Christopher is THIRTEEN!

Four-year-old fun ...

The JOY of Emma

Another Saturday night sleepover with Ems. The four kiddos had spent Saturday evening here at the Beach House, and then Ems spent the night. She and I stopped at Best Buy and picked up a couple of movies to watch in the next few weeks. We watched "Father of the Bride" and laughed and laughed and laughed ...

 After church Sunday morning, Emma helped me assemble and light my Christmas tree (no pictures). We drank hot chocolate, listened to beautiful Christmas songs, and got the job done!

And we still had enough time for a short walk at Pickerel Lake!

Pictures from 11/19/16, Saturday evening

Brendan! Such sweetness!

Since today is November 30 and I haven't posted in several weeks, I'm going to try to run a few memorable pictures/occasions this evening and narrate them later (hopefully).

Kaity time ...

It's difficult to choose a favorite day for me around here. My life is happier than it has ever been these few years living in this little space I call home. I love it here ... and I love playing with my little children when they come over. Mondays are Kaity days. Today we got all geared up to go on a bug search. Kaity strapped on her "goggles" (this is what she calls the binoculars), her microscope, and her bug cage. She was ready!

 It has been a little bit chilly for bugs these days ... after all -- it IS November! So far, no snow. We have truly had a gorgeous and rather warmer than usual Autumn. We caught TWO stink bugs, put them in our bug "cage" and explored around outside. We were actually IN and OUT a few times during our afternoon.

 We spent much of our time with our little animal friends. Kaity shared her brand new hooded vest with Mama bear. Doesn't she look so cute? We also read: "Turk and Runt" loud enough so that all of our animals could enjoy it along with us.

 Kaity played quite a lot with all of our little stuffed animals: Ollie, Fernando, Mikey, Beatrice, Clara, Alayna, Dee-Dee AND she got our horses out to play too: Luna, Dusty, and Nico!

 We played for quite a long time in a huge pile of leaves out back. Kaity is a master of chaos. No matter what ... you can have every leave raked in a beautiful pile and she can destroy it in a matter of seconds (with a huge smile on that cute little face too!).

I love you, dear Kaity. You are precious.