This is Halloween

Another Halloween has come and gone.

This time of year always FLIES by.

Whit got to dress up for dance class.

Twice.

She is Misty, a character from Pokemon...

without the belly shirt

and with slightly longer shorts. :)

I didn't think anyone would recognize her,

and she did have to explain to most people.

But it was fun to see that a few people

knew exactly who she was while 

we were trick or treating.

We had a wonderful time at the Fall Festival/Trunk-or-treat/Chili Cook-off.

C hung out with old friends.

And new ones. 

This was B's first year not dressing up.

Made me kind of sad.

He was good at passing out candy, though. 

I talked Andrew into wearing out knight and lady costumes again.

Any excuse for me to wear a fancy dress. 

We had great trick-or-treating weather on Halloween.

I took the girls around the neighborhood,

with C's best friend from across the street. 

The streets were PACKED like usual. 

Cars park bumper-to-bumper down our main parkway.

Most homes have a line of people waiting to get candy.

 But then we find little pockets of homes with NO ONE else there.

My friend's husband built this robotic skeleton.

It's eyes, head, and mouth moved.

And it could talk to you and answer questions.

AMAZING!

Another fun holiday!

Love creating these memories with the kids.

Annual Pilot Mountain Trip

As is tradition, on the end-of-first-quarter teacher workday, Andrew took the day off of work (even though he is CRAZY busy right now) and we headed up to Pilot Mountain.

The weather was threatening, but there was less than 50% chance of rain, so I figured we should take our chances and head up there. The high was predicted to be in the 50's, so I told the kids that we'd need jackets, but not heavy coats or hats or mittens.

The drive up there was pretty.

Even though it was sprinkling...

not a good sign.

When we got to the top, I set up my tripod and we took some fun family photos.

And some individuals.

One of my favorites:

courtesy of Caroline.

I took a few pics of the beautiful scenery.

LOVE the fall colors!

It was colder up there than we thought it would be.

I still wanted to hike and think we would have been fine

once we were moving.

But the rest of the family overruled me. 

They thought we would be miserable with our little jackets on.

So, we ate our picnic lunch in the car and headed hone.

And we had enough time to catch a matinee at the dollar movies.

The boys watched AntMan.

The girls watched Inside Out.

A fun and relaxing day.

Dance classes

Miss Shelley has a couple of parent observation days each year. Andrew and I LOVED catching a glimpse of all the hard work Whit is putting into her dance classes this year.

First was pointe class

Those are W's calf muscles on the left. Nice!

I haven't learned how to speak ballet yet,

but for this move they had to hold a paper

between their thighs and make it across the floor

without dropping it.

W did it!

Gorgeous!!

She is also taking a Ballet III class and hip hop,

but I wasn't able to observe those ones.

Her newest class is MUSICAL THEATER.

She LOVES it.

Here's a little snippet of her solo:

And a couple of still shots:

What a fun class!

What September looked like

For my graduation gift, 

Andrew sent me to a dSLR boot camp.

It was FABULOUS.

Here's a little sample pic from the workshop,

learning about shutter speed.

That man was my teacher.

So, of course I took the girls 

out for a photo shoot the next day.

And a sweet man volunteered to take one of the three of us. 

I also got a new lens,

a 50 mm prime lens.

And a new flash.

LOVE them.

Much easier to get that shallow depth of field that I like so much. 

National Folk Festival date night.

So fun.

Lunch date with my Colombian twin, Bea.

FHE Singstar battle 

Air hockey at spare time on an early release day.