Christmas at the Farm

We went to the farm for Christmas as we always do. Unfortunately, we had a very short visit, only being there from Friday to Sunday. Nonetheless, we got to visit with everyone.

Asher singing in front of the tree:


The beautiful array of gifts:


Chiara cool-chillin in Granddaddy's chair:



Granddaddy watching Asher play:


Asher and Chiara opening two of their presents:


Phoebe modeling the hat Rachel made her:

New Kitty

We got our new kitty from the shelter this evening. She's groggy but very cute. I think her name will be Luna Lightfoot (we'll call her Luna).

Chiara's Birthday Party

Chiara will be 3 on December 28th but given the timing of both her birthday and Asher's we had her party early. I think it was our most well attended party ever with more than 30 guests. The theme was tattoos. Rachel and Molly put the finishing touches on Chiara's cake. Rachel had drawn the artwork, then took it to the grocery store so they could print it onto sugar paper.


The Sullivans arrived early so they and Chiara filled the balloons.



Then Chiara got a huge bouquet and danced with them.



Once the guests arrived, the tattooing was fast and furious. Nearly all the kids and some adults got a tattoo or two and some guests got 15-20. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the array of tattoos once they were done.


We also had spray-on hair color. The other side of my head is equally green and Mackie, Jayna, Mateo, Chiara, and the twins also got copious color in their hair. I didn't get pictures of everyone who got hair color.



The cake was delicious and Chiara blew out the candles well.



And what else can I say but "party hard, crash hard!"

Kid Pictures

Our neighbor Rich of Paul Marcus Photos asked a few weeks ago if he could take some pictures of the kids to build up his gallery and we of course said yes. He got some wonderful shots.

Asher and Joey in the Hammock

These pictures are from last week but I forgot to post them until now. Last week LD & Joey watched the kids while we went out for our anniversary. After we got home, I saw Asher and Joey playing in the hammock so I took some pictures. Don't they look like they're having a great time?

Boo!

Happy Halloween! I hope everyone had a great time. Last Monday night we went to the annual Homeschoolers's party at the Austin Children's Museum which was very fun. This year we knew more families than last year. The hostess kept mentioning that they'd never had a Rook at the party before.

For their pumpkins Chiara wanted a mean monster and Asher wanted a triceratops in a palm field in the moonlight watching constellations of itself. Following Chiara's instructions, I drew a mean monster for Rachel to use as reference material for the actual pumpkin. Rachel and our friend Jenni started on the pumpkins and then Asher helped with his.




And of course our Rook and Elephant went out trick-or-treating after dusk last night.