Family photo shoot

Here we are in our backyard! We had a friend come over and take these I think they turned out nice.

November 2014

We had a mild November this year. It was a fun month. We spent more time outside raking and playing in the leaves. We spent time watching football and hanging out all together and with family. Catherine was sick twice in November with colds and since she has asthma it makes it much harder for her. But we are hoping to stay healthy now. Catherine has started talking a lot more. Most of the words are only understood by family. There is a lot of mimicking sounds too. She loves to run away from us and try to hide from us behind her hands. It is so cute. One fun thing from the past is Sock Monsters. Will started this when Elsie was little and is still doing it. This time it was with Will's new "girly" (determined to be girly by Elsie) socks. You put the socks on the girls hands and arms and then call them a sock monster! Catherine got out Elsie's ear muffs and tried them on by herself and then there are the pictures of her and the blocks. She is so cute and has so much personality. Elsie is beautiful and continues to do good in school too. Both girls are happy and that is more then we can ask for. 

Halloween 2014

Halloween 2014 was great! As you can see Elsie was Elsa the snow queen from the movie Frozen. She was so excited to go as Elsa. The only problem was when I finally got around to looking for a costume it was a bit late, since everyone wanted to be Elsa this year! They were all sold out in her size. We had already been toying with the idea that Will's, amazing cousin, who went to school for costume design could make her the costume and so that is just what we did. I wish I had taken a picture of the night she came to show us the fabric samples. She brought lots of blue, green, teal, and aqua fabric of all different kinds for Elsie to pick from. Elsie got to pick the exact fabrics and so help design what it would look like. It was a really fun experience and I would love to do it again if we can. As you can see it turned out fabulous. In the second picture you can see Will's cousin Lyndi the sewing creator extraordinaire. Catherine was a giraffe just like Elsie was for her second Halloween simple but soooooo cute. 

It was a busy day but good. We started out by going to Elsie's school to see her costume parade. Then one of Adah's friends took Catherine so she could help run Elsie's class party. After that we relaxed a bit and Catherine had a nap. When we got Elsie home from school it was crazy again. We needed to carve the pumpkins and get ready to trick or treat. As it turned out we took a long to time to carve the pumpkins (which had not been done before hand because of Will not being available and us being busy on the weekends) so we started out late on our trick or treating. It was warm out and a fun night though. After trick or treating we went to our friend's house in our neighborhood for a little party she was having. It was a fun but long night.

October 2014

Catherine is growing and changing so much! She has mastered putting the orange circle into the shape box and can even do a few other shapes with a little help. She is saying more and more animal sounds and words and can do a little sign language too. She is also working on eating yogurt with a spoon and loves it!

Elsie is growing too and doing great in school. She loved playing in the leaves this fall and it was fun to go to the local shopping village and see all the decorations they put up for Halloween. I don't think we did any thing major in October but since I take so long to blog about it you never know. 

September 2014

September was a good month too. Catherine continued to practice walking and could finally go all the way down the hall if prompted by mid September. She did not pick walking over crawling until the end of the month though. Will and the girls went swimming for the last time on Labor Day and it was cold. We have been harvesting more tomatoes and have gotten lots of yellow pear tomatoes and big red ones too. We went to the State fair where Elsie had a Monarch Butterfly land on her when they released them! She also got the ride on a pony with her aunt and see lots of other animals.  

There was more baking and jam making after Catherine and I went raspberry picking! Elsie had her Fun Run and did great and even raised some money for the PTA at her school. Miss Catherine loves to read books! Will found her in the chair one day where she had climbed with a book by herself. I often find her in her room by the bookshelf where she loves to pull all the books down to read. Catherine also started to make some animal sounds in September! She started out with a cow "mmm" and kept on going. 

The End of August 2014

Well most of August was spent on our trip so here are the last of the cool things we did. Mostly we cooked yummy things and grew a few things. The pictures of the sunflower plants at the bottom are from the end of July so they got much much bigger (you can see one of them in the photo to the right of Elsie holding her tomato). The top photo is of a plum tart form grandpas plums, then you can see a pretty beet we grew below the tomato picture. Below that are some pickled beets we made and then some roasted beets that we grew in our garden. 

August was a great month. Catherine started to take steps in Vermont, she cut all her one year molars, and she charmed everyone she met while we were traveling. Elsie had lots of fun with cousins in Vermont and Boston, she continues to be a great big sister and then she started school. These girls are so amazing we love them so much!