A Busy Month

Happy Halloween! I just realized how long it's been since my last post - I guess we've been busier than I thought! Here are some highlights from October:

We went apple picking at the beginning of October. Jorie had a lot of fun picking apples and even more fun eating them! We picked far more apples than we needed and never came close to eating all of them. Terra really enjoyed eating the apples too, though she didn't do much picking.

Here's a picture of Terra playing Mimi's new piano. Terra had so much fun playing and singing, we might have another performer in the family! Mid-October was incredibly eventful for us. Perhaps the most memorable event of the month was when Jorie decided it would be fun to see what happened when she dialed 911, so she gave it a try one morning as I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes. I found the phone on the playroom floor and picked it up to hear, "This is the police department, we've been listening to an open 911 call for nearly 10 minutes". I was mortified! I very apologetically explained to the operator that my daughter must have called by accident. Minutes later an officer pulled into the driveway. I apologized once again and sat down for a long talk with Jorie about appropriate reasons for calling the police.


We took a weekend trip to the beach and also went to a baptism. This was Terra's first time at the ocean and she wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Jorie had a fantastic time splashing in the ice cold water, her jeans and winter coat didn't even slow her down!



The girls had a wonderful time in the pool at the hotel. The beach was a bit cold for Terra, but the indoor pool was just right. She loved jumping in! Jorie had fun jumping in too, thank goodness Jeff was with us! How do moms handle two kids in a pool with no help?!

Here's Jorie with her jack o' lantern. She designed the face herself and enjoyed watching me scoop out the insides and carve the pumpkin, though she was not about to touch the pumpkin herself! Perhaps she'll give it a try one of these years!

Here's Terra with her pumpkin. She really enjoyed the pumpkin carving ritual. She thought it was really fun to scoop out the insides of the pumpkin, but had even more fun putting them back in after we carved the face - I don't think she quite "got" what we were trying to accomplish. :)

Here are our little cuties in their Halloween costumes! I know what you're thinking - what are they supposed to be? Our family rule is that the girls have to dress up as a character in a book. Jorie chose to be Morgan LeFay, the enchantress librarian from the Magic Treehouse series. She was so proud of her costume. Terra is a red button. Her favorite book is a book with buttons and she seems to really like circles and the color red, so it was a natural choice for her costume. Costumes aside, Halloween was not quite what we had planned, Jorie woke up with a terrible cold and spent the entire day on the couch. Fortunately, we have some wonderful neighbors that were willing to risk having her drop by so that she could trick-or-treat at one house. She missed her Halloween party with friends, which was terribly upsetting, but there's always next year! I hope everyone had a safe Halloween!!

Ding Dong the Strep is Gone!!!

We have such happy news that strep has left our house! That's right, all four of us lined up at the doctor's office last week and we were delighted to learn that all of our cultures were all negative! Now that we are all in good health, we can finally get back to our usual routine and chaos of daily life...

Terra has been having a wonderful time exploring! She follows Jorie everywhere and ventures on her own too! We started a music class a few weeks ago and Terra is loving every minute! She was a little unsure at first, but it didn't take long for her to join in and, by the end of class, she was participating with all of the hand movements! The only part she did not like was having to give her bells back to the teacher - she had a death grip on the bells and was not about to give them away!

Jorie started ballet lessons last week, here she is waiting for her teacher in her "beautiful dancing dress". She absolutely loves dancing and can't wait to go back tomorrow. She's been practicing the dance her teacher taught them all week and I must say, the little hip wiggle at the end is absolutely adorable!

Here's our little character! Everywhere we go, we hear people say that Jorie is the funniest little girl they've ever met. Her swim teacher actually referred to her as a "legend" and fully expects to see her one day on "Last Comic Standing". :) You really have to spend some time with her to really appreciate her quirky style and unique sense of humor, but here's a little glimpse of her silliness. This is how she came into the kitchen the other day and completely shocked me - I was not expecting a snowman head on my little girl!

Can you believe it?! This is Jorie's very first haircut!! After nearly four years without even a trim, we decided it was finally time to even out the 'do. We only trimmed one or two inches and we came away with a few curls for the baby book. Jorie thought it was tons of fun and was especially pleased with the bottle of bubbles she got at the end! She's already asking when she can go back.