Bad Santa Pictures

Baby Brayden (my youngest sister Holly's son) is in a bad Santa photo contest- click to the right for more details on how to vote.

Yesterday Santa was in Tiki. He rode down the main street on a fire truck and then held court at the fire station. At 6 Caroline is still afraid of the big man. She has yet to sit on his lap without a pep talk first. Maddy finally led her over and sat with her.

Why is it that we try to teach little ones not to talk to strangers and then all bets are off for the fat man in the red suit?

Now, THAT is a skating skirt

As many of you know, Caroline has been taking Skating lessons and has an interesting sense of style. Now the two have come together for your entertainment.

C goes deer hunting

Caroline, Hunter and I went to his parent's deer lease this past weekend. C helped Hunter build and install "Caroline's blind" in October and she was excited to try it out with him. The blind was everything Caroline wanted and they even "found dinner" as Caroline tells it.

This was the first time C was along for the whole process and she opened the windows in the blind for Hunter to shoot. She loved the tracking part, thought the gutting part was cool and gross at the same time ("his heart isn't really heart shaped it is sort of circle shaped. Isn't that weird?") and was very proud to help provide dinner.

Ski Jeans

All Caroline wants for Christmas is snow. She has been talking about it for 10 months. So, C and I will be headed to Minnesota to see new baby Parker (and or course his parents, puppies and grandparents) over Thanksgiving week. Since we had to purchase all the gear we decided to teach C to ski this year as well. So, C, H and I are going to Jackson Hole Wyoming in December to ski for a few days.

C now puts on her "ski jeans" and practices "Auntie Jill skiing" (cross country) and "Christmas skiing" (downhill) complete with actions. She will be ready.

Halloween

The news is out. Caroline's secret identity is Violet Parr of the Incredibles.

We went to Port A for Halloween again this year. C loved trick or treating with Tres (C's godfather's son and her good friend in PA) last year and we added the twins to the mix this year.

As soon as C is in costume she IS Violet. She will throw a force field to save you from danger or go invisible at the first sign of intruders. At one point the kids were all loading in the golf cart to head out and C fell out. We went running over and John replied, "She is ok. She has a force field."

Of course Violet could not go alone. So, I made shirts for Hunter and I as well. It was pretty cold, so we both wore ours under a jacket, but flashed our family identity several times along the trick or treat route to ward off the bad guys.

Adelyn was Junie B. Jones of second grade book fame and John was Clint Eastwood from "the Man with No Name." He was working his cigar and even tipped his hat when he said thank you.

A Supercalifragilistic kind of day

In August, I saw the ad for Mary Poppins - the Musical. I knew it was the moment I had been waiting for for six years. My baby girl was old enough to accompany me to musicals! Oddly enough, C saw the same ad and tore it out of the newspaper and had me hang it in her room. She LOVES the movie.

Of course this was an extra special Fancy Nancy kind of event so C got to wear her Jane Banks pinafore. Mimi brought this back from NOLA over the summer. Every grandma we passed did a double take and smiled. You gotta love a little girl in braids and a pinafore.

If you have a chance, this was an incredible technical musical. It was done by the same people as the Lion King. Of course the show is not just a reproduction of the movie and actually follows the book more, so we had to have several whispered discussions. But we attended the first matinee of the show and it was full of whispering kids.

Spoiler alert: at the end, MP flys off into the sky and goes out over the crowd. She landed right in front of us. C jumped up and started clapping. I am pretty sure she liked her first big girl musical performance

the new deer blind

Over the summer, Hunter built a new blind for the deer lease. This was then taken over by Caroline and I to camouflage. I truly hope the deer are color blind and not art critics because this blind is light pink and VERY interesting. The portrait on the front is John, Mimi, Adelyn, Papa and Caroline. The tiny rat looking thing is actually our dog. And the best part- I drew it. C added her dinosaurs, palm trees and bats to the other sides.

C, Hunter and Cia went to the lease for the weekend to put it up for the season. Caroline and Cia went exploring while Hunter was working (and Mommy was back home scrapbooking) and found lots of treasures- real and imagined.She even got to eat smore's for breakfast.