the mandel 5

Bat Girl, Jengo Fett, and Darth Vader with Indiana Jones (Stephen) with Kylie and Dawn This year we did our neighborhood first and then went to Kylie's. The kids were wiped out much sooner this time. We drove to Casey's and then to Auntie Mann's once they were too tired to walk anymore. Quote of the night: Logan saw the yard in the above shot and said, "Now THOSE are broken bones!" Rob took Logan to get a toy for being so brave the last couple of days. He picked a Darth Vader ship. He is sleeping with it right now.

Last night my team had a fundraiser at Scooters Jungle. I took my kids and everyone had a blast. About 2 hours into our 3 hour slot, Logan fell off of a 4 ft ledge in an inflatable thing and landed on his arm. He was trying to grab the rope to swing on and missed. I was standing right there. One of my student's moms, Mrs. H, is a nurse and was (thankfully) there that night. She rushed over and helped us keep Logan still (hard to do in a bounce house with fifty 12 year olds rushing over to see what happened). Mrs. H offered to ride with us to the pediatric ER to help keep Logan from moving his arm. Kris met me there and took Megan and Nathan home. I could not reach Rob - he teaches at coc on Wednesdays and as we know, everything we need him for seems to happen on Wednesday nights. His phone was on vibrate so he didn't hear any of my calls. Mrs. H. asked me if I wanted her to stay with us and I said yes. She carried Logan in and had him all snuggled up. She was using...

Here we are last night, making chocolate dipped pretzels for our guests today. Today I took the kids, along with Grace and Kari, to see High School Musical 3. Loved it. Then we had the fam over for our annual pumpkin carving. I know it's early and they might rot but we are busy people and no other days this week worked. Nathan chose a pumpkin that is shaped like a football and then carved it himself to look like one...see, those are the stitches (and his name). Grantie came along to help again. This is what happened when Jennifer broke out the icecream!

I left Grace's party last night for one hour to pick up my car. In that time, Megan and Sarah collided head on while running in the yard. Both have black eyes. Tell me I'm not the only one who laughed at this photo that Scott just emailed me.

Tonight was Graci's annual Halloween party. These pictures are all out of order but here you go... Joey even had a costume! Nathan was Darth Vader Logan was Jengo Fett (from Star Wars)

So many of you have asked how these turned out. But for those of you who didn't hear the story, here it is....about a month ago, I, the professional photographer, forgot it was my kids' picture day. I realized it when I dropped them off but since it was a teaching day for me, I couldn't go back home to change their clothes, etc. I told Megan to just take her hair out of the ponytails. After school, I asked them how picture day went. Nathan said so proudly, "I did a half smile!" Megan said, "I just put my hair in a bun." !!! Here are the results..... I was going to have them do make-up pictures. But why? These are cute and they are the official pictures from this year at school. There's another new post under his one.