A pattern emerges

I know I should be cleaning and packing but I just thought of something after I read Allen's previous comment.

Allen says the shirt and the axe. I say, hmmmm, something VERY familiar here.

Pernell Roberts, Sean Connery, Allen Shaw.

Heading in the right direction

Staying the course and right on track for the future! I'll give him another 30 years or so to completely achieve the look.

I love my Allen.

Sean Connery, Pernell Roberts, Allen Shaw.

It's a girl thing.....

Pernell Roberts 1928-2010
A long time favorite.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.....HALLOWEEN!

We had a crazy Halloween this year!
For the first time we told the kids they had to make their costumes out of whatever they could find in the house. I didn't have high hopes for this years fun factor, boy, was I wrong! At our annual church Halloween party Julia won Funniest Costume and Allen brought home the Jar of M and M's after guessing the closest to the actual amount, which was 507. Allen's guess, 472. Jacob's guess,365.

Jora has been talking for months about being Cinderella and that was easy, Jacob pulled together an impressive ninja costume and Julia's award winning costume....well, who can guess who Julia dressed up as?? Julia told us who she wanted to be this year but we thought it would blow over. It didn't. On Halloween, she chose her own costume, every piece of it. I'll be watching the comments for a correct answer! Here we have a picture of Julia and her prized golden pumpkin! She may never let us throw it away, after all, she won it! (Though she did relent and turn it into a Jack-o-lantern.Here is the Sunday morning picture of the kids and their Halloween haul.

Teeth Cleaning

The day after Jacob's birthday found us all in the dentist office for Jacob and Julia's teeth cleaning. It was the first ever time for Julia and, of course, Mom was alot more nervous than Julia was. We have an amazing pediatric dentist who has darling hygienists and when they came to the waiting room Julia held Jacob's hand and walked right back with them. Allen and Jo and I stayed in the waiting room for a bit to let them get settled and then we went back to see how it was going. When Julia was finished she slid off the chair like it was a slide and I asked her how it was and she said, in her slightly annoyed tone...."It was fine! Mom!" Then she wanted to pick out her new toothbrush.
The photo is Julia in the dentist chair, holding the timer for her flouride treatment and wearing the sunglasses all the kids get to wear. For her cleaning she chose Chocolate flavored paste and happily reported NO CAVITIES.
Jacob had bubble gum flavored tooth cleaning and also reported NO CAVITIES! The doctor is amazed at how many permanent teeth Jacob has, something about molars. But they all have great teeth and next summer Joey can get her first tooth cleaning, too.

Jacob hits the double digits.

Jacob had a great birthday this year. Over the last summer he discovered Bakugan and so we had a Bakugan theme birthday. Bakugan are clever little toys that look like large plastic marbles but when they are rolled across their magnetic cards they pop open into fantastical creatures. You can see some close up on the cake. Allen and Julia designed Jacob's cake together this year. The girls were all about "time to eat the cake!" they then proceeded to pick off all the skittles and not really eat much of the actual cake at all. They really enjoyed the skittles though.














Jacob loves his Bakugan strategy game and was very pleased with his Bumblebee Transformer.

Happy Birthday Jake!

Labor Day, a great day off, unless you're a parent?

Alligator wrestling on Labor Day....Nothing like it!

Ahh, turtle love and Emu pecks.

Jacob practicing his cow feeding skills for our upcoming trip to Scotland....in my dreams.

Jora directing Allen's attempt to get her picture with the camel....bossy.

We decided to celebrate our labor day this year with a trip to Living Treasures Animal Park in Donegal, PA about an hour east of Pittsburgh. We haven't been there since Julia was two and Labor Day was a lovely, cool rainy day this year. We all loaded in the car and played "I spy" for an hour then loaded up with our feed bags and out into the park. We saw sleeping wolves, baby bears, crazy prairie dogs, lots of camels, ponies, donkeys, goats by the millions and baby llamas.

Joey was everyone's monkey. Very successfully so!

Since we were only 20 minutes away from Ohiopyle we ran up there and walked by the river for a few minutes. I caved and let the kids take their shoes off and less than two seconds later Julia was wet from her waist down. Not Kidding. Jora was right there with her. So we made our traditional naked ride through the drive thru at Dairy Queen to get our Ice Cream and back home to Pittsburgh.