, and even then it was a challenge...

Here's the best that I could get:



And here's the rest.. my failed attempts at getting a decent picture. I got the best picture in the first two minutes, after that it all went down the hill, not to mention the scratches on Ashley's face that make her look like she's been in a cat fight..

We'll be going for formal portraits in January for Ashley's 4th birthday. Hoping to get some nice shots then.

Joan's Birthday

Yesterday was Joan's, I mean Nana's birthday. We cooked dinner at home and had a little celebration. It's much easier these days to stay home than to go out for a dinner with kids. Ashley's still ok, but Katelyn will not sit still for more than 20 minutes. I made a few appetizers, including bruschetta on french bread toasts, blueberry goat cheese with crackers and shrimp. For dinner we had Indira's famous Harvest Salad (with roasted turkey, feta cheese, pears, walnuts and dried cranberries), and I made a ham with mashed potatoes and string beans almondine. For desert I didn't have time to make a homemade cake, so I bought a cheesecake and make my own raspberry sauce to go with it. Katelyn loved the sauce so much she could have eaten a whole bowl full of it!

Here's some pictures of Nana and Ashley. (This was already after Katelyn retired to bed, so no Katelyn pictures this time)

General Update on What's New

We got so many things going on at the same time that I don't know what to write about. The highlight this weekend was going to Domenick and Carmela's wedding. It was a lot of good food and dancing, not to mention getting all prettied up, which I don't get to do much of these days.



I'm also happy to report that I'm finally back down to my pre-pregnancy weight and size 4! (All thanks to many friends that recommended Weight Watchers :) and watching food portions.) However, if the holiday partying continues at this pace, I may be in trouble..

We had couple other events this weekend that were very fun as well, but this Blog would look like an encyclopedia if I wrote about everything that we do.

I prefer to keep this Blog more focused on what's new with the kids. Speaking of which, both Ashley and Katelyn have been fighting a cold all week. They are both coughing and got runny noses; it’s nothing to get too excited over, but I did take them in to see Dr. Yia just to make sure that their lungs where clear and they were :)

There are a couple of new things that Ashley's been into lately. She's always been fond of coloring, but now she's branching into drawing people. The faces look more like ghostfaces from the movie Scream, but she's trying. I'll have to take pictures of the portraits that she's drawn to put up here. She's also been getting better at writing letters. She loves to play school, and really enjoys going to her Preschool. She even asks me on weekends if she can go to school. Not sure if I never mentioned this on the Blog, but she's 100% lefty. She does everything lefty, including holding her spoon and writing. Katelyn, on the other hand, (no pun intended), is a righty! She does everything righty!

Katelyn is a ball of energy, she's none stop all day. She's figured how to climb up on to the kitchen chair and from there on to the kitchen table! She thinks it's hilarious when she does this and we drop everything to run to her to get her down before she falls down on the tile floor! Kitchen/family room area that we have gated off used to be a safe place to leave her for a few minutes, but not anymore. She's also fond of jumping on the couch, and has fallen down from there more times than I can count.. Apparently the pain from falling doesn't bother her and hasn't taught her to not do it. She can also now push a chair to the kitchen counter and climb up to reach anything on the counter top!

We'll have to sign up Katelyn for gymnastics as soon as possible, so that we can tunnel that energy into something productive. She can already do a forward roll and likes to stand on her head doing the downward dog yoga pose :)

She's also finally beginning to like reading books. Her attention span has improved significantly in the last couple of months. For someone that doesn't like to sit still, we can now get through 3 books with her in one sitting! She also likes to color, but unfortunately half the time she also wants to eat the crayons that she's coloring with, so the coloring has been very limited for her.

In other news on Katelyn's front, she's got a lot more teeth now, literally. She has an extra tooth in the front on the bottom. Instead of having 4 bottom front teeth, she has 5! I guess that explains the teeth crowding.. We asked the pediatrician about this, but she said that it's no big deal. So, in total she's up to 17 teeth! (8 on top and 9 on the bottom!)

Here's a picture of Nastya holding Katelyn where you can see the extra tooth:


I think that’s about all that I wanted to mention for now. I have to make more videos of them. Watching them in action is priceless!

Blueberry Tarts with Crumb Topping

I've been testing out a few recipes that I want to prepare for Christmas dinner.
One of them was for Blueberry Tarts. I made them a couple of days ago, and they came out pretty amazing! I made small tarts, however I'm thinking that for Christmas I'll make one large one.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a great four day weekend! On Thanksgiving day we drove up to my mom and Chuck's house for dinner. It was a nice gathering minus all the screaming entertainment provided by Katelyn on the ride there and back. She was not a happy camper to be strapped in a carseat for over an hour.. The hope was that she'd fall asleep on the ride home, but no such luck.. She insisted on watching the DVD all the way home. Lesson learned, keep long trips to a minimum until she's a little bigger.

Friday was a long day. Indira and I went shopping to the Outlet Mall from 1am - 5am, I mostly picked up clothes for everyone. They had 50-60% off whole inventory of many stores.. After that I dropped off Indira at home, woke up Mike, and the two of us continued to shop up 8am. By 8, I was falling asleep standing up, but it was worth it since we bought everything on our list. Mike watched the kids until the afternoon, and I got to sleep a bit. We went out shopping again at night, just to get the kids out of the house.

Unfortuantelly I got no pictures from this weekend, because my camera's been acting up and no longer takes pictures :( I get the "Card Locked" error on display, and the only way to clear it is to open it up, remove battery and chip set and blow inside. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. All I know is that I missed some great shots this weekend :) The good news is that I took advantage of the Black Friday deals and picked up a new camera! It arrived yesterday, so we are back to taking pictures :)

Here's a picture from last week of Ashley and her friend Lily (our neighbor's daughter) over at Barnes and Noble. Turns out the bookstore is the place to go, if you've got time to kill with kids and you want to get out of the house...

Ashley and Lily will be in the same grade when they start kindergarden, possibly in the same class. That would be great, since Lily is a very sweet girl :)

Cake Decorating (Week 4) - Last Class

Yesterday was the last day of my Cake Decorating Class. We practiced writing on the cake and learned to make roses. Both skills need a lot of practice to make them look professional. Our final product was a Cake decorated however you like.

I make a Chocolate Kahlua Cake with chocolate mousse and fresh strawberry filling. Covered chocolate whipped cream frosting and decorated with vanilla whipped cream frosting tinted with different colors. I don't like the taste of the Buttercream Frosting that we've been using in class to decorate our cakes, and it's full of Crisco, which is loaded with trans fats. The whipped cream frosting tastes really good, but is harder to work with, since it gets too soft at room temperature.

Since Chuck's birthday just past I thought to surprise him with a Homemade Birthday Cake on Thanksgiving:

Weekend Where Abouts..

This weekend, we again worked very hard to bring some order to the house. It's been hard work lately to keep up with everything in the house. Mike finished organizing the shed and I put away Halloween decorations and started sorting through kids' clothes. Saturday we took the kids out to Toys R US and the Barnes and Nobles to get out of the house, and Sunday they played a good part of the day with our neighbors Emma and Liam while we attemped to continue working on house stuff.

I got a nice picture of Katelyn at the book store:


I tried out a couple of new recipes.. the highlights were oven roasted smoky turkey legs like the ones you get in Disney World, and Chocolate Pecan pie. Both came out extremely delicious!

I actually cooked up a storm this weekend (from Friday night til now), I made Shepherd's pie,baked ziti with ground turkey, mushroom soup, smoky turkey legs with sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, and salad; for desert I made brownies, chocolate chip muffins, pumpkin bread, and chocolate pecan pie. I have a recipe to make granola bars that I wanted to try, but I guess that one will have to wait until we finish up the left overs.

Quick update on my garden

It's been a rather mild fall so far, not too many cold nights. Yesterday I picked some radishes for the dinner salad from the garden. They were really good! So happy to be able to continue to pick stuff so late in the fall! Parsley, rosemary, thyme and oregano are still looking good as well! Taste pretty amazing in the soup :)

I'll definitely be planting more stuff as soon as the ground gets soft in the spring!

Katelyn fell out of her crib!

We always knew that Katelyn was part monkey and very strong, but this past week we got a "nice" surprise from Katelyn. She's been a little uneasy about taking naps lately, so we've had to leave her in her crib and let her cry a bit to settle down before falling asleep. Last Thursday she again decided that she wasn't tired enough to nap, so she was furious and screamed histerically. She's very stubborn and once she sets her mind on something that's it.. She threw all of her things out of the crib and then managed to throw herself out of the her crib with a loud thump. She went to her bedroom door and continued pounding her fists until we got there. I happened to work form home that afternoon, so I heard the whole thing first hand.

We knew being how active she is that this day was going to come sooner than it did for Ashley (Ashley stayed put in her crib perfectly happy until she was 3 years old) but we didn't expect it to happen at 16 months!!

Her crib doesn't have a drop down side, and she's not big enough to throw her leg over the side to climb over, so the odds are is that she pulled herself up enough where she could lean over to fall out.. Scary considering that she probably fell on her head or her back, but without any visible signs of hurt.

I Googled what to do and consulted with a few friends that have kids that have done the same at a young age. Katelyn is not even 17 months yet, so I don't feel like she's ready for a "Big Girl" bed, and the responsibility of being able to wonder around her room before sleep and when she wakes up. So the choice was obvious.. we had to get a tent to put over her crib to keep her from climbing out.

I ran out to Babies R Us to get the tent and came back empty handed :( They don't carry them!! Urg.. So what are we to do.. Indira rocked Katelyn to sleep for her nap on her hands, but night time is a whole different ball game. Both Mike and Indira were out of the house, I tried to get Katelyn to sleep in the crib at night, I figured if she's tired enough she won't fuss and just go to sleep. But as soon as she was done with her milk, she was screaming bloody murder and trying to climb out. I didn't want her to fall again, but I wanted to see if she'd try again. So I sat quietly in her room in the rocking chair, just to see what she'd do, and soon enough she wedged her feet in the slots in the side of the crib and almost made herself fall out head first. Realizing that leaving her in the crib is not a save choice. I cleared everything out of her room, moved her crib over and put her crib mattress on the floor where her crib used to be. I attempted for almost an hour to get her to lay down on the mattress to sleep but no luck.

Her normal bedtime is around 7:30. It was after 10pm and she still wasn't sleeping, finally Mike came back, he took her in her room and 5 minutes later emerged with news that Katelyn was on her mattress settled down.. I don't know how he does it, but somehow he's the only one that can reason with Katelyn and convince her to listen when no one else can. She slept on the floor the whole night until 6 am. At which point I suppose she thought it was time to get up. Mike again visited her room for another 5 minutes and convinced her to sleep until 8 am !!! Amazing! Thank God he's got this power over her, or we wouldn't get any sleep.

On Friday, after having processed what has happened, I realized that getting her to sleep on the floor is going to be an ongoing challenge. I got a tip to look for the tent at the Burlington Coat Factory and luckily they had it!! We right away set it up, so that she could nap inside the tent that day. She was a little leary at first, but now she's used to it. We zip her up inside so she stays put. So far it's worth every penny of the $60 that I spent on it. At least we have a piece of mind knowing that she can't fall out and hurt herself and that she's not leaving the room.

Here's what the contraption looks like:

Cake Decorating (Week 3)

I had another cake decorating class last night. I made vanilla cupcakes and decorated them with vanilla buttercream frosting. It's amazing how easy it is to do once you have someone show you how!

Now I just need to make up special occasions to bake and decorate cakes for :) So, if you are reading my Blog and want me to make you something special, by all means I need guinea pigs to practice on :)


Next week we have the last class. I'm going to make a chocolate cake with chocolate puddig filling, and fresh strawberries. I just need to pick a color scheme to decorate the cake.. I'm leaning towards fall colors, red, orange, yellow. We'll see what happens.

Cake Decorating (Week 2)

Last night I had my second cake decorating class. We learned different cake decorating techniques.

I made a four layer white cake with raspberry and chocolate mouse filling, and frosted it with the vanilla buttercream icing. I'm not a huge fan of the way this icing tastes, but it is easy to work with because it doesn't melt at room temperature.

Yesterday was Indira's one year anniversary since she came to US. I dedicated this cake to her :) We had a mini celebration when I got back from class. We had cake and a glass of wine. The cake tasted really good, but I think I'll need more practice decorating.. See for yourself :)



Here's the side view of the cake, after we've eaten some of it :) he he!
I guess we were all too anxious to taste it :)


Next week we are decorating cupcakes, so stay tuned..

Cooking with Mommy

Lately, both Ashley and Katelyn are obsessed with fish crackers. Katelyn begs for them all day long! They eat so many of them that I'm afraid they are going to turn yellow from all of the artificial food coloring that's in those crackers.

I typically wouldn't give them something like this, but it's so convenient and especially when I need them to be quiet for a few minutes!

I found a recipe online to make homemade cheese crackers, so this Sunday we made our own home made cheese crackers, using the cookie press to press them into different shapes. The end result looked amazing, however they didn't like the taste :( Daddy loved them! (I put paprika and worcershire sauce in the dough) perhaps I have to tweek the recipe to make it more kid friendly.

Here are a few pictures of us making them:

Playing in the Leaves

Here are some pictures from Sunday.

Another Awesome Weekend!

We had an amazingly productive weekend!

Get ready for a long post..

We had a lot to get done around the house, clean up the garage, rake leaves, fix a sprayer in the kitchen sink, winterize my garden, etc. The most important task was to clean up the garage so that we can park both of our cars inside. Last week we had a night of frost, it wasn't fun for Mommy to sit in a freezing cold car in the morning and wait for the windshield to defrost before heading to work. Luckily for us, on Saturday, the kids took a long nap, so we had plenty of time to work on it. We threw out a bunch of junk and had to move a few items into the basement, until we get more time to go through it. A lot of the items are bulky and need to be either sold or donated. It'll take time, but the hardest part is done! I'm very happy to report that we accomplished our mission and both of the cars can now fit in the garage! Yay! :)

We also managed to fix the sink and take care of couple other things on Saturday, including going over to our neighbor's twice to play with kittens. We were cat sitting for the last week, and Saturday was our last day to spend with them. Ashley was a great helper! (Too bad I didn't take any pictures; they are the cutest, cuddliest and very playful cats.)

Sunday was another very productive day, thank god for the extra hour, because we really needed it. The kids were up early, so we managed to eat and get outside by 9:30! It may not seem like anything to most, but Ashley and Katelyn don't start eating breakfast before 9, 9:30, so for us it's an accomplishment in itself! We started the day by raking leaves in the back, and made a big pile right under the slide. The weather was perfect! No wind, and sunny! The kids had a blast they'd slide down right into the leave pile! And Katelyn, my fearless monkey, decided that she didn't need any help to climb the big ladder to get to the top of the slide. She did it all on her own for the first time! Here's a video of them playing in the leaves:



The day was going to perfect, kids were happy playing outside so I decided to seize the moment and clean up my garden for the winter, something that was on my list to do before the winter sets in. I pulled out all of the dead plants and raked everything clean. Then I realized it was still early and I had time to move our blueberry bushes. They've been living inside my garden since the beginning, but I haven't gotten enough blueberries from them because the birds eat them before I can get to them, so I can no longer justify having them inside the garden fence. While the kids napped (or more like Ashley napped and Katelyn entertained herself in her crib) Mike helped me to dig them up and transplant them along the side of my garden outside of the fence. They look good in their new home, and now I have a lot more space in my garden to work with! A win-win situation! I'm planning to install couple raised beds in the spring where blueberries used to be and move my strawberry plants there. It's a constant battle with critters in our back yard. The moles are living inside my existing strawberry bed, and I don't know how to get rid of them. I'm hoping that by moving them to the raised bed I'll get rid of them.

We had a great gardening season this year, the best one since I started my garden. We were picking tomatoes and peppers in October. And I still have radishes, lettuce, and herbs growing that we are picking right now. My raspberries are doing fantastic as well. Katelyn loves to munch on them in the garden. There are still a few more berries on the bushes, but a lot of them are now mushy because of the frost.

I've planted garlic for next year, and I have already designed my garden layout for next year! I hope to get a green house some day so that we can grow even more stuff. I'd like to try growing a couple of new plants next year, like asparagus and potatoes! Stay tuned.. I may have to start a separate blog to record my Gardening adventures. :)

Cooking relieves stress

I've been cooking a lot this fall.. Somehow it's very calming for me just like gardening. And good thing I have a lot of people that I can feed :)

Ashley has been really a good eater lately, and I feel it shows. It's as if she's grown a lot taller over the last couple of months. She eats great during the day, and has a big snack before bed. Sometimes, it's two bananas or couple of slices of cinnamon raisin toast with butter. I can't complain, she may wine about the food, but at the end of the day she'll eat almost everything that I prepare (even meat!) as long as it's not spicy.

Katelyn was always been a good eater, but now she's turning into a junkie. She begs for sweets and fruits, especially grapes. If she doesn't like something, she just spits it out and throws it on the floor. She still prefers to feed herself which can be a challenge. We can't really feed her any of the soups that I make. It's way too messy.

One of our favorites this fall is home made minestrone soup. I've been making my own vegetable broth and making the soup from all of the local produce and herbs from my garden. It tastes so good, and it's so ridiculously healthy that I'm surprised that everyone loves it as must as they do, even Mike!

Another favorite has been my chocolate chip pumpkin muffins that I make out of fresh roasted sugar pumpkins. They are another treat that's so tasty yet not so bad for you.

And this is the first year that we are roasting pumpkin seeds, I don't know why I was throwing them out last year, they are so good!!

I also signed up for a Cake Decorating Class. Yesterday was my first class. We got to decorate sugar cookies with some icing. Next week we are doing a cake. So far it's fun. I hope to pick up some new skills so that we can make our own beautiful cakes :)

Here's a picture of the cookies that I decorated:


I may start a separate Cooking Blog to talk more about the food and cooking. I'm really enjoying learning more about this.

Indira - The Bat Girl

Indira went to a Halloween Party on Saturday night at Jenk's and she dressed up as a Bat girl. She's like a real super hero! Awesome au pair by day and Bat girl by night :)

Thank God for our super hero or Mommy and Daddy would be in trouble...

Trick or Treat

Poor Katelyn got a really high fever on Wednesday, she took a four hour nap in the afternoon and woke up with a relatively high fever. At night it spiked to 104.2F. It was very scary, the temperature rose so fast that I was afraid it would keep going up. We called our doctor because I thought she may want us to go to the hospital, but luckily it didn't come to that. We managed to get it down to 101.5 with Tylenol and sponge baths. After three days of high fever and not eating, Katelyn got a rash. It turned out to be the Roseola virus. (Ashley had it when she was 8 months old) It's common virus for one year olds to get, so once we identified what it was, it was a relieve that it's nothing else and Ashley didn't get sick because she's already immune to it. But my poor monkey has been weak and tired and not in any mood to participate in anything this week. She just wanted to be held and was up at night crying :(

Since Katelyn still can't choose for herself, Daddy chose for her to be a Pumpkin this year. We got her a super warm outfit in case it was going to be cold. And it was super soft, just like her blanket that she loves!

Ashley on the other hand was looking forward to Halloween. Mike and I took her to the store and she picked out her own costume. Ashley decided that she wanted to be princess Belle for Halloween, and coincidently, she got invited to Ellie's 3rd birthday princess party. Here's a picture of Ellie and Ashley at the birthday party. She really had fun there!


Ashley also got to wear her costume to preschool last Thursday. The class got to go trick or treating to all the classrooms. She came home with a lot of candy! She really loves her preschool, even on weekends she keeps asking me when she's going to preschool next.


On Halloween day, the weather was on the colder side and again quite windy, but no rain. While we waited for kids to wake up from their naps to go trick or treating, Uncle Dan helped us carve our pumpkin, and by help I mean he did the whole thing, we jsut picked out the design. He did a great job, as if he carves pumpkins every day :)




We went out for trick or treating, but as expected Katelyn was not in the mood, so I had to carry her up and down the street. She only wanted me to hold her and no one else.


Ashley had fun, she was very polite, and some times a little greedy. She'd get a candy and continue to stand there with her bucket out waiting for more candy. We had to explain to her that we people only give a couple of candies to each child so that everyone gets some. After checking out everyone's decorations, we concluded that we had the nicest carved pumpkin of everyone on the street. So, kudos to Uncle Dan!

After coming back we attempted to get a family picture on our porch. Not an easy task but here it is..


We ended the day by munching on freshly roasted pumpkin seeds (from the pumpkin that we carved) while sipping on beer and wine. For dinner I made a spicy chili with all the fixins. Later Joan and David came over dressed as a Doctor and a Hippie.

Overall, it was a fun day, I just wish Katelyn was feeling better.