Funny

Cass and I laughed and laughed. This is SO our family.

Soc.Her.

Cassidy had an AMAZING soccer season playing with her beloved Fire Bombs under the direction of Coach Christensen. They won a ton of games and improved immensely. Cass thrives at defense on the field and really found her soccer moxie this year.

This super-quick throw-in led to a fast goal.

Battle!

Just stop looking so grown-up already, Miss Almost-10-year-old! Congrats Cass on a wonderful soccer season.  We love your enthusiasm and determination on and off the field.

Soc.Him.

Garrett had a wonderful season as the star tackle-forward for his soccer team the Silver Bullets. (Special, special thanks to Coach Mike for putting up with all of Garrett's tackles, tricks, and tumbles in this (usually) non-contact sport. Unless you're 7. And your name is Garrett).

Poor soccer ball. This looks personal.

One of the many things we love about G. He's just so grounded.

Garrett--we love your energy, excitement, blatant disobedience (well maybe not) and especially your smile. You got SKILZ, my friend, on and off the field. 

Happy Halloween, Cowboy

We had a rootin' tootin' good time with all of our Halloween festivities:

there were spiders....

and Frankensteins (36 to be exact---we did this craft at Cassidy's class party),

there were num-nums that even included a pumpkin casserole (rest assured Ben, it had no actual "pumpkin" in it) and breadstick "fingers" .

There was pumpkin carving galore....

(I'm sorry...who do you cheer for again?)

The ubiquitous tongue....in baseball, in soccer, in pumpkin carving.

(this was the first year Garrett carved two pumpkins all by himself without managing to incur any mortal wounds. That sentence is a little misleading---it's his first year carving pumpkins by himself, he's never actually had any major wounds, he just hasn't done it by himself before. Whew.)

The annual "blessing" of the pumpkins.....seriously G, what are you doing?

There were a few cowboys.....

who came home with LOTS of candy from their trick-or-treating rodeo:

Here, G and C teach S the fine art of "sibling candy trading". (AFTER of course, they pay the parent tax).

We invited a few of G's friends over to celebrate the big day.

We (meaning Garrett) thought it would be fun to do a science experiment birthday party. 

10 boys + 10 experiments = MESS FUN!

We made slime (and quicksand and magic potion).

We tested the laws of gravity and physics (turns out they're all true).

We also made lightning in our mouths (Wint-o-green life savers chomped in the dark) and exploded perfectly delicious bottles of diet coke, with the help of a few Mentos candies. I have to say the diet coke geysers were big hits, even if the complete waste of my favorite beverage nearly brought me to tears. It really was so messy much fun. We ended the afternoon by sending Garrett on a treasure hunt to find his presents followed by mountainous ice cream sundaes drowning in chocolate sauce.

We also had a celebratory dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe, our family's fave. 

( I had to put this in here even though it is a terrible photo just so we can document the occasion)

Happy Bday G-Dawg!

Seven is Heaven

Happy Birthday to the best 7 year old I know.

We love you Garrett!

Peachy

We enjoyed tons of peaches from our tree this year.

I think maybe we have finally stopped itching all the peach fuzz away.

We took all of these.....and turned them into

49 quarts of peaches

12 quarts peach pie filling

4 dozen peach muffins

40 cups of frozen peach slices

Totally worth it, but I'm not sure if my kitchen floor will ever recover =)