Spreading Christmas Cheer

One of the men in our church donated this Santa costume earlier this week, so Joel decided he would go to the girls' school dressed like Santa. The kids were so funny! We got there a little early so we sat outside the office for a few minutes. Everyone who walked by laughed a little bit and the kids usually acted like they weren't quite sure what to do. 

 We went to Anna's class first. We weren't sure if Anna would want us to come in, but she thought it was a good idea. Joel read Twas the Night Before Christmas, and they all listened very politely. 

 Norah's class was next. She told everyone "That's my dad." I'm pretty sure they already knew, but she was so excited I think she wanted that little claim to fame. 

 The kindergarteners were not quite so polite and attentive. 

 A few weeks ago, our pastor and friend Trevor was talking with our kids and his about things they can do during the Christmas season that would give the gift of "presence" rather than "presents." One of the ideas they came up with was to visit some of the older people in our church and sing to them. So this afternoon, we took the kids to visit two of our church members who live in assisted living and are not able to come to church anymore. The kids were so sweet and enthusiastic. We thought they might be a little shy especially since they didn't know the people well, but they did great! 

Christmas fun with Mum

This past weekend we had Mum come for a visit. It was a great time for her to visit because we had some fun Christmasy things planned. 

The first night she was here, we went to an event in our little community of Edgewater where they light up the Christmas lights downtown. Thankfully it wasn't too cold so we didn't mind too much when Santa was running late for his grand entrance. 

Anna and her friend Isaiah just being goofy.

 The next morning we went to a parade in downtown Golden. We used to take the girls to this parade when they were little, so it has become sort of a Christmas tradition for us. 

 Norah's new favorite thing to do it rock climbing. Joel took her climbing on a date recently, and she hasn't stopped talking about it since. Mum wanted to see her in action, so we decided to go again. 

 It was Anna's first time to try it, and we were all very proud of her. This kind of thing does not come naturally to her, but she did it three times and got a little higher each time. 

Joel preached at church on Sunday, then Mum took us out for lunch.

 Then we took a quick family picture before Joel and I got to go out and see a movie while Mum spent time with the girls. 

Monday is my normal day to volunteer in Norah's classroom, so I brought Mum with me. She really enjoyed being able to see their school and meet Norah's teacher and some of her friends. We're so thankful she was able to come visit us!

Thanksgiving Weekend

My parents came to Denver for Thanksgiving, and it was a full, fun weekend together! I didn't take many pictures, but here are a few (just for you, Becky!). My sister Becky and her husband Chris weren't able to be with us this time, but we get to see them at Christmas (Yay!). 

My sister Sara and her husband Geoff just bought a house, so we spent some time helping them get unpacked and settled in. 

 The girls requested a trip to the Downtown Aquarium since we had never been there before. Actually, Joel will correct me and say he took them there several years ago when they were much younger. I was out of town for the weekend and it was a fun thing for them to do. There is a flash flood exhibit that is right at the beginning, and apparently the thunder and lightning totally freaked out the girls, so Joel was left pushing a huge double stroller through crowds of people as they tried to get out of there as quickly as possible. So they were all a little traumatized from that experience.

This time it was much better! Here are the girls with the tiger behind them. You can barely see him up on the rock under the tree. 

 This was a highlight for Norah: petting and feeding the stingrays! The water was just barely too deep for her to reach them, but she was so patient waiting for them to swim a little higher. After about 15 minutes of waiting with her hand in the water, the staff said it was ok to feed them. Once we did that, they came right up to her. 

We're so thankful we were able to spend the weekend with family. Looking forward to being together again at Christmas!

Halloween Fun!

Halloween was a busy day full of lots of fun things. The girls wore their costumes to school, and I started the day going with Norah's class on a field trip to Hammond's Candy Factory. Four classes full of Kindergarteners in a candy factory on Halloween--that was quite a combination! This was my group:  a panda bear, Spiderman and Rapunzel.

 Anna spent the weeks before Halloween deliberating about how she wanted to dress up. I think she changed her mind about ten times. I finally gave her a deadline to decide so we could put a costume together. An alien is what she picked. 

 Here's the alien with some friends from her class.

 At the girls' school, Halloween is kind of a big deal. They have a big parade with all the students through the whole school. I didn't watch much of the parade because I was helping set up the party food in Anna's class, but I did get a quick glimpse of my panda bear as she walked past. Any time the kids are in the hall, they are supposed to cross their arms and "put a bubble in their mouths" so they don't talk. I think Norah's teacher maybe forgot to tell her that the bubble rule didn't apply to the parade!

 Here's Norah with one of her friends at their class party.

So Anna got home from school and told me that she didn't want to be an alien anymore. She decided to go back to one of her original costume ideas, Princess Leia. I think she realized that her alien headband wasn't much of a costume and she wanted to do something a little more elaborate. 

This year our Community Group helped to host a carnival at the girls' school to provide a safe alternative to trick-or-treating for families in our neighborhood. It was a lot of work, but turned out to be so much fun! We had over 200 people there. 

Here are the girls with their good friends and our partners in ministry, the Lees, otherwise known as Peyton Manning and a dancer. 

 Joel and I got creative and made our own costumes. Super Dad and Super Mom!

 We had some students from a local art college volunteer to do face painting and it was a huge hit! 

 This was the girls' favorite game: Candy Bar walk. Just like a cake walk, but the prize is a full size candy bar! 

It was really neat to see everything come together and to talk with different families in our school and in our community. Maybe it will become a yearly tradition!

School pictures

I think these pictures are a good description of how the girls feel about school: they love it! We've had a great experience so far this year. We moved into this neighborhood knowing the demographics of our school (it's very low income and transitional with a high population of Spanish speakers), but we felt strongly that sending our girls to the neighborhood school was an important way for us to connect to this community. We're blessed with two teachers who are very experienced and the girls have really connected with them. Joel and I have been very intentional about being involved at the school, and we're taking advantage of the resources they offer parents, like taking a Spanish class. We've even been given the opportunity to host a Halloween carnival at the school, along with our church and community group, to provide a safe place for young kids to go on Halloween. We're so thankful for the way God has provided a great school experience for us this year, and we're excited to see what other connections come from it. 

Anna, 2nd grade

 Norah, Kindergarten

Norah's first ballet class

For the past few weeks, Norah has been taking a ballet class. She has really enjoyed it, and for the class last week parents got to come in and observe. 

 In all of the pictures I took, she has this expression on her face. She looks like she's not having much fun, but she comes home talking non-stop about the class and showing us all her new moves. 

 While Norah has been doing ballet, Anna decided to take a pottery class. She had a great time creating her pieces. Here are the ones she brought home last week: a penguin sculpture, and jar, and a penguin mask. Penguins are her favorite animal right now, as you can probably tell. 

I'll leave you with a few short videos of Norah's ballet moves. As you can see, she is an expert skipper and mastered that skill even before she took ballet! 

An Afternoon Hike

Yesterday afternoon we kind of spontaneously decided to go on a hike. It was a beautiful fall day and we had been intending to head up to the mountains to see the fall colors. We decided on a place up in the foothills, so it was only a short drive from Denver: Lair O' the Bear park.

 Our hike began along the water, and the girls loved being able to throw leaves in and watch the rapids take them away. We had been to this park before, back in 2009. This time we took a little bit different trail, but ended up in the same place. And when we saw this bench, I remembered that I had a picture of the girls sitting on it from last time.

They've changed a lot, haven't they?

But some things are still the same, like girls being goofy for the camera. 

 Here's a few more pictures from the hike.

It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, especially when the Broncos aren't playing until Monday!

Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

Today Norah and I went on a field trip with her Kindergarten class to the pumpkin patch. This morning we woke up to the first snow of the season in Denver, so it turned out to be a very cold day. But we had fun anyway! 

Here we're on the wagon that took us out into the field to pick our pumpkins.

 There were so many kinds to choose from! Orange, white, green and orange...We just tromped right out into the field until we found one that looked good. 

 Here's Norah's pumpkin. She went with the classic orange variety.

 But she wanted a white one too, so she helped me find this one.

 After we picked pumpkins we had lunch, then got to play around the grounds of the farm. Right around lunch time the clouds rolled in and it got REALLY cold, so the kids didn't last long before it was time to get back on the bus. But Norah enjoyed petting the goats and seeing the other farm animals. 

Crazy Hair Day

Today is Crazy Hair Day at the girls' school. Norah has been planning her hairstyle for days. She calls it "corn hair." I think because the little ponytails look like ears of corn. We also tried an idea we heard from a friend--coloring your hair with chalk! It worked really well. Let's hope it washes out really well too. 

 You might be asking, "What did Anna do for crazy hair day? Her hair looks that way every day." You would be right about that. However, Anna's idea of crazy hair is to wear THREE headbands instead of one. I think she has inherited my sense of adventure. :)