Sneak peek

We took our annual family picture on Thanksgiving day, which you'll get to see later.  In the meantime here's some pictures that were taken along the way...

Great Wolf Lodge

This past weekend our family took a short vacation to Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, KS.

The Lodge has an indoor water park, so we spent a couple days in our swim suits playing, sliding, and splashing.

Everyone had a wonderful time playing and tubing in the water.

And when we were water logged we enjoyed exploring the hotel, 

goofing around in our room,

and listening to story time each night, complete with visits from Wiley, Violet, and the other Great Wolf characters.

Looking forward to returning again in a few years!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year Penny's brother and sister-in-law, David and Christine, came to join us for Thanksgiving.  They are in the States for a few years while he studies at Trinity seminary in Pennsylvania, and we were so glad they made the drive to stay with us for the weekend.

The day after Thanksgiving we went to the Busch Brewery, a fun and unique St. Louis activity.

The kids enjoyed the tour too, especially seeing the Clydesdales and getting free pretzels and lemonade at the end!

After the tour I headed out to take my friend, Jen, and her kids to the airport.  They are moving to Florida, so this was the last time I'll see her for several years, probably.

Our paths have overlapped several times since we met in college many years ago.  Looking forward already to taking a beach vacation to their new home eventually!

Thanksgiving Chapel

Every year the girls' school has a Thanksgiving Chapel.  And each year the kindergarten and first graders put on a Thanksgiving play, starring the pilgrims and the indians.

Last year Laine was a pilgrim, but this year she got to be an indian.

She did a great job with her speaking part, and they sounded great singing, "Toom, tum, tum, tum..." and pounding their drums.

So proud of my little performer.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Cole in action

Here's a few shots of Cole, doing his thing...

Helping carry the backpack like a big boy.

Watching the tree trimming truck outside his window.

Chillin' on the couch with his Winnie-the-Pooh hat.

Such cuteness!

Happy Halloween!

Laine wanted to be an owl for Halloween.  Not sure where she got the idea, but I was fine with it, as long as she helped make her costume.

So she and Penny found a mask cut-out online and glued it to cardboard and taped it to some old glasses with the lenses removed.  Then, entirely on her own, she created an owl trick-or-treating bag, using real bird feathers that we had collected earlier this year.  I love her creativity!

Here's everyone all dressed up for the big night - owl, monkey, fire fighter.

We joined the Reels and went in their neighborhood, which is much more trick-or-treater friendly than ours :-)

Cole and Caroline - two little monkeys!

Pumpkin Carving

A busy couple weeks for our family with birthdays and Halloween back to back to back - here's the pumpkin carving process...

Scooping out the guts (look at Mead's face!)

Starting to carve

The finished product: big hungry pumpkin eating tiny little pumpkin!

Nice work, Penny.