Portland

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we headed down to Portland for a visit with Barbe, Rick, Gram and Sam.  It was such a great break from our typical weekly schedule and we all enjoyed some quality time with our family.  We spent most of the afternoon on Saturday at the OMSI - the science museum in town.  It was a great place and we all had so much fun exploring it.  We took great walks, watched some movies, enjoyed each others company and spent a small fortune at the Nike store.  The girls absolutely idolize Sam, who is so wonderful with them, and they even warmed up to Roxi.  Hopefully we will get back down for another adventure soon!

Dressing up as animals in the Science Museum.  Laurel didn't want her picture taken in any manner but little did she know I can see her peeking out :-)

 

Working their way through the mind teasers.

Maya and Gram

A little photo shoot - they thought it was SO cool that you could stand on the roof of the garage.

I don't know that she would admit it if you asked, but she absolutely fell in love with Roxi.  

Maya and Sami.

Maya and Gram snuggles.

We successfully wore them out and they both crashed on the way home.

Gymnastics

Maya has been asking to do gymnastics for quite awhile, but since we missed the sign ups we were put on a waiting list.  A spot just opened up and we jumped on it!  The timing is actually really good since soccer is wrapping up.  She has done two sessions so far and really seems to love it.

Her first session and she quickly made it all the way up to the top of the ropes!!

They go station to station to practice all of their skills.  

And our evenings are now spent practicing her new skills.  She was determined to do a cartwheel, something she wasn't able to do on the first day.  But after practicing nightly for a few days she figured it out before her second class - and I don't think I have ever seen her as proud of herself as she was that first time she made it over!  Bridges are common practice as well... and of course, her little sister wants to learn it all along the way.

Decorating the Tree

Despite the tragic christmas tree adventure, it turned out to be great once it was put in place and decorated.  The girls pretty much handled the decorating this year, even the ones that were up high, they were the ones that told us where to place them.  We've settled into a bit of a routine, Rey and I get the tree in the stand, Rey obsessively sweeps up all the fallen needles while Maya and I put on all the lights, then the girls put on all the decorations.  It works well :-)

Pointing out their favorite ornaments

Sisterly love in front of the final product.

Another Soccer Season

Maya played another season of soccer on her Pink Lion Cubs team.  She really had a blast - even on the windy, rainy days.  I'm not sure if it was maturity or a slight change in girls but this team was really focused and seemed to gain skills by leaps and bounds this year.  They started to pull together as a team and worked on some actual strategy.  Maya gained a lot of confidence and really went after that ball!  She is already counting down until spring soccer begins.

The team - minus one.

Some action shots - Maya is wearing the green shoes.

And earning her first trophy, she was SO excited for this!

Most of the team and Coach Andrew.

Halloween

The girls each had many Halloween parties to attend this year which gave them the perfect opportunity to show off their costumes.  Laurel was a Cheetah (NOT a jaguar or leopard) and Maya was a racoon.  We had a costume party for girl scouts, school, my work and then trick or treating on Halloween night.  And despite the complete downpour on Halloween night the kids still managed to have fun walking around the neighborhood.

It is all about the pumpkins

We spent quite a bit of time visiting, picking out, decorating and carving our pumpkins.  The girls (and, well, me) really look forward to this time of the year... the start of fall and all that comes with it.

Laurel's class took a field trip to the pumpkin patch and I was lucky enough to charperone.  This is the only picture I managed to take, but she sure had a blast.  Animals, hay mazes, pumpkins and a train ride, what more could 15 4 year olds ask for?!?!

We managed to squeeze in a quick family trip to a new pumpkin patch this year.  It was hard to fit it in with all the rain but we were able to get in a couple hours.  We had a special guest with us this year, Callie got to join while Aunt Jenny was sick.  

Cousins!

We ventured through one of the corn mazes - the girls wanted to do both but by the time we finished the first the rain was coming down pretty hard so we opted to skip it.  These three fearless leaders led us all the way through and we made it out the other side!  

The lines were WAY too long for us to actually wait in to purchase pumpkins at this place, but we did take some pictures.  Then drove to the local fruit stand next to our house to pick out our pumpkins there :-)

But we made sure to take plenty of pictures with every type of pumpkin possible before leaving!

And of course we carved them.  Each girl picked out the perfect pumpkin and then picked out the perfect design.

Laurel dug right in and cleaned out the whole thing by herself - mostly because she was teamed up with me and I made her :-)

Maya, on the other hand, scooped out about one spoonful and refused to touch the guts with her hands.  She was able to convince Daddy to do it for her!

The final products!

3/4 of the family!