Concordia Thanksgiving

Today daycare had their annual Thanksgiving Feast! Instead of eating in their individual classrooms, the school (well, almost the entire school - more on that in a minute)gathers in the main room and each class is dressed either as Pilgrims or Indians. They say their prayers, the Indians do their little yells and everyone digs in. We were hoping to stop by and tell the girls "hi", take a few pictures, and then head out to our own lunch. Unfortunately, we learned this year that the older kids don't eat until the younger ones are done so while Nora's class made their appearance at 11:15, it was right at noon when Addie's class finally made their way out. Nora was super excited to see us and while she ate most of the food on her plate, I swear she stood up between each bite to run to her Daddy with the biggest smile and point something in the room out (turkey, pumpkin, the horse on his shirt). When she finished saying whatever she had to say, she'd do a cross between a horse gallop/dance/jump the entire way back to her seat. This was certainly an exciting meal for her. Her hair was briaded so cute and their outfits were really precious. Not sure if we get to keep these shirts or not - Addie's class did when she was little but the shirt wasn't in her cubby at the end of the day so I think we are out of luck. When Addie's class finally made their way out, Addie spotted us right away and we snapped a few pictures before we had to leave. Unlike Nora, Addie didn't cry when we left. She's getting so grown up and even informed us at supper that she is nearly 4 (not happening until May but I guess she'll be 4 before she's anything else).

Trick-Or-Treat!

We had a great time going trick-or-treating with my cousin Matt and his family (Nate was a racecar driver) and some of their friends (Madeline was a princess). Addie led the pack right away and was all about going to the next house to get more candy. At one point in the night, Nora had opened a tootsie roll pop in one hand (which she wasn't letting go of) and her pumpkin basket in the other (which she also had a death grip on) which meant that at a few houses where it was "help yourself" to the candy bowl, she was just out of luck! We had to get Addie under control on her knocking more than a few times though because if the homeowner didn't get to the door quickly enough she started to ring the doorbell while knocking some more. She had such a good time and really listened well while we were walking around the neighborhood - she really didn't want the night to end! Nora had fun but took a little while to warm up to the idea of going to different houses. She was content trying to eat all the candy from the first house or two. By the end of it though she was running around - guess she turned into a wild flower:-) I'll admit, the holiday is a lot more fun when the kids get the point!

Jack-O-Lanterns

The week before Halloween we carved pumpkins with the girls. It was late in the evening when we started but we had to carve them then because Mommy was out of town from Wednesday evening through Friday at a seminar. We all worked on getting the guts out of the pumpkins but didn't do a tremendous job apparently because the things were pretty nasty by Sunday - we lit them a few times before then though and the girls loved them. We let the girls draw on the pumpkins with markers first and then Daddy helped to carve their faces. Addie was very interested and wanted to make sure Daddy did a good job. Nora looked on genuinely concerned almost the entire time - it was precious. Here's a few pics from our night! Halloween pics to come when I get around to downloading them on the computer - not tonight:-)