October 31 Kaity's Halloween Parade

Monday:  Kaity invited me to come to her school Halloween costume parade at 2pm today--she asked me on Saturday and I told her I would come! I wish I could have been TWO places at one time, though, because Kelly asked if I could come to Aidan's costume parade at his school today at 2pm as well. However, Aidan's school is on the opposite side of the city and there was no way I could be in two places at one time and I had already promised Kaity.

Kaity's parade took place outside on a walkway that circled the playground. I climbed a rather awkward playground apparatus to get a better angle ... but it was uncomfortable up there--I wanted to swing my legs over so that I could actually sit on the top but the possibility of mishap (i.e. me falling) was at a rather high percentage; so I decided to just stay standing precariously at the top. This "old guy" (ha! he is probably younger than I am!) dressed up like MARIO cracked me up. He fit the suit so perfectly.

Here are some of the people standing around the sidewalk area waiting to see their kiddo ...

Here is Kenzie (Kaity's best friend) ... she looked at me and mouthed: "How did you get up there?!?" and I just laughed and kept shooting pictures.

Another good shot of MARIO ... and Kenzie!

I thought the kid in the green monster costume was the best ...

Here's MARIO looking like he would like to eat a BIG MAC! 

AND ... here comes KAITY!

I totally forget what character she is dressed up to be--I'll have to ask her again. I asked her last week and when she told me, I had no clue WHO that character was! Kaity looked at me like I was the most clueless person she had ever met. So I hesitate to ask once more ...

On either side of Kaity are two of her classmates: Lyric (on the left) and Annaliese (on the right). The short fellow walking behind is COLE (who I hear a LOT about from Kaity).

I love you Kaity-Girl!

Here is everyone cracking up together ... I really like this picture!

More ... Cole's face!

I think Kaity will enjoy these pictures.

The parade only took about 20 minutes. I would like to have gone inside with her class, but I didn't know about this entire thing until Saturday and it turns out that adults who wanted to visit the class had to fill out special forms beforehand. Pooh.
 

October 30 A very late birthday present

Sunday:  Well! After working for probably 100 hours (no exaggeration), I was finally able to FINISH the photo book I've been working on for Kelly's birthday (which was TWO months ago). It was quite a project, and I loved every minute working on it.

I have thousands and thousands of pictures of Dylan, Kelly and the kiddos--how would I organize them and narrow them down to ONE book? I began working on this in early September (I was already late!) and just decided I would go back all the way to 2010 (even a few months prior to that) to when Dylan and Kelly were dating, got engaged, and got married. From there, I did Brendan's birth, baptism and just brief glimpses into his first 5 years without siblings. And then Aidan was born and in quick succession, Erin and Cal! 

So then the book became more challenging because .... I have SO MANY PICTURES! I went through a company called Snapfish and I opted to do the 8 x 11 book, hard cover with lay-flat pages, matte finish. It was more expensive, but I really like the look of the finished product. I finally got the book ordered a week ago Friday and received it in the mail yesterday! I was very pleased with the speed of process and the quality of the book. I was so excited to give it to Kelly. I couldn't wait until Tuesday (when I normally see her), so I just wrapped the book up and took it over this afternoon!

I'm just going to post a few sample pages (there are 82 pages!)

Here is the cover:

It has a very "scrapbook" look and feel to it, and I like it! When I say that I have THOUSANDS of pictures, I am telling you the truth! I tried to limit Kelly's book to MOSTLY events that happened at their house, their church, or in their presence at my house or playground, etc. I didn't totally succeed because I have so many cute pictures of the kiddos here at my house from their Tuesday visits--so I feel it turned out about 80/20, which is okay.

I love the song, "The Blessing" and pray these lyrics lots and lots for all of my family. God is good and gracious. How wonderful that He cares about our families.

October 29 Pumpkin carving

Saturday:  It was Emma's idea to carve pumpkins this afternoon--and I am SO glad she put this forward. After all, this is the last Saturday before Halloween. We simply walked "next door" to the little greenhouse over on Cannonsburg and the girls picked our some really BIG pumpkins (funded by Emma).

This greenhouse is usually crammed with beautiful flower arrangements--baskets everywhere--but at the end of October--there really were not many flowers inside here. But LOOK! I have never seen this type of blossom before. The lady at the greenhouse told me it is a BOUGAINVILLEA. It is gorgeous!

I took many pictures of the girls and their pumpkins--I love this one of Kaity!

Emma put Belle in her cat-pack for the walk, so she got to enjoy our time too.

Here they are walking along Cannonsburg ... these are BIG pumpkins!

Thankfully, we saved our pumpkin carving equipment from last year--so they were all set to go!

First, they had to GUT their pumpkins. Kaity found it pretty slimy.

Emma carved "Oogie-Boogie" and Kaity carved "Zero", both from "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

We found pictures on-line and then I was able to print the pictures off so that they could tape them to their pumpkins and then do the carvings.

I basically just stayed out of their way. I did heat up some "frozen" spaghetti for them to eat when they took a much-needed break from their carving.

Look how COOL their pumpkins turned out!

I was just happy to be here to watch the process. I love these two granddaughters so much. Thank you for them, Lord.