November

Things have slowed down a bit since soccer. However, we are still up at the crack of dawn every day. Emily has early morning violin. There are three elementary schools here in Ellensburg. The girls go to Valley View. The early morning violin is at Mt. Stewart which is clear across town. She has to be there at 7:30 am and then she takes a special bus just for this group back to Valley View before school starts at 8:40 am. That is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then Molly has choir at 8:00am at Valley View on Monday and Thursday. We are reaping some of the benefits of all these early mornings.

Molly got to conduct one song at the Veteran's Day program at school. I didn't get to go because I had class, but Grandma and Granddad Carter and Grandpa Glen came to watch. I guess there were a couple other kids who conducted, but Molly was the only one that was announced. They even record the performance and show it on tv, but I haven't seen it yet. Grandma said she had recorded some of it. I will have to see if I can get it.

Emily had her first violin concert on the 18th. It was all the strings from Elementary, Middle, and High School. It was a very nice program and it was all less than an hour. We went to the Morgan Middle school where they have a stage and theater seats. It was very nice except for a little boy that kept walking through our row. His mom was five rows in front of us and he was just wondering back and forth.

(I am having problems uploading the video of Emily's concert. I will try later.)

I only have about two weeks of classes left. Things are finally letting up. I am not as stressed as I was. Timothy is doing great. He is improving so fast in his speech therapy that they say he won't need it for much longer. We are so excited. Benjamin is 11 months old now. He is getting so big. He is cruising along furniture and is very close to walking. It is amazing to watch how fast he is growing.

Jared is so great. He has helped me a lot this quarter. I have the best husband in the world. He has been busy at work. He is thinking of trying to do Driver's Ed again. We will see if that happens. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving.

Soccer

YAY!!! Soccer is over. Molly and Emily have been doing soccer this fall. Molly was put with the U11 girls since not enough girls signed up for the 10 year old age group. So she was playing with 10 and 11 year old girls. She is only 9, but she held her own and got right in there to kick the ball. Jared coached Emily's team. No one volunteered to coach so Jared did it. It was a lot of work getting our schedules together. I am glad that it is over. They had a lot of fun.

Both Molly and Emily's teams had Orange uniforms. Since Jared was a coach he got a free picture. Usually it is only with the one daughter, but we were able to get both girls in. It was really cute. Jared didn't have his coaches sweater yet. The sweaters were gray so that they would be neutral, but I liked that all of them were in orange for this picture. Isn't it great!

Halloween

Halloween was fun. Molly was a vampire, Emily was a witch, Timothy was Buzz Lightyear, and Benjamin was a frog prince. School got out at 1:10. We got ready to go Trick or Treating. We went downtown to do our trick or treating. It was a lot of fun. We even brought one of Molly's friends with us. Our favorite place to trick or treat downtown was Papa Murphy's. They give the kids a free personal pizza or cookie dough. It is great. Then we went to a party that Molly's friend was having. We had chili and pizza and then we went trick or treating around where they live. It is on top of the hill so it is the nicer part of town. Lots of good stuff. Then we went over to another party that Jared and I were invited to. They had a bonfire outside and lots of good stuff to eat. The kids had a lot of fun and ate way too much candy.

We carved pumpkins the night before Halloween. The kids loved it.

Molly carved BEWARE in her pumpkin. It was a printed copy and had fingers clawing over the top. You can't see it very well. It was very difficult and Jared and I had to help her.

Emily did this all by herself. She had a lot of fun.

Timothy picked out the picture of what he wanted carved and then helped a little bit with taking the seeds out. Then I carved the pumpkin for him. What great fun.

Disneyland

We were at Disney land from October 23 through October 25. We flew from Seattle after classes on the 22nd and got to California around 1:00am. We didn't get to our hotel until 2:00am. Then we went to the park when it opened at 10:00am. It was 90 degrees the whole time we were there. We went on all the rides and had fun. The 24th was Jared's parent's anniversary. We went over to California adventures and spent a lot of time riding the new Toy Story Ride. It is a ride and a game. You have a gun to shoot and there are carnival games that you play. It was fun. We went on it 5 or 6 times. Molly wanted to go on the big rides. Jared took her on the California Screaming roller coaster a couple of times and I took her on the Malliboomer which was soooo much fun. It was also terrifying. It is like the game where you hit the bottom and try to ring the bell at the top. Anyway, you are strapped in and hanging. They have a plastic cover over your face and they shoot you into the air about ten stories up. Then you bounce down. Molly loved it. On the 25th we were planning on going to Ariel's grotto. However, about an hour before we went, Emily started throwing up. It was the heat. So we went to the nurse and let her lay down for a while. Then we decided to go on Toy Story yet again. While we were in line, we noticed that Timothy wasn't with us. I went back out the line and didn't find him. There were two ways I could have gone and I happened to go the right way. He was down just a little bit and a park employee was talking with him. He must have gotten seperated from us in the line and decided to try and find us. We need to get him to understand that if he is lost he needs to stay where he is and not go wondering. We then flew home on my birthday. We didn't get home until 9pm. We had lots of fun.

Phantom of the Opera

On October 9 we went and saw Phantom of the Opera in Spokane. It was a blast. We went with my sister and her husband, Jenny and Scott. It was the first time that I had seen Phantom live. This was Jared's birthday present. We also got to go and see Liz and her new house and she watched Ben for us. Marianne and Sara wanted pictures taken of them too.