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Violet cheered in the Jenks Christmas Parade today.  We all had fun going to the parade, and the kids liked collecting candy.  She did a good job after she got over being chilly, but it was really a great morning for a parade.  We spent most of the rest of the day around the house, and the kids climbed the tree in the backyard for quite a while, and even took some books outside.  It was a great day!

Warming up before the Parade.

Having fun in the parade.

Enjoying candy after she was finshed with her part of the parade.

Quentin and Violet both entered an art contest at their elementary school.  They loved getting a canvas of their own, picking out paint colors, and deciding on what they wanted to paint.  They had to stay within a theme (Together we can), which they didn’t really understand.  Quentin just wanted to paint fish or dinosaurs – he didn’t see the need for a theme.  They finally settled on a reef painting for Quentin (Together we can save the reefs) and a rainbow for Violet (Together we can make the world a happy place).  I love them and we are going to hang them in their rooms.  Quentin got 3rd place in his age group, and Violet got an honorable mention.  They both got trophies, and were very happy!!  Sorry for the bad pics.

Some pics from last Sunday afternoon (11.07.2010) – climbing trees (or, rather, the one tree we have that you can climb) and swingin’.

We went trick or treating around our neighborhood tonight.  Aren’t they cute?

Cousins Jake and Cole sent Quentin and Violet some new rollerblades, and tonight we tried them out.  They love them!

Sunday afternoon we had great weather, so Heather and I decided to take the kids to the Pumpkin Patch.  They agreed to pose for a few pictures with the promise of a turn on the inflatable slide.  They all had fun picking out pumpkins and rolling the wagon around.

All three cousins spent a few days at the lake with Gramma and Grandad in the rv.  They had a good time, but by Sunday you could tell they had been spending a lot of time together.  There was a lot of teasing and button pushing going on.  I started implementing the quiet game, which helped distract them some.  At one point, the girls were talking in the car in a small backseat on either side of Quentin’s head.  He yelled out, “Girls!  Let’s play the quiet game!  One, two, three, GO!”  I think he’s onto my game.

Violet cheered at halftime at the Jenks/Sapulpa game tonight.  She had a great time!

…fly a kite!

I went to a conference in New York last week <insert photo evidence>

and really enjoyed getting to see a few sites.  While I was there, I went to FAO Schwartz and bought the kids kites.  As soon as we all got home on Sunday after they picked me up at the airport, we had to try them out.  Quentin got a shark and Violet got a butterfly.  It wasn’t quite windy enough to really fly them, but we all had a great time trying.

It was a gorgeous day, so, of course, we needed to play on the playset a bit, too.

It was a good day.  So happy to see my family!

Tonight was “meet the teacher” at gymnastics, which basically consisted of students and parents crowding around the teacher for a brief discussion about what the kids had been learning in class, and a demonstration of each student’s favorite technique.  I couldn’t get a good picture of Violet during the demo, but after class was over, she was kind enough to perform a few moves for the camera.  She is doing a fabulous job at gymnastics, and her favorite thing is to climb the rope (a knotted rope that is about 20 feet high).