Happy Halloween!

Good evening to everyone!

The last week has been a lot of fun. The girls have been anticipating carving pumpkins, a friends birthday, the neighborhood fall festival, and of course trick-or-treating. I have uploaded all of the pictures from the weeks fun.
Carving pumpkins was pretty comical this year. The girls cleaned out their pumpkins this year. Elizabeth dove right in with out hesitation. Katherine was determined to use the little plastic pumpkin scraper to remove the seeds one at a time. Finally, when I got her to stick her hand in and grab some the response was priceless. I got the wrinkled nose look and an immediate request for a paper towel to clean her hands. Once the pumpkins were clean, Dennis & I did the carving. The patterns were picked out by the girls. Katherine chose a goofy looking mummy (I carved) and Elizabeth chose an owl (Dennis carved). They both turned out quite nicely.

Another reason why Elizabeth was eager to clean out her pumpkin was because we were going to keep the seeds and toast them. They turned out quite nicely and the girls have been enjoying them every day since. I do believe that will become a yearly tradition from here on out.

Halloween day was quite busy for our household. We had a birthday party in the early afternoon. One of Elizabeth's closest friends has a birthday on Halloween and the kids had a great time celebrating with him. Then there was only a few hours before our neighborhood fall festival. Katherine ended up crashing out for a nap about the time it was starting. Dennis & Elizabeth attended while I stayed home with sleeping beauty. No sooner did they get home did we have to start to get ready to head out for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood.





























We snapped a few pictures and then headed out to meet up with neighbors and friends. There are a couple of families that we have trick-or-treated with for a couple of years now. The kids are becoming such pros at this. As always, we had a great time and the kids were all worn out.

When we returned home we had enough time to turn on our lights and decorations and had out a little candy. We received several compliments on our decorations and even had a few little ones that were very reluctant to approach. I'm sure it had nothing to do with glowing skeletons, thunder and lightning strobe light and sound effects, spooky floating ghost or the huge spider web. There are a few pictures of the decorations in the pictures I've uploaded (see link at beginning of this post). Elizabeth really enjoyed handing out candy, too.

I am certain that we will all sleep quite well tonight.....too bad tomorrow is a school and work day.

OKAY, OKAY!!!!

After two good nudges from a few friends I'm going to work hard to bring our blog up to date. For those that have Facebook accounts, my pictures there are much more up to date as well as the normal daily happenings around the Frambes household.

My plan of attack is to start with current stuff and work backwards so I'm certain the posting will be wacky for some time. So starting this next week be looking for some new pictures and updates.....who knows maybe a few will show up today!

Puzzle Pieces Everywhere!

Recently Katherine has discovered the joy of working puzzles. She will spend hours working and reworking puzzle after puzzle. However, unlike Elizabeth who is meticulous about making sure each piece gets back with the correct puzzle, Katherine prefers to leave them scattered in piles. When I asked her to pick them up and put them away she gathered them in a bucket all mixed together.

I can see my Mom somewhat giggling at this. When asked to clean my room as a child, I'd just shovel everything into the closet or under my bed with zero rhyme or reason. Where now I want everything in it's place.

After I asked her several times to pick them up. I finally resorted to the trash bag threat. Just like the typical kid, she was screeching, "NO!!!! I'm cleaning them up!" Still she was not putting them away. I handed a bag to Elizabeth and asked her to put all of the pieces into the bag so we could throw them away. Yeah, I think Katherine has her sister all figured out. Sure enough, Elizabeth went running into the playroom to pick up the puzzles for Katherine. There's no way she'd let me throw away those puzzles. Katherine lounges back while Elizabeth cleans up the room.

I'm not entirely convinced that all of the puzzle pieces are in their proper boxes, so next week sometime I'll be working 20 kid puzzles to make sure we have all of the pieces. Good thing I LOVE to work puzzles. Not to mention, I think I'm going to take a friends helpful hint and mark the back all of the pieces for a puzzle with the same letter to make sorting easier next time this happens. Yes, I'm certain there will be a next time.

Best Dinner Cook!

A couple of weeks ago, I was having one of those days where it seemed like every thing was a battle with the girls. You know, one of those times where you begin to wonder if you were cut out for parenthood. Dennis was working late and I was so ready for a Calgon moment.

I had dished the girls plates and sat them at the table. After the third, fourth, or was it fifth (I have lost track of how many) time I asked them to come to the dinner table. There was a battle for something another.....wanting to wait for Daddy....finish watching a show....working on a puzzle...who knows. They finally sat down. I was back in the kitchen dishing my own plate and doing a little cleanup at the same time. I could hear them doing their normal giggling and playing at the table. As I headed back into the dining room, I figured that they had not eaten a bite . I was surprised to find quite a bit of food already gone from their plates. Yes, I'm certain that they were not feeding Bandit under the table. I sat feeling exhausted and not wanting to fight any battles with either one of them.

As I started to eat my dinner. Katherine started to stand in her chair, but before I could protest she'd reached over to give me a huge hug and whisper (which is not really whispering for 3 years-old), "You make the best dinners ever, Mommy! I love you!" Elizabeth immediately echoed her sisters sentiments. It was as if all the bad moments of the day were completely wiped away with two simple sentences from my girls. I was smiling...beaming from my head to my toes. They melted my heart and made my day just like that!

Funny how they noticed the affect it had on me. I kid you not, every dinner since then one or both of them make sure to add those two simple sentences at some point during the meal and it has the same affect every time. What a great thing to experience! I love being a Mommy!