Abby's school picture.

Paul's Birthday is tomorrow.

I've been working on a project for the last year or so.

Please go have a look: http://paulbeers.wordpress.com/

This one's for my parents.

Hey Mom and Pop,

Here is my first day of kindergarten:



And Abby's:

Easy Bake Oven!

I am very fortunate to have some amazing families on my caseload at work. One of the moms with a kiddo on my caseload presented me with an Easy Bake Oven for the girls during a home visit a couple of weeks ago. Typically, I don't take gifts from my families, but this one was too special too pass up, so after the OK from management (and several co-workers who thought I should keep it in the office and use it to bake cookies for staff meetings), I brought it home. Abby and I have had a great time baking with it.

After searching the internet, I found some recipes that use regular cake mix in the Easy Bake, which is awesome, since the refills that make 2 cakes each are $6.99. Too crazy! This was the first attempt with regular cake mix and it turned out great. In fact, I really considered making another one just for me after the kids had gone to bed.

Yummy cake with sprinkles!

My own cake!

I'm eating the whole thing! No bites for mommy.

Little Witches!

The girls decided to play dress up this afternoon. Abby came down and announced that they were little witches.

Too cute!

Libby's makeup!

Here is Libby's first attempt at mascara. I found her sitting on the bathroom counter like this. I knew she was being too quiet upstairs!

Halloween 2010!

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. We had several of our friends come over to go trick-or-treating with us, creating our own little mob of the under 6 set. Starting from the left is Kiera (the unicorn), Karen (the dalmatian), Peter (the fireman), Libby (Minnie Mouse), Abby (Wonder Woman), Emma (Cinderella), and Carly (the duck). As we got outside, we were also joined by Ethan, who was Mickey Mouse. Unfortunately, he and Libby refused to stand next to each other, so I didn't get a picture of Mickey and Minnie.



Ready to hit the town!



Our friends Matt and Susan were in town visiting from near Chicago and decided to come trick-or-treating with us. In their area, all trick-or-treating is done during daylight hours. Susan grew up there, but agreed that it's more fun after dark.


We've all decided that Bill and I (and now Kat and Eric!) live in the perfect neighborhood for trick-or-treating. As we were walking along, a police cruiser from Tualatin PD came by with its lights on and stopped next to us. The police officer then got out of the car and proceeded to give out candy to the kids, guaranteeing that our friends will all try to come back again next year.





Yum, candy!


We can't wait to go again next year!

The Fruit Loop with Grandma and Gramps...

Last weekend, my parents were up for a visit and we decided to head out for an adventure to Hood River to check out the "fruit loop". It was a great time and my dad now has apples for at least the next year. Here are Gramps and Abby picking out pumpkins at Rasmussen's farm, the first stop on our adventure.
Libby wanted to pick out her own pumpkin.

Abby is so cute!


Libby wanted to pull the cart.




Then, we moved on to the Kiyokawa Family Farms, where they were having the heirloom apple festival and Abby got to taste-test over 75 different varieties of apples. She thought that was great. They also had this fort where the girls had a blast. After this stop, the back of the van was weighted down with about a hundred pounds of apples.




Next stop was Mt. View Orchards and Fruit stand for their "Edelweiss Day", complete with German food and fresh apple cider. We brought some of the cider home and it's yummy. Here's Libby giving Mommy "the look".

We made one more stop, which was at Apple Valley's Heirloom Apple Butter Festival, where Grandma and I bought a couple of jars of apple butter while everyone else lounged in the van. Then, on to Multnomah Falls.

Neither of my parents had actually stopped at Multnomah Falls or the lookout at Crown Point, so we did both on our way back from Hood River.

By the time we got to the falls, it was drizzly, so we didn't get out to explore much.

All in all, it was quite an adventure for one day!