Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet!

This is the first year the girls chose their own costume ideas without my persuasive input.  I really wanted them to be Cinderella in the rag dress and Ariel in the "Kiss the Girl" dress, but they were not having that.  Lera said she would be Cinderella in the rag dress next year, Cinderella in the blue dress the next year, Rapunzel the next year, etc. etc.  Basically, she has her whole childhood figured out, as far as Halloween costumes go.




The girls LOVED getting make-up and sparkly tattoos on their faces!


Meow.


Jedis and droids.




Chess was holding Raven's hand, so Lera wanted to hold Saryn's hand.


Still choosing suckers as their candy to eat first!

Happy Halloween!

Play Group at the Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin Carving

Chess drawing out a design.






Ta-da!

Lera Turns 4!

The day before Lera's birthday, we had a little party at Joy School with her friends.





The whole family woke her up to tell her happy birthday!



Opening presents.



Luckily, the library was having story time, and Lera loves the library!



Later, we had lunch at Chick-fil-a with some of her cute friends.



The ward trunk-or-treat just happened to be on Lera's birthday, as well.  So, of course we went to that and the girls had a great time.







I think my sweet Lera had a pretty good birthday!  I love my smart, funny, loving, tough, clumsy, giving, happy, squirmy, and sassy girl!

Consolidated Gold Mine

We took the girls to Dahlonega to see if we could strike it rich by finding gold!


Our tour guide showed us where the gold used to be.  I guess we got there a little too late to strike it rich.


We did see a small underground waterfall that was pretty cool.


Chess danced and galloped through the mine.


We learned a lot, saw some bats sleeping, then climbed out of the mine.


We were given another chance to find some gold!  The girls are holding their tokens to do some gold panning.


Ready to find some gold nuggets.


This nice man did some magic and pulled gemstones out of the girls' ears!


Panning is hard work.


Chess did it mostly by herself.


We found some!  It didn't make us rich, but we sure had a good time! :)

Cousin Halloween Party at Nan-Naw and Paw-Paw's

One-Nighter

Chess has been asking to go camping, so when we had a free weekend and the weather just happened to look amazing, we decided we had to do a one-nighter.



Playing by the water quickly turned from this...


to this...


It was a warm evening, so it turned out okay and the girls had a blast.







Unfortunately, our wood was old and slightly damp, so we had no fire.  But we had sparklers and cooked our hot dogs on the stove.

The next morning we ate, played at the playground, played around our campsite, had lunch, then packed up to go home.

Kinsey Family Farm

With the big cousins at school, we took the little cousins on a field trip to this cute farm.