New Orleans Trip

This past weekend, D and I took a little trip to New Orleans.  D was running a half marathon and I was just along for the ride!  It is so great living so close to my family cause Gramma and Gary are just a quick drive away and are eager to watch the girls and help out.  Match made in heaven as we are eager to have the girls watched :)

We had a great time and and ate a great amount of food.

 Listening to some random, excellent opera singing off of a balcony in the Quarter

D's favorite part of New Orleans

My favorite part of New Orleans

The actual reason that we came

Our fancy night out

Happy Halloween

Every year we take the girls to get their pictures taken in their Halloween costumes...and take our birthday pictures too!  This year the girls selected their costumes on-line.  I was a little concerned how they would turn out, but they both ended up totally adorable!  Audrey really loved her little flamingo - though she frequently would not hold its head up and it was therefore flapping around her knees.  But they both made it through boo at the zoo (for 5 hours!) and being worn to school all day and a full evening of trick-or-treating.

 

Love this picture of Brooke the Tiger!

On the way to school dressed in costume!

At a party before trick or treating.  Only the in costume adults were pictured.  I planned for me and D to be in costume but my costume was an epic fail...twice.

We trick or treated for a little while with the Musselwhites.

During trick or treating.....note the sad little flamingo head hanging down :)

An action shot during the trick or treating

Second Dance Performance

The day after the homecoming parade, the elementary schools had their Fall Fest (which was hard to classify as fall at all as it was BLAZING hot outside). There were lots of games, food, and booths for the kids.  And the girls' dance class was invited to perform again.  The girls were adorable again!  Here are some pics:

Homecoming

Homecoming is a pretty big deal around here.  The theme for this year was Hooray for Hollywood.  Each school is responsible for putting together a float.  Since I have done a little volunteering at the school with the PTO, I have gotten to know Ellen, the person in charge for the early learning center PTO.  So I was part of the group of people working on and creating the float.  The theme that we chose for our float was Finding Nemo.  Due to various issues, we did not start working on our float until the Monday before the parade on Friday.  But in a surprising turn of events, our float won first place!!  And even more exciting was the girls and I got to ride on the float and throw out candy.  Which was hilarious to watch cause all the crowds got very close when they saw a float full of little kids - but those kids had some arms on them and were whopping people in the heads!!

Here are some pics from the parade:

 Lots and lots of pomping!

 This picture is with Audrey's teacher Mrs. Mestayer

Trip To Houston

For Columbus weekend, we took a trip to Houston to visit friends and go to a baby shower for our friends the Florezes....and ate a ton!! We arrived late Friday and checked into our Galleria hotel - that we got on priceline (I am still so excited to get such a cheap room....I never get my bids accepted!) Saturday D took a run in Memorial park while the girls and I walked around the Galleria.  Saturday afternoon we at lunch at Lupe Tortilla with Emily, then had the shower while the girls got to play with their aunt Amy and cousins.  To end the evening, we ate Texadelphia with the Flemings. 

Sunday morning we met up with the Bridges and Tewes families at the zoo.  It seemed like a great idea but the weather did not totally cooperate as it was COLD!  We had lots of fun at the zoo and followed that up with lunch at Freebirds.  That afternoon we got to visit with our friends the Bradleys.  It was cute to see how well the girls got along with all of our friends' kids!  To end our day we had a delightful dinner at Chuys.

Monday we finished our mini-vacation by eating at Star Pizza and getting Ruggles Bakery dessert for the road.  Can you tell that we have missed the food of Houston?

On Tuesday the girls were off from school for teacher conferences.  Both went well.  The girls seem to be doing very well both academically and socially.  Mrs. Mestayer did say that Audrey if very quiet in class and rarely raises her hand.  We have been trying to encourage her to be a little more outspoken in class.  Both of the girls had taken some sort of assessment (letters, numbers, sorting, etc) and both did very well on them.  Apparently they take this little assessment three times during the year - though with different teachers the next two times.  Brooke still seems to be a star in her class.  She was nominated for student of the year (which we are not sure if all star students get or what and it seems so weird to do that in October).

Field trip

The girls had their first field trip. It was to a local church that does a little fall fest type thing. The school divides up and does half the classes one day and half another day. Since the girls are on the same hall, they will always go together. I volunteered to be a chaperone and was selected to go with Audrey's class. At the church each class went through a rotation - pumpkin maze, story time, hay ride, snack, pumpkin decorating, jumpy castle, fishing for prizes, and a ball rolling game. It was cute. But since I was with A's class I did not get to see B very much on this trip. Though the three of us did sit together on the bus.

Here are some pics (Audrey was so cute posing with the pumpkins!!)

Carving the Pumpkin

The girls were so excited to decorate for Halloween and to carve the pumpkin this year.  So I gave in and let them carve the pumpkin a couple of weeks ago....and now it is so gross sitting out on the porch in the 80+ degree weather.  Fortunately we did buy another pumpkin and will carve it up.

Here are some pics of the event: