The Le Family #4

This is Aliesha and Mateo.  This first grader is surely loved.  Mateo was adopted by a family not too far from Aliesha's parents.  They let her take him to the park, take him shopping, and take him to family gatherings.  It's been good for all of them.  He gets the stable home life he needs and contact with his birth mom.  She gets to see her son and let him know he is loved.

I think this one is my favorite of them together.  Sweet faces.

The Le Family #3

I felt a little intimidated here.  Sarah here is a photographer.  I have always struggled with presenting my best self when confronted with someone that has talents and abilities that I don't perceive me having.  I like to take pictures, paint and sculpt... if anyone that I know does these well I just freeze up.  I know that they don't have expectations of me, but I almost have more of me because I'm around them.

This is Daniel, Sarah, Leah and I'm not sure what their baby's name is.  I just can't get enough of that Leah. Too sweet!

The Le Family #2

We had to hurry with Nate and Meri's family.  Emerson and James weren't too pleased to have to smile.  I tried to do it fast.  We did get a couple that looked good, but they were a little hard to edit.  I'm just hoping that they are good enough.

The Le Family

Over Thanksgiving, I was able to steal away for a couple hours to take pictures of one of my favorite families.  This is my cousin, Tiff and her boys Ronin and Theo.  I haven't edited everything that I took, but these are my favorites.

Alan and Rachelle's house

Jer took some money over to Alan's house to pay him for picking up chocolate for the dipping party we do every year.  Their annual sale was while we were in Colorado.  Alan works developing things for Virtual Reality programs, so he has this set up and invited Jer to bring all of us to check it out.  Every single one of us loved it.  Sam kept asking if we could get one... (Jer checked, cheapest we could go was $350... zing).  Evelyn didn't want to have anything to do with it.  I told her she should at least go look in the goggles to see what it looked like.  That's all it took and she was hooked.  After playing, we had pizza and apple pie together, then we went to watch a movie in their newly finished movie theater.  I'll tell you, I really like the feature that they added that when you press play on the movie the lights automatically dim.  That was kind of them to use their entire afternoon playing host.  I'm sure that they had plenty of other things to do, but I very much enjoyed chatting and catching up with them.

Dinosaur Museum

I told Seth that when he didn't have any accidents in a day that we would go to the Dinosaur Museum.  His voice got all high and he clasped his hands, "The Museum! The Dinosaur Museum!"  And we did.  Saturday, between the fencing competition in the morning and visiting Jer's Uncle Alan's house, we went.  It was a very fast run in and run out thing... but he had fun.  I took him back yesterday too.  He LOVES it.  Yesterday he wanted to keep walking around the room that was dark and had "stars" in the sky.  Saturday he kept asking me the names of all the dinosaurs.  I'm getting pretty good at trying to pronounce them. 

Day after Thanksgiving

The day after Thanksgiving, we went and chose out a pretty Christmas tree from Baum's.  The kids refuse to buy the flocked ones, but we like the green ones well enough... Seth kept saying that he was going to buy a little tree for him and I needed to get a big tree.  Then we went back home, set up the tree and played games with my brother Seth and our neighbors', the Komens.  They bought a game based on the Mistborn world.  It was fun, but I like cooperative ones a little better I think.

Thanksgiving weekend

So here's Ada at the X-Ray room.  To get the whole picture, you have to visualize me balancing Seth on my shoulders, trying to take a one handed picture while keeping Seth from pushing any of the buttons on the other side of the safety wall.

We're on a tighter budget than normal because of all the repairs going on, but we were able to surprise Ada and Sam with their own foils.  They were pretty happy about it.  They also participated in a "learning" tournament.  It was for ages 8-12, unsanctioned... but they had a real referee.  The goal was to teach the kids what a real tournament requires and feels like.  Sam won a bout, Ada came really close.  Maybe after we get financially caught up with things we can bet them the rest of the equipment they should have. 

A week ago

A little more than a week ago, this girl broke her wrist.  She has grown up so much in the last year that sometimes she's a little more clumsy than normally.  She was running across the playground, tripped, sprained her right wrist and broke her left one as well as hitting her head on the concrete.  She thought it would go away, but an hour later it was still really painful.  She called me and I came to the school.  I brought some children's ibuprofen and something to wrap her arm in incase she had sprained it.  She could move it, but as soon as I touched it to put the wrap on she was cringing.  Usually I have them sleep on it to see if it's really broken or not... but I had a feeling this one was really broken.  I asked my mom to watch the kids and took Seth and Ada to the doctor for the millionth time.... (Seth was sick the day before, I took him in for a sinus infection... then me in for my foot and a sinus infection the day of.) He said that it looked broken, but he wanted an x-ray... we headed to the hospital and got an x-ray done.  Seth was done by then... 4th doctor's appointment in one day.  Ada was a trooper though.  She was brave and just cheerfully chatted with me or Seth while she waited.  Then we went home to bed.  Ada's doctor was out the next day, but I called the on call doctor to see what the x-ray said... yes, she had a buckle fracture in one of her wrist bones by her thumb.  Luckily the casts are water proof... not recommended to really get wet all the time, but when we accidently get it wet when I help her shower.... not a big deal.  Since she has one hand available... she teases me by saying things like, "I'll go wash my HAND." and if I ask her to give me a hand, "Sure, but only one."  She's loved having everyone sign it... most of the little notes have the word Moo in it.  I drew a cow on it for her and it just rubbed off because we didn't use the right marker.  She'll get her hand back a week before their piano recital.  Likelihood that she'll have her left hand for the song done in a week?

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we went to both my parents' and Jers' parents houses.  For both, we were asked to bring pies... so we had one job and we were going to do it well.  We made 4 gluten free pies, 4 apple pies, 8 pumpkin pies(4, but I had to remake them because I forgot to put in the sugar the first time), 2 strawberry and bought a pecan.  It made for a long day the day before Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving was more restful.

Thanksgiving with the Wilcoxes.  Probably the last one at their house for a couple of years.  I was glad to get to spend it with them.

We have had colds and been super busy, so we haven't visited with the Hansen cousins much.  It was fun to see all of them.  Ada has been missing Mariah fiercely.

These nuts got their own table.  They thought it was pretty good and they're all old enough that there was only one spill the entire day.  That's not bad for a house full of kiddos.  Evelyn was so excited to see Millie that she made a whole bunch of paper fans to share with her. She kept saying, "I hope Millie likes them."

This was the first day that Seth went without any accidents.  I was very pleased and amazed that it was Thanksgiving of all days.

This was my second time meeting Walter.  He's such a cute little smiler. The food was delicious and the company was something I'm grateful for.