Happy Halloween!

Here's a pic of Allie and Will in their costumes. Allie, of course, had to be a ballerina dalmation. The moment that has spawned at least 3 weeks worth of questions. You see, Richard and Jennifer have an invisible fence. Keely will not walk across the fenced area (which is a good thing) even with her collar off. So, she either has to be carried across or driven across. And, since the fence is buried, the kids didn't quite grasp the concept. Also, notice Keely is dressed as a dalmation too!

The whole family. Pongo (daddy dalmation), Jewel (ballerina dalmation), Cruella De Ville, Lucky and Keely (a black lab dressed as a dalmation).

Here's a closeup of us. William refused to have his nose painted. I'm not surprised as he doesn't like being dirty.

The danger of sleeping....

With two 4-year olds and a bottle of baby lotion in the house. Apparently they asked Daddy if they could put lotion on him and he said um-humm. So, they technically had permission. I don't think we ever laughed so hard!

Holy Cow Hannah!

My good friends triplets turned 3 last Saturday, and I had the privilege of making their cakes! She wanted two farm cakes and one Hannah Montanna. I think these fit the bill. These were fun to do, but required a 4 hour nap the next day to catch up on my sleep!

Tanya also had the privilege of photographing A&W for their 4 year pics. Go here to check them out.

Half Marathon

Billy ran in the half marathon today. Here are a couple of pics and all his stats:

Overall place: 398 out of 1838
Division place: 49 out of 130
Gender place: 304 out of 888
Time: 1:49:36
Pace: 8:22
Needless to say, we are pretty proud of him. He shaved about 13 minutes off of last years time. It's amazing what a little bit of training will do for you! Hopefully next year he will begin training a little sooner.

This is at about the 7.5 mile mark

Did I mention it was reallllly cold. Allie wasn't too happy!This is Billy sprinting into the finish.

Some Recent Cakes

Here's a couple of cakes I made recently

This was for our friend Jesse's 4th birthdayAnd, his brother Leo's 2nd birthday

Allie and Will are 4!

Wow, this post is really late! I'm so far behind, but trying to catch up. Allie and Will had their 4th birthday on Sept. 1. For us, this means no less than 1 month of celebrating (seriously). It all starts on vacation. Grampy takes the kids to the Toys R Us in New York City to ride the big ferris wheel and choose their birthday gift. Then Grammy and Aunt Merri do a wonderful job of spoiling the kids at the beach house. This year their birthday was on a Tuesday, so we celebrated at home with Granny, Uncle Richard and Aunt Jennifer. We made our own little individual pizzas and had cakes from the grocery store. Then, we had a big birthday bash Saturday night at our house, where we also celebrated Papaw and Kaitlyn's birthdays.

Will and Allie on their birthday with a little celebration at home.

Will and Princess Allie at their big party. All the girls dressed as

their favorite princess at Allie's request.Allie's cake for the party.Will's party cake. Yummy dirt cake, perfect for some

monster truck action!Kaitlyn's birthday cake. According to Allie, Kaitlyn is in pink, Allie

is in purple, William is in green, Mommy is in Yellow and Daddy

is in orange.

The sunflower and the locusts

We planted a garden this year. We started everything from seeds and really enjoyed watching things grow. The kids would eat things out of the garden they wouldn't touch from the store. We had a tomato plant (apparantly the vining kind) that was about 8 feet wide. We were litterally picking a galloon of tomatoes daily -- for weeks. I finally had to just rip it out. We couldn't get to the tomatoes on the bottom so they were starting to rot. We also planted green peppers (still harvesting those), carrots, turnips, lettuce, watermelons and sunflowers. We have one watermelon vine that just decided to start growing this month and it has 3 or 4 1/2" watermelons on it. But, our sunflower did awesome. Here are some pics of A&W pulling all the seeds out of the head. It was a little over 16" in diameter at it's largest point.

Not so sure about these locusts shells at first. William wanted nothing to do with them.

Then she decided maybe they weren't so bad.

She eventually pulled leaves off the bush behind her and lined the shells

up on them. She said they were in bed.

The Beach!

I know, picture overload. It can't be helped. And, I deleted half of the ones I uploaded. As usual, we enjoyed a great week at the beach. We got to visit all our favorite places (Uncle Will's, Ron Jon's, Dom's, Panzone's, and the list goes on). Thank you Patrick and Merri for sharing your vacation with us!

Wipeout! Some surfer taking advantage of the waves.

KT Bug sporting the latest in fashion from Uncle Will's
The cousins: Katie, Allie, Will and Patrick

Allie Bug

William - this little booger is hard to get a smile out of

Allie playing in the sand. On the first day, they both immediately

dropped to the sand and started making sand angels. Too cute!

Will making sure to get sand in every nook and cranny. You must

click on this picture to fully appreciate the amount of sand on him!

Katie and Uncle Billy at Uncle Will's

Allie, Katie, William and Patrick on our boat ride. We took a sunset

cruise through the harbor, past the lighthouse and out into the ocean.

Pretty neat experience. I think everyone enjoyed it.Our family.

Allie and Will on the rocks in front of Barnegat Light.

Mommy and William

Katie and Allie with their American Girl Dolls. (Ok, Allie's is a Target

American Girl Doll)

William showing Grammy some love!

Allie's turn.

Patrick and Merrianne

Big Patrick

Girls trip to New York City

The girls all took a trip into NYC. More specifically to the American Girl Doll Store.

Like two kids in a candy store!

Katie and her doll, Allie and her loaner doll.Grammy and Aunt MerrianneAllie giving her doll a sip of tea.Our appetizerDessert. Imagine a cute little flower pot filled with chocolate mousse and a daisy sticking out of the top, a neatly iced heart shaped cake, and a flower shaped sugar cookie. Allie used her mousse to ice the cake and cookie. The two princesses had a long day! Thanks Grammy for braving the traffic

to take us to American Girl Place!

Hanging out at Aunt Merri and Uncle Patricks

William's favorite activity: Playing with Patricks trains William and Grammy

Allie and Aunt Merrianne

William relaxin' in the pool

Allie, diving for gold?

New York City with Grampy

Grampy and Grandma took the kids for their annual birthday trip to the NYC Toys R Us.

Of course, the kids loved the train ride into the city. Riding the ferris wheel inside of Toys R Us.

Allie in Rockafellar Center
The kids in the M&M's store. Will did not want to be near the big M&M.

Will, Grandma, Allie and Grampy

Dorney Park

Toys and nail polish

William loved playing with new toys (meaning, all of Patrick's stuff)

Allie loved having her fingernails and toenails painted!

Visit with the Molchans

We enjoyed a great visit with the Molchan's while we were on vacation. We mostly enjoyed the nice weather, swimming in their pool and a little bowling!

I thought it was hard getting 2 kids to sit still for a picture.

Here's Allie, Will, Nathan, Kimmy and Abby.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Then we stopped at Geno's in Philadelphia on the way back to Grammy's after we left Annapolis.

It's been so long...

Sorry for not posting anything lately. We were gone on vacation for most of August, and came home just in time for Allie and William's 4th birthday! With all the unpacking and prepping for their party, and then just a few days to relax, there was no time for posting. But, I've finally got our pictures on the computer from vacation, so I'll try to post over the next few days.

Here are some pictures we took at the riverfront one day on vacation.

Splash Park

We spent a morning at the splash park in Booneville. The kids loved the water. I wish this were just a wee bit closer to home so we could go more often. Here are a few pics of the kids and some of their friends. I was playing with some of the settings on my camera, that's why the color is different. Some of them I like. Some I'm not real fond of, but I enjoyed playing with the camera features and know I just need to play more to learn how to make my pics look great!

Baby Raptor

Allie Gaile

William doing one of his weird impressions.
Ranger.

Aargh! Pirate Allie.

Isn't that sweet.

Allie really wanted to play with that steering wheel. There was

just a lot of water to contend with!

Will loved running through the rainbow

Outside Fun

We finally got the playset moved to the backyard. Here's Allie and her Daddy

Look at those cool rainboots!


We hung this swing on our tree in the front yard. The kids love it, and so do I.

Another crazy outfit put together by Allie.

Friends

Kaitlyn, Allie and Allison (AJ)

Krislyn and Allie


Allie, Maddux, Ryker, William and Krislyn.
The boys are 1 day older than A&W!

Indianapolis Zoo

We also visited the zoo while in Indy. Even though we got off to a rainy start,

it turned out to be a great day.

The trains are Will's favorite part of any zoo.

Allie going for a pony ride.

William going for a pony ride.

The kids loved the dolphin show.

They got to pet a shark!

All the kids together. Seth, Sierra, Evan, Alicia, Ian

Allie and William

Indianapolis Children's Museum

William loved the awesome train display.

Allie happily posed with R2D2 and Yoda for her daddy to have a picture of.
The kids finally got to meet their cousins Ian and Evan!

Big kid dino Ian about to attack baby dino Will.

Evan and Allie hanging out.