HALLOWEEN!!

What a crazy, weird, random day. Today is Halloween and I feel as if instead of savoring it we kind of just rushed through it. Always so busy. All of this anticipation leading up to it (for the girls) and now it's over! We went to Camille's preschool today for their Harvest Festival which was kind of a disappointment (!). I guess I probably am just expecting too much - it is, after all, only a preschool! My only experiences thus far have been in a more organized, bigger public school setting. Anyhow, the girls had fun and got to run around for a little while. Claudia and George came over after nap-time to see our house and hang with the girls. They brought along some little outfits for them as gifts, which was sweet. After they left, Steve and Jennifer came over for dinner along with Kimberly, Allison, Eddie and Allison's mom. Dinner, then trick-or-treating with all the kiddos. The neighborhood was less than "poppin'", but I suppose times are just changing. I seems like when I was a kid there were so many other kids out! Today was just a lazy Halloween, I guess, thrown into the chaos of the start of the holiday season just a week after these crazy fires happened here. Just kind of a strange day. Well, the kids looked CUTE and had a great time, were super excited for the CANDY and didn't even throw a tantrum when we told them they could pick out 4 pieces and we would get rid of the rest :) A little bribery helps, I suppose - tomorrow we will go shopping for a toy in place of the candy that they traded us. Here are more photos!

a funny story

So the other day, Estelle comes running into the room SCREAMING and crying.

"What's wrong Estelle?" asks I

"Camille hit me with a blanky" she sniffles.

So off we go to the bedroom.

"Camille!" I yell. "Why did you hit your sister?"

Through the tears of her own (everything is the end of Camille's world) she cries "Sissy threw my baby!". Any of you who know Camille know that she was wailing as if she almost lost an arm.

So, as seriously as possible I make them kiss and make up. Estelle is over it, but Camille is dying. She is crying so hard she can't even give Estelle a hug. Estelle has to wrap her arms around her and hold her like a little mama. It's pretty cute. Camille is still hyperventelating when I ask:

"Camille, do you want sissy to go bybye? Should I take her away?" "Do you want to play by yourself?"

And says a sniffling Camille, in a pathetic whimper "no."

"Are you sure? you want sissy here? You love her?"

"yes."

And so affirms my belief that all through the fighting and yelling and screaming, they really can't live without each other.

Disneyland

I know I have been horrible about this. I really need to set it as a priority. Perhaps today will be the day that my world changes and I become an avid blogger :). I just wanted to post some photos of our Disneyland trip this year. This was the first year that Jeremy's parents took us instead of mine. It was very cool, it was also the first year that both of the kids were so excited and into it! Camille was elated to meet Tigger and Pooh, as you can see. They both really loved the rides as well, though some of the proved too scary for their two and three year old brains to wrap around. They officially woke up at 6:30, took about a 20 minute nap and didn't get to bed until around 10:30 and they were fine! My kids surprise me sometimes - they can't sit for 10 minutes at dinner with us without climbing over the tables and chairs and destroying everything in their paths, but when I expect them to be at their worst and totally melt they completely pull through as perfect as angels. Kids. What gives?

Gosh, it's been so long...

I guess buying the house has just killed us, time wise. I have picked up an extra day of watching Rylie, so Tuesday through Thursday is shot and then there's the weekend. There are so many memories to fill in the lapse from the last entry until now, and I guess I really can't. I missed halloween, thanksgiving, christmas, camille's birthday, valentines day, st. patricks day and all the little events in between. It would be futile, I suppose, to try and make it up. Maybe I'll post some pictures from the gap during random times throughout the next few months. For now, I'll post a few more recent. The bathtub seen was just fun times taking a bath last week while Rylie was here. The other is me and my girlies (and new baby boy) playing on the swingset in the backyard. It was this last Sunday, the 6th of May and it was right after the baby-celebration that we threw for Mike and Patti.

During The Gap I was also working more teaching cooking classes for an after school program. That's on a hiatus right now, but I am filling my time with cake decorating classes that I have been taking for almost two months now. Our house got broken into recently and we are finally kind of getting back on track from that (happened on Easter).

So for now I will leave you with nothing profound. A few pictures to look at and hopes of returning much sooner than in the past. Sorry for being so neglectful!