Defending Her Title

Rachel competed in her school spelling bee again this year....and SHE WON!!! We are so excited and proud of her!!! I had really worried it would be hard to win two years in a row, and I prayed she would not be too disappointed. Well she new her words and won without any problem. Statistician was the word she won with.

Now we are studying for the Area Wide Spelling Bee in February.  The winner wins a trip to Washington DC for the National Spelling Bee. She only has to study and know over a thousand words from the study list. There will be lots of studying in our future.

Happy Halloween!!!

As you might have guessed by now, we did not make it to the pumpkin patch this year. It makes me a little sad, but the only kid that said something about wanting to go was Rachel. By then it was too late and most of the pumpkins were gone. :0( So, we did a little photo shoot at the house in our costumes.

The pictures came up in the order they were taken, so Momma is first! I am a little self conscious about being first.

Here I am as Wonder Woman!!! I saw this costume and knew it was mine!! I even put it on first thing yesterday morning and wore it all day.

Wonder Woman and her Superman have this bunch under control. They are doing their mad faces. :0)

Little Superman was tricked into this costume. He thought he was getting to wear his pjs all day!

Little did he know Wonder Woman had pinned a cape on the back of it. It took him most of the day to figure it out and want it off.

Memaw came to spend Halloween with us. She passed out candy last night to the Trick-or-Treaters. Love the picture where Superman is smiling up at her.

Wonder Woman with her little Superman

Our Green Ninja...

He is loving this costume. The sword is the best part, of course.

My little Bunny...

She loves to shake her bushy tail...

 Our Beautiful Angel...

Memaw holding the Bunny.

Group shot.

Rachel with her friend B. An angel and a zombie....the perfect combination!

Memaw with the kiddos.

Trick-or-Treating.  Wade caught on very fast. He LOVED trick-or-treating!!! He did not say much. He mostly grabbed the candy and ran back to the stroller. We will work on better manners for next year.

Luke with his buddy Sumo Wrestler.

 We all had a blast last night!!! It is so fun to get dress-up!!!

Carving Pumpkins

We spent yesterday afternoon carving pumpkins. We all had lots of fun!! We even had fun grossing Wade out with the pumpkin guts!!

Wade walked around the whole time we were working on the pumpkins saying, "Punkins yuckie, yuck!!"

Hard at work. The kids really dug right in and starting working without any complaining. Finally, they are trained!

Love the tongue.

Help from big brother.

Wade checking out what is going on.

Sweet babies.

Luke with his finished Jack-O-Lantern. Rachel and Luke did their carving themselves. The results were great!!

Carving away.

Rachel's Cat Jack-O-Lantern.

I carved Kate's pumpkin for her. She wanted Hello Kitty so that is what we did.

Kate with her pumpkin.

Wade does have a pumpkin, but I ran out of time and steam working on Kate's. Maybe we will get it done before Halloween.

We are very excited about how they turned out all lit up!!

First Six Weeks of School

Our school year has gotten off to a great start. I am almost scared to type all of this out loud for fear things will change. First, Rachel's big news is she was selected as Model Knight for the first six weeks. They have a luncheon to honor the students, and Wade and I went to eat with Rachel. We are so proud of her!!

Kate got her first school award. She has had to watch Rachel and Luke get their awards so many times. She was SO excited it was her turn to get an award! She smiled back at me the whole time!! It was fun to watch her excitement.

 Katybug with her award!!

All the kids like their teachers, have met new friends, and made good grades this six weeks. Everybody is happy!! Luke even made straight A's. We were all surprised and happy! I hope they can keep up their good work. Momma and Daddy are proud of you Rachel, Luke, and Kate!!

How Does Your Garden Grow? - Part 3

This is what is left of my little garden. Two tomato plants and a pepper plant. The tomatoes took over the planter.

   

This Fall has been good for the tomatoes!! The cooler weather and rain has sure helped them! They have done better this fall than both spring and summer combined. Look at all the tomatoes I am waiting on to ripen. I know there are fifty or more.

There are a few ready to pick. Let me tell you we usually don't get to the house to wash them before the kids eat them. Kate and Luke LOVE the tomatoes from the garden!

 Here is a comparison picture. Wade compared to the tomatoes. They started out so small and now they are huge!

These were the tomatoes I picked or had fallen off on the day these pictures were taken.

The pepper plants are really doing good too!

This morning I was so excited to find all this ready to be picked!!! Kate and Luke will have a big snack when they get home from school!! We are having salsa, queso, and tostadas for dinner tonight!

My first experience gardening has been fun and a little disappointing. My corn grew really well but did not pollinate or whatever the right term is. I had nubby little corn cobs, and I learned corn only produces one cob per stalk. You would have to plant a lot of corn to feed our family. I was excited that the corn grew very easily and quickly. Carrots did grow but they were pretty small. The seeds were very small and hard to plant. I only got two sunflowers because the birds kept eating my seeds. It was too hot to grow strawberries. My cucumber plant died when we were on vacation.  I was kind of disappointed with the tomatoes at first. I thought I would have gotten a lot more. They would have lots of blooms but then no tomato would grow. The tomato plants have redeemed themselves this fall though. When I planted the peppers I envisioned bacon wrapped peppers stuffed with cream cheese, but I never had enough to make a batch. It was also a pain to find somebody to water the plants when we were out of town. All of that being said, I do plan to try again next spring. :0) I will plant more tomato plants and way less corn!