Cake Walk

The girls' school has a traditional cake decorating contest for the cake walk at the Fall Festival (not Halloween Party, mind you). Here are the girls' entries for this year:

We were surprised that neither won a prize, but that's ok. The fun is in the creating - and eating the leftovers! We didn't win a cake at the cake walk, either, but with all the flu going around, I was a-ok with that!

Museum of Flight

The girls didn't have school one Friday in early October (never did figure out why, exactly, but hey - we'll take it!) and P suddenly felt "sick" so we decided to head to the Museum of Flight to use our pass once more before it expires.


Feeling very presidential, MY First Family descends the steps of Air Force One (used by Ford, Kennedy, Nixon)

I didn't photograph it, but we heard a presentation from a scientist who worked on the water purification system for the Int'l Space Center, and M & I were brave enough to try a "sample" of water that had been through the system. It tasted like...water!

Point Defiance Park

We've been loyal members of the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium for 3 or 4 years now and just recently discovered there are acres and acres and acres more to the park! The zoo sponsored a geocaching contest that we participated in (even though we didn't have any electronic gadgets, we still found the caches!) and were motivated to keep exploring this gorgeous park!

E comes up with some pretty unique places to pose...

Our little mermaids...

While strolling along the waterfront, P's eagle eyes noticed this little seal washed up on shore. He had a hook & line stuck in his mouth but was still alive. We had the zoo's phone # on the brochure for the geocaching contest, so we called them, and they gave us another phone # to call, and about 4 agencies later, we finally found someone to come get him. They said it would take about an hour to get there, so we stayed for a bit, left for awhile, and when we came back, he was gone, so the girls are really hoping he got some help with that hook & is back on his way to his momma.

Pumpkin Patch

The weather surprised us with a string of gorgeous days at the beginning of October, so on one of P's days off, we surprised the girls by picking them up from school at the end of the day and heading to one of the many pumpkin patches in our area. We've tried several over the years, and this one - Scholz Farms - is by far our favorite, and not just b/c it's entirely free (except for buying the pumpkins)! I have pics of the girls in front of the "How Tall This Fall" sign from years past that I'll have to find...they've both grown at least a foot since we started going there!

Princess Power

Just before school started, E needed another colonscopy. Having learned a few things the last time, we were better prepared! This time, E wore her "Princess Power" shirt and dressed up for the occasion. During the prep at home, I encouraged her to cooperate w/the last steps of the prep by saying, "If we don't get this done now, we won't have time to paint your nails or put sparkles on." It worked! She was very very brave through the whole thing and we hope to not have to do another test like this for a very very long time!

First Day of School - 30 Days Late

Sorry, Babe

M: "Want to hear something funny about me? I am realizing that I like things to be either really organized, or really messy. But just cluttered drives me crazy."

Me: "Sorry that you live here, babe."