Moving?

No, we're not moving from Jacksonville just yet.  However, I think I'm going to move the blog to shutterfly.  I find it more user-friendly for adding photos and let's be honest...most people read family blogs to see photos of the kids ;-)  So, I'm going to try it out for a while.  The link is:  http://readerfamilyadventures.shutterfly.com

October

Here are a few pictures from the pumpkin patch, pumpkin carving (Michael did all the labor-intensive carving while Gavin and I scooped out seeds and roasted them) and Halloween.  We had their Halloween parade at school, trick-or-treating at the mall (so that Ella could go) and then trick-or-treating with just Gavin after dark in our neighborhood.  There aren't any great pictures of the two kids together, so I'm posting the sequence of photos that were taken for your amusement, instead.

My pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.

At their Primrose School Parade.  She refused to wear the hat.

After she saw us and was getting wheeled away.

Gavin and his friend Colton.

Trick-or-treating at the mall.

Love the shoes :-)

As you can see, they were not in the mood for pictures.  Gavin didn't want to wear his mask and Ella didn't want to sit in his lap.  Mommy just wanted ONE decent picture!  *Sigh*

At this point, he tore his mask off and she nearly launched herself off the chair, so I gave up.

With his super-cool spiderweb-shooter (aka silly string).

Spider Gavin

Bad picture of me, but love my little ladybug :-)

Ella's First Birthday Party!

We had a great little party for Ella last week.  I never had time during residency to plan fun parties or to do anything creative, for that matter, so it was a lot of fun to do this.  Thanks so much to my mom and dad who helped so much in putting things together in the weeks before, and to Larry and Nancy who helped set up and clean up!  Oh, and a word about the bounce house--I had gotten a deal on a small one, which I figured would be great for the 7 older kids (ages 3-7).  The lady from the rental company called me the night before to ask if she could upgrade us for free, as they needed the small one for another function.  Of course, I had no problem with that...until they unloaded this ginormous Disney Princess 5-in-1 bounce house into our yard!  It actually turned out that the kids had a blast on it, though.