A Glastonbury Tradition

Every fall Grace and Lyla have a blast jumping in a big leaf pile with our neighbors. We've been blessed to have very friendly neighbors that almost all have girls. They love to play in the street with them after school on days when the weather is nice. Every fall there is always one day where the girls make a big pile of leaves and have a ball jumping in them and throwing them. This year it was in our yard. Our neighbor across the street also has a nice tree in her front yard so the girls carried buckets of leaves from her yard to our yard to make an extra big pile. They worked hard to get the pile as big as they could. We finally had to stop them and tell them to go ahead and jump. I love fall-leaf-pile-jumping pictures. I wished I had gotten a good one of Grace and Lyla together. Maybe next year. The girls in the pictures below from left to right are: Lyla, Reesi, Lola, Emma, Ryan (the only boy), Rachel, Ailey and Grace.

Poor Lyla

One weekend this past fall, my mom planned to take the girls to spend the night with my sister, Julie, that lives in Hendersonville. Then they were going to go on to Indiana with my mom for fall break. They went on to Julie's house that Friday evening. I got a frantic call my sister around 7pm saying Lyla just threw up but she says she feels better now. I said, let me know if she does it again. Somehow I knew I would be getting another call very soon, and I did. She was sick. Eric and I drove up to Hendersonville to pick her up. She was pitiful. I sat in the back of the van with her holding her bowl just waiting for the next time, which came about every 30 minutes. I "slept" with her all night doing the same thing. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep. I washed that bowl many, many times! The next day she seemed to be done throwing up but she definitely didn't feel good. Around lunchtime though she thought she could eat something. That didn't sit well on her stomach and she got sick again. She actually slept on the couch that afternoon for almost 2 hours! I think it's been about 3 1/2 years since she's taken an afternoon nap! Fortunately, no one else caught the virus. The next week I was on a field trip with her class and her teacher said that the virus had been making it's way through almost every child in her class the week before the break. Lucky us!

Redecorating

This picture shows the paintings that the girls did hanging above the fireplace. Grace's is the one on the left. Lyla's is on the right. Her vase shows the water inside of it. She thinks "outside the box".

Last spring I got the urge to redecorate my downstairs. The dark colors that I have used for the last 12 years were suddenly closing in on me. I desperately needed lighter, brighter, more airy surroundings. Well, we have finally begun to make a few changes. The first thing we did was paint over the red walls in the family room and foyer and the green walls in the kitchen. Eric and I stayed up late on a Friday night to do the prep work. I did the edging. On the next day Eric did the rolling. The girls were home and wanted to paint too. So I had them paint some canvases I've had under my bed for oh, about 4 years. I painted the background and then guided them on what to paint. I wanted to hang them over the fireplace so I didn't really want to give them complete control over what they painted. Looking back, I probably should have just let them do whatever they want. Maybe we'll do that one weekend we need something to do. Anyway, at the time, I wanted them to look similar. They ended up painting a vase with flowers in it. I helped them center the vase and make them the same size. They decided everything regarding the flowers in the vases. They turned out pretty cute. I also had my couch and chair recovered. They were slipcovered to begin with so I just had someone make new covers for them. I found the fabric at Wal-Mart, believe it or not, so it was really cheap, as far as slipcovers go. The picture I have above of the wall with their paintings on it is really dark. I need to take a different picture. I will also take pictures of the other things we've updated at some point. For now, this shows the first step in my mini-makeover.

Silly Band Trading

The silly band craze is just that...crazy. The funny thing about my girls loving them is, they don't even wear them! They just like to see what they have and try to trade with each other. It's funny. On this particular afternoon, they ended up in a trading session with the little girls that live next door. I just thought they were playing next door. When I went over to get them they were in a serious trading session! I went back home to get my camera, of course. It was too cute. It just cracked me up that they had their 4 chairs pulled up knee to knee all going through their piles and negotiating their deals! Hilarious!

I love coffee

The morning I took this picture the sun was coming in so bright. The steam from my coffee just looked neat rolling out of my coffee cup.

Butterfly Release

Grace's class raised butterflies this past fall. They had a release party and invited the parents to attend. They prepared several songs to perform for the parents at the release party. They even made cute butterfly hats. They were very cute. Once they had a cute butterfly cake snack they were ready to get the butterflies out. Each student had an orange slice. The butterflies must love orange juice because they stuck to those oranges forever! They were very pretty and the kids had a great time.

This is Delaney, Grace's friend from her class.

Some creative mom, that was NOT me, brought this cute butterfly cake made out of Little Debbie cakes.

Lyla's Class

This is just a class picture that Lyla's teacher emailed back in September.