Halloween Parade

Coming in barely second to trick-or-treating is wearing your costume to school for a Halloween parade and party. This year, Ava has a beautiful dragonfly costume thanks to Grammy.

Ava's Teacher was the Tooth Fairy

Seattle

We spent the weekend in Seattle attending my dear grandfather's funeral. He passed away a week before on his 90th birthday. While it's been really hard to have him gone, the funeral was a really great celebration of his life. He was a quiet, humble man who worked hard and was fiercly dedicated to his family. During the funeral, each of his children and grandchildren shared memories of him, and the great grandchildren sang "I am a Child of God." He loved children and would have loved that.

After the funeral, we drove into Seattle and went up the Space Needle. Ava thought it was just about the coolest thing ever, and especially enjoyed eating in the rotating restaurant on top. She now wishes we lived in Seattle so she could go to the Space Needle "every day." She couldn't stop talking about it during sharing time at school today (I volunteered in the classroom). The next morning we went to the Pikes Street market, where the girls were entertained by watching various seafood tossed around before we had to jump on a plane to get home.

Aloha!

We spent a week in Hawaii at the beginning of the month, where we did nothing but rotate between the beach and the pool. It was perfect.

The flight over was a little crazy. It's no fun traveling this pregnant, and Lilly had just about everything happen to her. By the time we arrived in Hawaii, Lilly didn't have any shoes, pants, or underwear. But we were in paradise, and who needs shoes and pants in paradise?

Tyler and I were able to rest up and read lots of books. We also had lots of fun playing with the girls on the beach and the pool. They learned to body surf and boogie board, and went down the water-slide countless times. It amazes me how they have both become such strong swimmers over the last year.

Ava brought her frisbee, which she will throw as many times as someone (Tyler) will catch it and throw it back to her.

Lilly has it in her mind that she is a model. Who taught her to pose like this?

Or this?

Ava had all sorts of questions about volcanoes, so we drove out to the lava field.

And last, but not least, the boogie boarding. Lilly bailed right after I snapped this picture, and refused to get back on.

Pumpkin Time

We took the girls to the pumpkin patch at the beginning of pumpkin season. It was warm and there were hardly any people there. In fact, the girls got to ride the ponies until Lilly announced, "I'm sick of this!" They also got free entrance to the petting zoo and unlimited slides on the big blow-up slide.