Fall Wrap-Up

Happy 5^th Birthday to our gorgeous, firey, one-of-a-kind, brilliant, wild animal, silly, soccer-playing, ballet-dancing, artistically-talented, sweet blessing-of-a-daughter, Kayliana!! 

Kayliana announced that she wanted to 'build' a dragonfly.  She came down with instructions (written on the paper - too light to see, sorry).  And then Mike (dad-extraordinaire) helped her make her dragonfly. This girl doesn't cease to amaze us with her creativity and talent. 

A couple of weeks back, we enjoyed Halloween festivities.  Our pirate family (with Captain Hook, Mrs. Hook, Peter Pan and parrot) was a big hit at the school carnival, our best friends’ Halloween party and soggy trick-or-treating.  (Matthew was ‘too cool’ to participate in our theme.  He wore a scream mask…but was actually sick the night this photo was taken).

A week after Halloween, Kayliana and I had a ‘girls’ trip’ to Birmingham, Alabama to celebrate my dear friend Rachel’s wedding.  (We’ve been friends since we were 6 years old and she is such an incredible ‘auntie’ to our kiddos)!  Kayli and I had a great time.  Birmingham might as well be Disneyland the way everyone called Kayli ‘Princess’ and catered to her every need and desire! 

We had such a good time and Kayli rocked her role as Flower Girl.  She was referred to as the ‘wedding mascot’ and definitely stole the show.  (The fact that she carried around a stuffed ‘pet skunk’ added to her star-of-the-day tendencies.  That skunk, ‘Flora’, even danced with people at the wedding reception and, boy, did Kayli terrify the rental car guy when, returning the car, she told him from the backseat, “I have my real pet skunk in here!’).  Flora-the-skunk was NOT allowed to be present at the ceremony and had to wait in the car. 

We had a fairly short aisle to walk down and Kayli understood she needed to go slowly with her leaf and petal dropping.  She took one step, dropped one petal.  One step, dropped one leaf.  One…at…a…time.  Then when she got up to groom Carl, she took a handful and threw it at his shoe.  One more small handful was thrown at his other shoe and then she thought, ‘Hmmm, this is taking too long’ and tipped the basket over and dumped the remaining petals and leaves.  Everyone was laughing and Kayli knew she’d rocked it!

At the Vulcan Museum in Birmingham.

Now, we focus on the usual crazy-fun-busyness of our life.  Work, music-teaching (A LOT!), school, insane amounts of middle school homework and trumpet-lessons for Matthew (he's amazing!), ballet/tap and pre-Kindergarten for Kayliana, acting class and chorus for Zachary, church groups, Engaged Encounter and coming up on Thanksgiving (which will also be the 2 year anniversary of dad ditching us for Paradise).  Woah.