Halloween Weekend

They should be on a box of Rice Krispies. Friday night started off with Ben at his last away game and the girls had a friend over for dinner and few hours of game playing.

Saturday, Nicole came by on her way to a community party to see if the twins wanted to go. After some chatter, they decided to go. I still had to sew the neckerchiefs for the costumes, so they borrowed a couple of Becca's and headed off to the party. The next few pictures are courtesy of Nicole's mom.



Rad took Ben and a couple of his friends to the gym and then he came back to take Becca over to the beach and they all watched the air show. Rad took the air show pictures since I was home for when the girls returned.

After the air show, we had a trunk or treat party at our church. Nicole came with us to the party. They didn't play many of the games there but they went through the maze A LOT. After the church party, Ben went to a party and the girls came home and watched a movie.
We even had Mary Poppins and Bert decorating their trunk. How cute are they?
Jessica and Stephanie carved their pumpkins after church today. The pumpkin on the right has a side view of a witch. I think the top line poking out is a cloud, the next is the brim of her hat, the 3rd poke out is her nose, then the chin. She is holding a jack-o-lantern.
We finally finished the Jelly Belly puzzle that we have started several times. This was very challenging with the pieces being odd shapes.

Hope you had a great weekend with as much fun as we had.

MPA

After the shower, we went to see Ben at the MPA (Marching Performance Assessment). The high schools started performing at 4:15 but Ben's school didn't perform until 7:30. I thought the shower would be done by 4:00 and people didn't start to leave until 5:30. We got there in time to see the last 3 high schools perform, his being one of them. They received the highest recognition of Superior.

I took quite a few pictures that are better than the one above but even Ben can't tell where he is in the picture. He said he would have to know what song they were playing when I took the picture. They do move around a lot. Ben is directly behind the color guard/girl in the picture.

Baby Shower

Last Saturday was the baby shower for Bonnie. Above are the favors that we had for it. I bought a bunch of mini pumpkins and attached a tag with jute that said "Bonnie and her lil pumpkin thank you". It was too hot to use the patio so we crowded around the dining room table or nearby to eat and start off the games.

The girls humored themselves during the shower taking pictures for me. I have 3 different cameras with pictures of people, food, decorations and what they took of each other. They took some extra orange and lemon slices to put on their cups of punch.
Becca gave them some pointers on their drawing/doodling.

It went well and I was glad to have it done. I was a little worried about how many people would show up. People aren't so good about RSVP-ing anymore. Maybe they never were and I just thought everyone did like my mom. There were only 3 people that showed up that didn't say they were coming, which was fine because I planned for 6.

Canine Commandos from Becca

I was able to go to Canine Commandos during school last Friday. I left during second period. We were grouped into groups and each group got one dog and a bag of treats. My group got a medium sized brown dog named Mullet. We trained him to sit, stay, come, and we tried to make him not jump on people whenever a person walked towards him.(Didn't work out) One of the workers said that Mullet knew nothing on Monday and now performed tricks perfectly. She also said we were lucky Mullet liked Cheerios because some of the dogs were picky and only ate certain dog treats. When everybody was done, we each got a clicker and a bag of dog treats. We went into a room with lots of cages. If a dog was being quiet, you would click the clicker then give the dog a treat. We would use the clicker because it would soon train the dogs that if they heard the clicker, that means they were being good. It was a fun experience and I look forward to the next one!

Rebecca

St. Augustine

The above picture was taken when they were preparing to fire the cannon at Castillo de San Marcos. The fort was built to defend Spain's claims in the New World. It is made of coquina. One of the soldiers was saying that they would be under fire during the day and at night they would patch up the holes. The next day when those that attacked looked and saw no damage after firing at it the day before, they began to be taken down not seeing they were having any affect. This fort was in 15 battles and never lost one. When it changed hands, it was due to a treaty.

This lighthouse was completed in 1874 and is 165 feet above sea level. There are 219 steps to the observation deck. There was another lighthouse before this one but it fell into the ocean in 1880.

From the top looking down.The view from the observation deck.We ended the trip with a stop at the beach.

Birthday

The girls took pictures of their cake for me. I now have 20 pictures of this cake all different angles, close-ups, etc. I'm glad they liked it so much. The cake was a checkerboard cake and it was the first one for my kids.
There were 2 more girls that came to the party but they had already left when I took the group picture. The two boxes were for a life-sized game they played in the drive-way. One box was the die and the other box had different things written that they had to do (i.e., hop until your next turn, sing the birthday song, run around the game). They rolled both for each turn. All in all, it was a fun sleepover.

Band Concert

The concert at the high school was 2 hours long and was amazing. I love hearing them play and seeing how far they've come from performing just a year ago. Doesn't he look spiffy all in black?

A picture of the band in their uniforms in the stands.

McKee Gardens

My mom and I went to McKee Botanical Gardens one day while the kids were in school. When we were looking through old brochures, we saw that at one time it was a garden and a jungle with animals. They no longer have the animals. My mom noted that it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

My favorite picture I took was of a dragonfly.

I liked the banana tree, too.

Then there were the red puff balls . . .

There are a lot of lizards here but I loved that one was hanging out on the Meditation Garden sign.

The bamboo pavilion was nice. The Seminole Indians used more than 9,000 palm fronds to thatch the roof.

An old banyan tree. I love the wrap-around, twist.

As you leave, you walk through the Royal Palm Grove - so peaceful.

Catching Up

Becca had a concert with her chorus group. The theme of the night was songs from around the world. I only recognized 3 songs of all that were sung. The 7th grade girls wore this navy blue dress and the 8th grade girls wore a black dress. A nice evening and we are looking forward to the Christmas concert.

This little guy was in front of my door one day when I came home. You can see how small he is next to my sneaker.

I never saw a snake like this before and looked to see what it is. It is a ring-neck snake and they only grow to be 8" long. He came around the night of the girls party and one of the girls carried him around for a bit and named him Velvet.

The kids got their report cards. They all did really well. Ben had 2 A, 3 B and 2 C. He has his C in Algebra back to an A and the one in Biology up to a B now. I'm pretty happy with what he brought home. He has been working hard this year and carrying a heavier schedule than he is accustomed to. Becca and Jessica had straight As. Stephanie had 1B and the rest were As. Here B was .5 away from being an A. Those FCAT focus tests really slam her for some reason.

I mentioned science fair projects a couple of posts ago and didn't say what they are because Jessica was still figuring hers out.

Stephanie is going to be using 30-50 people to find out if they are super tasters, average tasters or low tasters. Super tasters are supposed to have a stronger taste with certain foods, and I think she is going to take it to that level to find out what foods are stronger to them.

Jessica is going to be looking at what produce is stored in and what packaging keeps it freshest longest.