Thanks for all the great jokes. We ended up just going with the roar as the trick. I think next year Trinity will be ready for telling a joke.

Here's all the jokes sent in: (that I can repeat on this site!)

Where do horses live? In Neigh-borhoods.
My mom wouldn't let me go to the pirate movie because it was rated Arrrrrrr!
What did the left eye say to the right eye? Between you and me something smells!
What has ears but never says a thing? A cornfield.

The girls had a great time getting candy. One thing though, you could get quite a backlog on a house if a bunch of kids end up there at the same time, because they have to tell their jokes to get the candy. But it was fun and Trinity just loved it, although there were a few spooky houses that she didn't like.

Here's a couple snaps of the kids as the lion and leopard.
Trinity is in mid roar in this next one.

This was the full moon rising in the back yard last week.

This is a sunrise last week.

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at at 9:44 PM 0 comments    

After waiting all day, I can now upload photos again. Here are an assortment:

This is Angelina sporting a cute dress that our friend Amelia gave us in Phoenix before we moved. I had to take a picture so she could see how cute she looks in it. :)
Here Trinity is holding her bug catcher filled with ladybugs. We had a "swarm" of them around our house for a couple of days. I was reading up that they do that in search of a place to bed down for the winter. They will seek out a house or barn. I guess they either found their way into our walls or moved on because they are gone now. Trinity was in hog heaven catching them. She had over 20 in the jar at one counting.

I didn't think this picture was this dark - maybe it is my screen. If you can see this one, it's Angelina being very excited over finding an acorn.

This was actually a lot prettier than it came out in the picture. I guess I need to learn something about adjusting the camera manually so I get a truer photo to what I see. The sky had been gray all day and the sun broke out as it was setting. From my vantage point, there were really dark gray clouds in the sky behind the leaves, and the sun was shining on the leaves just lighting them up beautifully. It's still a nice picture, but not quite as dramatic as in person.

After taking the picture of the trees, I headed over to the other side of the house and caught these two in action.

Then we were off to the burn barrel to make a fire and roast marshmallows. I posted the close up of Miss Angelina with marshmallow mess all over her earlier. This was the roast that was responsible for that! Trinity loves roasting marshmallows. She and David went down and had some Daddy-daughter time roasting marshmallows this evening while I put Angelina to bed. What a special treat. She got to use a flashlight and roast marshmallows all in one event - it doesn't get much better than that for a two year old!

And finally, here is the video of the kids playing in the leaves.

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on Friday, October 26, 2007 at at 7:24 PM 0 comments    

First, here's the only picture I got uploaded before the blogger picture uploader went on a temporary outage. This is Angelina enjoying making a sticky mess of herself eating a roasted marshmallow.

We are getting ready for Beggar's Night here in Carlisle. Beggar's Night got started in the Des Moines area back in the 1930's. They found that there was so much vandalism associated with Halloween that they wanted to try an alternative holiday. So they instituted Beggar's Night which is celebrated on October 30'th. Kids get to dress up in costume and go house to house, but they say "Tricks for eats." Then they are supposed to do a "trick" to get the candy, such as sing a song, tell a joke, do a dance, etc. Mostly it has become standard practice to tell a joke to earn the candy. I can hardly wait to hear the jokes! Meanwhile I am trying to figure out if I can find a simple enough joke that Trinity can learn. I am open to suggestions! She is going as a lion, thanks to a hand me down costume from cousin Jiah, so a lion joke would be great. Her trick may just be to roar like a lion - that I know she can do! :)

Oh, by the way, they did find they had a huge reduction in vandalism on the traditional Halloween night...interesting solution, huh?

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on at at 12:18 PM 0 comments    

all is officially here now. We had a beautiful drive through town today. The trees are getting quite lovely. It's not the most spectacular fall I've ever seen, but even a not so good fall is still beautiful to see. :) What I am enjoying the most is how the scenic views are changing along our drive home and from our house. There is a lake along the east side of our road on the way home that we couldn't even see until the leaves started falling. Below is a picture of another sight we had on our drive home today - a bald eagle perched atop one of our neighbors trees. Amazing to see. It was sooo big. Trinity asked to hold it...I laughed and told her it looked like it would probably be almost as big as her!



The big news around our house is that Trinity has been using the potty since last Friday. She has had a couple accidents, but for the most part, has taken right to the new routine. We even ventured out on a shopping trip today and she was able to let me know when she needed to go to the bathroom at the store. Hooray!

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on Saturday, October 20, 2007 at at 6:52 PM 0 comments    

Here are some random life photos and then a video! I wasn't sure how long it would take, so I just started the upload then went to bed. :) That way it didn't matter if it took forever on dial up. If I get positive feedback on the video, then I'll try to do more of them in the future.

Here is Trinity on the swingset. I finally got the side yard fenced in so I moved the swingset up where it will be in the shade for playing in the summer. Also I can now look out my kitchen window while at the sink and see both the trampoline and the swingset - perfect!
Here are the kids playing on the trampoline with daddy the other day. I caught Trinity in mid bounce!

Yesterday I broke out all the winter stuff to have it by the back door for bundling up the kiddos. Trinity enjoyed putting on the hat and mittens that Grandma Mary knitted for her.

Here is Angelina Trampolina having a good time. :)

And here's the video. Just a little bit of trampoline play. I hope you enjoy it. :)

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at at 9:53 PM 0 comments    

I can't get enough of this little angel's smile! (and for those who are wondering, no, David is not going gray - he was just home from work and hadn't showered off the paint yet!)
Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on Monday, October 8, 2007 at at 9:23 PM 0 comments    

Just a quick note. I was out working on the yard this morning while the girls were playing. Trinity called to me, "Look, Mom, we're in the car together!" Of course I had to get a picture. :)

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on Saturday, October 6, 2007 at at 10:07 PM 0 comments    

Time for another update. Last week I took Angelina in to see our new family doctor. Her official stats for her one year check up are 20 pounds 9 ounces and 31 inches tall. The doctor said that puts her in the 90th percentile for height and 50th percentile for weight. To compare, Trinity was 19 pounds at 28 1/2 inches tall. We keep telling Trinity she needs to be nice to Angelina because she's growing bigger all the time!

I also found out that they have a shot clinic the last Wednesday of the month for Warren county, so the girls are all caught up on their vaccinations. We were a little behind so poor Angelina had to get 4 shots - yikes! But after vaccines, and doctors visits, and a 30k mile check up on the minivan, we were off to Chicago for the weekend. Actually, just outside of Chicago in Naperville. We visited one of my girlfriends, Chris, from the singles group at Calvary who has also gotten married and moved away from Phoenix. It was so good to see an old friend again and we had a really nice time visiting with her and her husband Kyle. Trinity still talks about the cat Lucy and wants to go back and visit the cat house. (her words!)

Saturday, David and I took the kids into Chicago and visited the Navy Pier. We rode the carousel and visited the Chicago Children's museum. Wow - was that a great children's museum - made me want to be a kid again! On our way out of town we happened upon a pizza place (imagine that!) and had some of the famous Chicago stuffed pizza for dinner from Giardano's. Sunday we went to church with Chris and Kyle. Before the service, one of the church staff came up to us while we were waiting and introduced himself and talked with us a little. I remember thinking, hey, he has the same name as that famous Christian guy. Turns out, he was that famous Christian guy - Josh McDowell - who was the guest speaker that day. What a great weekend to be there. He gave a fantastic talk. Very eye opening and I would think, almost burdensome to men. He was talking about how all the studies are showing how critical the father is in his children's life.

Anyway, we saw in the Sunday paper that the Cubs are in the playoffs, thus the title for this post. A good weekend for everybody. :) Sunday afternoon we walked along the river walk into Naperville and to a park to let the kids play. Trinity of course met and pet every dog that was walking the other way.

Back home on Monday, I received the reward every mom loves to receive from her child. We were playing on the trampoline when Trinity spontaneously gave me a hug and said, "I love you mom. You're my best friend."
It's all worth it right there folks. :)

In other news, I pick up my training materials tomorrow for my new job - school bus driver.
The opening is for a 1/2 hour route. So I will work from 7:15 - 8:15 in the morning and 2:00 - 3:00 in the afternoon. I can take the girls with me on the bus and Trinity is already excited about getting to ride a real school bus. For my 2 hours a day I'll get paid $616 a month. (it may be a little less since I didn't start at the beginning of the school year) It's a set amount that you can get prorated out over 12 months if you want, so you always have the income coming in. That means that I will get paid even when there are holidays. There is also the opportunity to volunteer for field trips and eventually a longer route if I was interested. I'm thinking that's a nice little supplemental income for a couple hours a day when school is in session. Step one is to get my class B, CDL license. I pick up the study book for that tomorrow.

David is still enjoying his job. There is the potential that the guy running the painting operations may be leaving and David might have the opportunity to take over. We are waiting and praying to see if that is what God has for David or if he should seek a job with the John Deere plant.

We had a date night at home the other night. We put the kids in bed then sat in the back yard out by burn barrel. David got a nice fire going and we roasted marshmallows and star gazed together. We have a beautiful view of the milky way at our house. We could hear cows mooing from a pasture somewhere over the hill behind the fields. I told David, "Gee, I was wrong. Here I've been telling everyone how quiet it is out here!" Yes, that was rife with sarcasm. Then I called out, "Hey, neighbors, can you turn down your cows? We've got kids trying to sleep over here!" ha-ha! We do not for one second regret moving here. We always feel so good coming home. As much fun as it is to visit places, when we cross back into Iowa, we're happy.

And now for the pictures:
Here I am on the carousel with the girls. You can hardly see Trinity because some lady got in the way- oh, wait - that lady is me! (ha) Anyway, all three of us were waving to daddy as we went by. Angelina has just started doing the wave. (and I call it that b/c it's that royalty wave as though her throngs of admirers were out there amongst the peasants)

The Chicago Children's Museum had a special Curious George exhibit - much to the delight of Trinity. She just loves watching Curious George. Here is Angelina playing doorman at Curious George's apartment building while Trinity checks out the mail boxes.

Girl meets monkey. BFF.

Angelina the firefighter. We almost had her trusted dog Trinity, but alas, getting two kids in place at the same time was not to be that day!

Here Trinity was being a cross between a bee and a butterfly. Made me think of a couple I know - Madam Jeanette Butterfly and Mr. Mark Bee :) She even had purple wings! (and you would have to be a part of my family to understand that, so if you don't get it, it's not b/c you are missing something!)

Big George came out to greet the kidlings in the afternoon, and after initially crying when seeing him and refusing to go near, Trinity not only got a handshake and a hug, but wanted to go back for more. :)

Here's mommy showing Trinity how to use the tools of the trade to uncover dinosaur bones at an archaeological dig.

Trinity and Angelina fishing.

Trinity still fishing. I didn't think we were going to get her out of that place. The only way I could get her to stop fishing with the nets was to show her the fishing with the poles. She wasn't interested in anything else in that exhibit and she worked determinedly at catching fish. Mind boggling. Maybe she will enjoy the real thing just as much - if so, she will make her daddy very happy!

That's all folks!

Grace and peace be with you!

Posted in: on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 at at 10:17 PM 0 comments