Girls night

Friday nights in the fall are always girls nights as Dan is typically attending football games. Maggie had a friend come home with her after school to hang out for a few hours. They did typical stuff, like play the Wii, listen to music and eat! And then played in the yard like kids do.

Mocking cheer.

Lanna in her "house" jumping on her "trampoline".

Maggie in an Erckle moment.

Charlie and the girls playing Wii.

Monster's Eyes!
In celebration of October starting today, I decided to make Monster's Eyes. It is kind of like a mini-taco made from ground beef, cheese, tortilla chips, sour cream, olives and salsa. If my name was Racheal Ray or Paula Dean, the finished product probably would look like eyes. However, mine looked more like something scavenged from road kill. To show you just how indiscriminant my kids are, they ate them even if they didn't look like "fresh" eyes and said they were really good. They actually didn't turn out too bad because I opened the fridge later and there were three eyes looking at me, it kind of made me jump at first.

Monster's Eye.

They are supposed to be appetizers, making 32 "eyes", 8 servings of 4 eyes each. I say this because after making them (it indeed makes 32) and counting how many everyone else ate, I figured Lanna had about half the batch. When I asked how many she had she said she didn't know, they were just so good!

Charlie

The second week of school we added a new family member. A kitten had been seen running across 15th Avenue and then found refuge in one of the classrooms at Mark Morris. The school had called the Humane Society to come pick the kitten up when Dan overheard the secretary talking about the cat. He called me and asked how I felt about another cat and we decided sure, we can save one more cat. So I picked up the kitten after work and headed home to introduce the kitten to our family.

Charlie the day we brought her home, about 7 weeks old.

She immediately fit in and has become a great addition to our family. On a whim, we named her Charlie and have been enjoying her company. She is a polydactyl, which means she has an extra toe on each front paw and looks like she has mittens. She is very loving and purrs upon contact or just from looking at her. She snuggles with everyone and is soooo patient when the girls pick her up constantly. Dan joked she will have osteoporosis from lack of walking as much as the girls carry her everywhere. We feel so blessed to have her come into our lives and so thankful she is a part of our family.

Using her "thumb" for string attacking.

Very comfortable napping on mom's lap.

We often find her playing in Maggie's soccer bag.

She was definitely a stray as she was treated for many things and we feel good about giving her a loving home. On a sad note, our 4 year old cat Scout was hit by a car and killed just 5 days after Charlie joined our family. Charlie has definitely filled a void in our life, and we are thankful to have her with us.

Labor Day

We headed to Astoria for a day of visiting with the Belmont-Smith family and Nanny and Grandpa. We had breakfast, did some caching, and rode the trolley.

The conductors were really great and let each of the kids sit up front and wear the conductor's hat.

Before heading out of town we stopped at the Goonie's house for a quick photo op.

For those that have read the BS post, you know that gps units do bounce but do not float, and out relatively new Garmin is now sacrificed to the river Gods. It was a day will not soon forget.

School 2010

Another year of school has started and we now have a middle schooler. I can't believe Maggie is in middle school and Lanna is in the 4th grade.