500,000 Lights

Did you know there are half a million lights at the temple visitor's center? We enjoyed all of them tonight! And we loved hearing our Grampy perform with the Richmond Mormon Chorale.

The letter D

Danielle gets so excited when she finds the letter D anywhere. "D for Danielle!" Imagine her elation when we bought a box of donuts covered with D's! She was speechless.

Fall Festivities

We had the usual fun trick-or-treating on Halloween. We had a cat, a witch, and a Rapunzel (with hair that didn't stay on for more than two minutes).

Rebekah was our pumpkin artist this year. She was very proud of herself.

This year we tried a new pumpkin patch - Temple Hall Farm out in Leesburg. Our favorite attractions were the cow train, climbing the bales of hay, and the corn box - Very fun! 

Happy Birthday Grampy

Today is a special day for our most favorite Grampy in the whole world - it's his 60th birthday!! We hope you have a wonderful day! We love you so much!

Rainy school days

Rebekah and Samantha are loving their first week of school. They both have great teachers and know several kids in their classes already. (If only we could have a dry day to go play outside.) And Danielle is dying to start her little preschool group next week.

Home updates

A few pictures of the living room updates I did earlier this year:

And a new wreath I made for the front door:

Our door gets very hot - I couldn't find a wreath that would work, so I made a wreath out of paper roses. Should I be embarrassed about how much time I spent on this? In case you're wondering, there are 170 roses, and each one took a few minutes to make, so you can do the math ...

I found the idea on www.madebymarzipan.com - the coolest website that even had a video tutorial!

Summer pics

A few pictures from the summer.

Enjoying $1 night at the baseball stadium (which turned out to be much more than $1 when you add lots of food and treats):

 

A fun day in Washington DC. No matter how many times we visit, there's always something fun to do.

How have we missed the Hirshhorn Museum and sculpture garden all this time?

Thinking of Grandpa and Grandma and their all-time favorite tv show:

Fun with girls

Girls are so much fun (even when they're all crying at the same time over who-knows-what)!

Beach week

We just got back from such a fun week at the Outer Banks with extended family. I don't have pictures on the beach, but here are some other fun things from the week.

Eating ice cream is our family's favorite:

The NC Aquarium was fun (but very small):

It was so nice to have a pool at the beach house:

We did the Nature Conservancy:

Bumper cars and Go-Karts on the last day:

Swim lessons

The girls finished their swim lessons for the summer. Everyone has made great progress this summer!

Even Danielle took lessons this time. She loves to feel included. As she says, "Mommy, I'm big now, right?" Here she is with her class playing, "Weatherman, Weatherman, what's the weather like?" Danielle always answers, "Sunny!"

Birthday girl

It's hard to believe, but Samantha turned 7 this month. She wanted to celebrate her birthday by getting her ears pierced!

Then we took a friend to Build-a-Bear Workshop, and they each got an animal. They loved it! It was a fun Teddy Bear Birthday!

More summer fun

4th of July Pancake breakfast and mini-parade at church:

Samantha learned how to ride without training wheels! Notice how big she is on her cute little bike:

Camping

We had such a fun week camping at Jellystone Park.

Some people were very excited to sleep on the top bunk:

Danielle finally overcame her fears of large costumed characters!

And Luray Caverns was a fun way to end the week: