More Video Clips from Visitor's Day at Dance Yesterday

Here are a few more videos of Ella at dance yesterday...ENJOY!

Visitor's Day at Dance

This week is Visitor's Week at Ella's dance studio. It was so much fun getting to watch! Here are a few pictures and video clips of her class.

In this first post the class is sitting and bending over to put their nose to their feet. Ella didn't put a whole lot of effort into her beding.

I have a few more to post but it's getting late and the videos are uploading VERY SLOWLY. I will load the rest in the next few days. Enjoy these and check back soon!

Here are the video clips from the Oktoberfest at church last night.

Oktoberfest

Tonight was our annual Oktoberfest at church. The kids were able to dress in their costumes and they played games and decorated pumpkins. Unfortunately, between the burn bans (we couldn't have a bonfire to roast marshmallows) and rain (we couldn't have hayrides) there wasn't a whole lot of other stuff left to do. Here are a few pictures of the costume contest. The video clips I took are having a hard time loading so I will try uploading those later.

Trent's Pumpkin

Here are a few pictures of Trent and I preparing his pumpkin for the school's 3rd Annual Pumpkin Decorating Contest. Tomorrow is the last day to submit pumpkins, so of course you can guess which family was at Michael's at 7pm this evening buying supplies. Trent figured out how to make this musical note pumpkin while we were driving home from school this afternoon...but I would like to point out that the past 2 years we have waited until the night before the final submission day and for the past 2 years Trent has won a category. In kindergarten, he did the fire man pumpkin that won 2nd place OVERALL in the entire school regardless of grade (he beat out 1st though 5th graders for that one) and last year in 1st grade his Batman pumpkin won for the Cutest Pumpkin in the 1st-2nd grade division. I personally believe that waiting until the last minute and then freeking out because we don't have any ideas, followed by running out the craft store an hour before bed and then piecing something together 5 minutes before bedtime seems to work in our favor. We will have to see if my theory holds up this year.

WHAT A WEEKEND!!!

I thought I would sit down and recap the "going-ons" of our family this week. It has been a while since I last posted...although I don't have pictures to go along with this post at least it's an update for those people who check frequently and get perturbed when I don't talk about what's going on. This was an extrememly busy weekend, so if this post doesn't make much since it's not because I failed English (believe it or not I actually carry a middle school endorsement in English on my teaching license) but rather a lack of sleep and excessive activity the past 3 days. Tonight will be an early bedtime!

Friday brought RAIN to the area! Not just a sprinkle but an actual downpour for several minutes. Grammy and PawPaw invited us to their house for dinner on Friday and then we went and did our birthday shopping for this week...Dylan is celebrating turning 8 and Grant is 5. It's been awhile since I've been at the mall when they put the gates down at 9:00pm but we closed down the mall on Friday! And we even stayed longer at the mall because Barnes & Noble doesn't close until later!

Yesterday (Saturday) we woke up about 7:45, and after doing several things around the house we headed out the the school for our 1st annual Fall Festival. Because it was put on my PTA I was strongly encouraged to attend but Trent wanted to go anyway so we planned it into our schedule. We bought $5.00 worth of tickets for the kids to play games and then ate lunch. Trent used one of his tickets to enter his name into the "Principal for a Day" drawing; I've already asked that if he wins could he let his mom have a day off. Unfortunately, our principal didn't think it as good an idea as I did. We will find out tomorrow morning if his name was picked.

After a short visit to the Fall Festival we traveled up to see Natalie and Edgar (and of course Amanda, too) on what was actually a business trip for John. He sold Natalie's church a new sound system for their new contemporary(8:45) service that began this morning and therefore, he was also contracted to help them on the first Sunday. Today was the day! We got to their church for a quick dress rehearsal at 3:30 yesterday and then enjoyed a very nice dinner with a few of the other staff members and their families. By the way, Natalie just celebrated her 1st anniversary at First Baptist and the whole family is doing very well!

After dinner, we went back to Natalie and Edgar's house and the kids played for a little while before bedtime. After putting the kids to bed we all got involved watching the UVA football game so of course we didn't go to bed until after 11:30. I actually think that after Edgar and I finished talking about life at Carson-Newman it was closer to midnight before I tiptoed to my room.

This new service was a long time in the making and highly advertised in their community so they were looking for a large crowd. This meant that in order for everyone (staff/band members) to be ready and for everything to be set in time John and Natalie needed to be at the church by 6:30 this morning. Luckily, the rest of us got to sleep a little longer. It was an awesome service and we heard afterwards that they counted a little less than 300 in attendance for this inagural event!

We ate lunch with Edgar, Amanda, and their friend Daniel before leaving to drive back home. Natalie joined us a little later after she left the 11:00 traditional service. Coming home we were on a little bit of a time constraint...John had to be back at our church by 3:00 to help a band load in for a youth concert. I took the kids out to K-Mart and Wal-Mart to help me find a GREEN shirt and pair of pants. Our Trunk-or-Treat theme this year is Batman and I'm supposed to be The Riddler but I'm having difficulty finding appropriate attire on which to puff paint hundreds of question marks. I'm also looking for a cheap pair of black boots for Ella (Bat Girl) to wear with her costume. No luck on either one! Time is running out...the Octoberfest at church is this coming Wednesday and then we will be doing the Trunk-or-Treat next week.

At 5:30, I took the kids to Putt-Putt for Grant's 5th birthday party. We played a round of Putt-Putt, ate pizza nad cake, opened gifts, and then spent the last 30 minutes playing video games. So, as I said it's been a busy weekend. And now it's bedtime. Talk to you soon!

Ella's First Family Picture

Ella drew this picture yesterday in Sunday School...it was her first drawing of her family. Here is a short clip of her explaining what she drew.