Seibert Christmas

We drove up to Farmer, Ohio to take part in the Annual Seibert Christmas in October Party. This year being Here are some of the great grandchildren: Annalise, Nate, Evie, Natalie, Gavin, Corey, and Oliver not paying attention. Not pictured are Tessa and Emily. They were too busy being cuddled by aunts.
Evie is thrilled with her presents from Marin: gardening tools, a I spy book, and a microphone to drive her mom crazy. Fortunatley, natalie got a mic too so they can put on "shows" together.

Annalise received a doggie Care Bear. Right up her alley.

Annalise and Evie stayed pretty clean despite the party being held in an auto and truck garage.

Evie had lots of fun playing with her cousins, but really had to be persuaded to eat dinner before she dove into the desserts.

Zoo Boo

It was a pretty nice day here and also fall break from school. We headed down to the zoo for Zoo Boo. It's an event where the kids get to wear their costumes, trick or treat, and see the wildlife.

Here they are in all of their pastel glory. If the weather changes like they say it will, these costumes will be hidden under winter jackets just like in MN. Evie was walking and chomping on some NERDS. Zoom in and you will see that she stashed the NERDS box in her costume.
Annalise had a great day. We met up with our favorite Elephant Keeper and got up close with the zoo's biggest animals. She was a little scared to touch the elephant, but she warmed up.

We all checked out this wonderful animal--Thanks for getting us backstage passes, Tim!

I finally talked Annalise into some pigtails. She must have liked how they felt.

Trick or Treat Practice

Halloween is just around the corner and the kids are getting really excited about it. Evie is excited to wear her fairy costume. Annalise had lots of options--fairy, lion, princess--and decided to go with the princess option from the Evie collection of 2006. Aunt Becky, does this take you back to The Dells--Trip 1 or what?

Annalise gets the hang of trick or treating and Evie is teaching her all she knows.

Back to normal

Life is returning to normal around here. No grandparents to bat eyes at and get out of eating vegetables or drinking milk. Since we returned, Evie has been bent on raking leaves. Finally, enough leaves fell that we could start stuffing the halloween bags. Annalise stands next to the "pooky ghosts". for some reason, she can't get the "s" out of spooky. Our favorite is to hear her say "pooky pider".
Evie, less enhusiastic. She was all charged up about filling the pumpkin bag that Grandma Taller gave her. Unfortunately, we don't have that many leaves--Grandma, did you have any idea that the bag was about the size of the kitchen island? We did our best and it's only a quarter full. Probably won't be long before we can fill that bag and several more.

Because they were covered with leaf mold and dust, the girls had baths before dinner. Of course, if Evie gets dressed on her own, then Annalise has to also.
Annalise says "I can do it!". Someone needs to hide these summer jammies!

Mom and Dad's Vacation

We celebrated a major anniversary this year. We planned on taking a trip and then Jim was awarded an innovation award at work. Part of the award was a trip out to Laguna Beach, CA for him and a "friend". Despite being surrounded by work people, we managed to relax. Our hotel was on the beach. When the tide came in, I'm pretty sure that the surf hit the building. The hotel had no air conditioning because of the ocean breezes. Unforunately, you couldn't turn off the waves at night, so it was a little noisy.
We went to San Juan Capistranno Mission for a visit. It was the first Catholic Mission in CA established in 1776. People must have been shorter then.
Here's the view looking the other way from our balcony.
Oh, and back to San Juan. This church was built around 150 years ago. It stood for about 9 years before it became a ruin due to an earthquake.
Sunrise on the ocean. Are you jealous yet? If you zoom in, the bouys that you see are actually floats for lobster traps. If you have a lobster license, you can go out and scuba dive or snorkel and catch them with your bare hands!

Of course, in CA, we tasted some wine. Then, after we became sufficently lubricated, they showed us to where we could buy what we tasted. Good marketing. Then we had a nice nap.

On Saturday, we went Kayaking on the ocean. We aren't too confident on our skills, so we didn't take the camera. It was great fun. After cleaning up, we drove up to Pasadena to see our friends, Tami and Mike.

Tami recently had Kaia. She was just a week and a half old when we met her. That means she was nice and cuddly and sleepy.
You can't be within 5 miles of a college football landmark and not stop. We know Purdue won't be seeing this sight this year.

Thanks to both sets of Grandparents for splitting the childcare. Our kids were completely worn out by the time they hit bed on Monday night.

Pink Eye....

Evie came home froms chool on Monday looking a little strange to me. Upon further investigation, I figured she had pink eye (as confirmed by WebMD). The Dr called in some eye drops and it is looking much better. Although she has also developed a cough and sore throat. Wonder what that is going lead too....Oh well, Grandma and Grandpa are here now to take care of them while we go to California for the rest of the week. She is in good hands.
Since we are still in isolation from all our neighbors, we are forced to play with each other. Annalise got to be the engine
Here's a pocket full of sunshine. She is almost completely recovered from her Shingles but now has developed a huge fear of the dark. Looks like the star night light will be moving into her room.
Evie is hanging in there and is going to be a big help for Grandma in getting things done while mom and dad are gone.
The best part about them growing up is that they are really starting to play with each other. This is especially helpful while I'm trying to make dinner. Here, Evie is drawing pictures of her and Annalise in their Halloween costumes.

Weekend

Not much happening this weekend. We tried to stay away from other people as much as we can to keep all diseases to ourselves. Fortunately, we think that Evie doesn't have chicken pox and Annalise is doing much better. While we were busy watching football games (Go Toledo! Go Gophers!), Evie made these fancy glasses for both of them to wear.
We also decided that a little fresh air wouldn't hurt anyone so we went to the local pumpkin patch. We got to take a tractor ride out to the pumpkin field.
It was very exciting for both girls to ride behind a stinky diesel tractor.
Our choices for pumpkins. They had to meet two criteria: no soft spots and.....
....you had to be able to carry them yourself (this is because the bigger the pumpkin, the more expensive!)
The tractor ride back to the "barn" where we got to choose a carmel apple and some cider to round out the trip.

Sunday was such a nice day that as soon as we got home from church and changed into our playclothes, we went outside. Evie was outside all day and only came into the house to use the bathroom. She even had rest time out on a blanket under the tree. We ate lunch and dinner outside too!

After Annalise woke up from her nap, we headed to the local nature preserve to take a hike and look at the leaves.


Evie's collection of rather large leaves.
Annalise's collection really didn't have any boundries of largeness or colorfulness. They were just interesting to her. Then she threw them in the creek. Oh well, better there than in the car with Evie's leaves.
What's a park without a playset? Annalise loves to yell down the tube slides and hear her voice echo.
Evie decided to practice her jumping off of things.

Here she is mid-flight. Don't worry Grandmas, she landed just fine.

Challa Back

This one is for the Jacobs out on the other side of the Mississippi River.Mom's Challa stuffed with apples and honey. Yes, we know that high holidays are over. You guys can make a ham and cheesy potatoes 2 weeks after Easter. This loaf lasted all of 12 hours in the house. It became the best french toast I've ever had this morning. Thanks to Alton Brown and the food channel for the recipe.
Evie butters her slice with great care.
Annalise has butter. We aren't sure she would even bother with bread if it wasn't for the butter. And of course, she had to spread it herself.
Challah Stuffed kid. Shingles update: Looks like the worst is over. No new spots and the ones she had are all scabbed over. Her fever has broke and she is in better spirits, but still gets run down pretty easily and asks to be put to bed at naptime. The interesting side effect of all of this is that you can contract chicken pox from being exposed to Shingles. Therefore, we are watching Evie very closely . I even made a paniced call to the dr. last night because I thought there were 3 unusual spots that I spotted on her neck. Today, they don't look pussy or scabby or anything like the pictures on Web MD so we may be in the clear. Just to be on the safe side, we are laying pretty low this weekend and trying not to have much contact with other children. We'll see where we are on Monday for school.
While mom and dad cleaned up the mess, the girls retreated to the living room to listen to the latest on the economic crisis on our favorite NPR program, Marketplace.

Tuesday

It was a quiet day here today. Just recooping from our exciting weekends. Our budding artist created this during her sister's naptime.
Later, we bummed around in the basement with "Legs" Taller. After this she took her first shower with assistance from mom and dad. She liked them so much that she proclaimed that she wanted to take a shower every night from now on.
Annalise shows off the newst style in nightwear. It's hard to part with your summer nightgowns, so why not wear them over your footie jammies?
She looks good now, but it's been a long day for Annalise. Over the weekend, she developed this rash on her back. Yesterday, it spread to her arm. I called the Dr. and he said to haul her in. I suspected a case of poision ivy, but she wasn't itchy. Then, today she was a big pile of whiny kid. Her appointment was at 4:15 and I had to wake her to go so I started to suspect that it was more than poision ivy. The Dr. saw her and diagonsed her with shingles. He said he hasn't seen shingles in a kid in a long time. We did some research and found out that none of the rest of us will probably get it as long as her spots are covered. We also found out that a person is more likely to get shingles if a close relative had it as a kid and Jim remembered his sister having it as a child. So now we are quarantined for a while. And since it is going to be rainy tomorrow, looks like we will get some house work done.

Camp Out!!!

This was a big weekend for the girls. On Saturday morning, Mom and Dad left them with the babysitter. Mom went to Chicago to see New Kids on the Block with some of her friends (friends who cried when the band took the stage). Dad went to the Purdue/Penn State game. When Dad got home, the preparations for the big camp out began!First, everyone found their lanterns. A very important part of the camping trip.
Then they got pajamma-ed up and found some books to read at bedtime. I'm not sure why Annalise always has to hold things over her head. Maybe so we can get a good look at stuff.
They got on their jackets because it was a cold night and walked to the campground....
...10 feet away from the deck. Look hard and you can see the tent in the back ground.
The three happy campers. From what I'm told, Evie settled down nicely, but Annalise was more like a "pinball" in the tent until she finally fell asleep. They rose before dawn and did the sporting thing of capping off their camp out with a donut.