Our Annual Trip to Minnesota

In October we took a trip. We started with a stopover in Seattle and spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house. It was then they gave Sabrina her birthday presents, including a Hello Kitty airplane. We couldn't fit it in our checked baggage, but luckily it had a handle so it was one of Sabrina's carry-ons.

We then went to Minneapolis so Marel could work in the office for a few days. The cousins came up from Omaha to spend the weekend with us before Marel had to work, and we all had a good time. Balo and Celia enjoyed walking around Ikea together. Balo even let Celia hold his hand.

Sabrina and Clara also had fun sitting in the back seat together.

Sabrina also took a liking to Balo. She was always up for whatever he wanted to do. Balo: "Sabrina, let's fight!" Sabrina: "Ok!" Here they are eating breakfast at the hotel, which all the kids say is one of their favorite parts of our Minneapolis trips.

We went to the sculpture garden to take some cousin pictures. We also attempted a few portraits. Elena was adorable and ever-stoic. This was about the biggest smile we ever saw from her.

The rest of the kids were feeling a little too silly to take good pictures.

New this year was the blue snowman, which was enjoyed by all.

We also took the perennial jumping rabbit picture.

We ended up that night with what has become another one of our annual traditions: dinner at the Dancing Ganesha restaurant, where the food is excellent and they don't mind the kids taking over the place just a little bit.

The cousins had to go back home to Nebraska after church on Sunday morning, but not before taking one last picture together.

After Marel spent a few days in the office, we left Minnesota. Of course we had to stop when we saw these in the airport.

We figured as long as we were halfway across the country, we should just go all the way and visit the other cousins in Maryland. More on that later...

Happy Halloween

This was a whirlwind Halloween because we got home from vacation less than a week before the holiday (pictures of vacation coming soon).  The girls each got a pumpkin to design.  I just gave them a sharpie and a pumpkin.  After seeing Sabrina's, Tom said I should have just said "what shape do you want the nose?  How about the mouth?"  But Tom did a great job cutting such a creative design to make it come to life and Sabrina loved it.  Celia's is a girl pumpkin because it has a bow.  

Tom and I finished up the Ariel wig just the night before Halloween.  The princesses were ready for trunk or treat.  

Trunk or treat is totally the way to go.  They get a mountain of candy in 20 minutes and then we're done.  It's usually especially ideal because it's freezing on Halloween, but this year wasn't so bad.  It was pretty warm a little rainy.  By the end of the night (when we do our one annual trick-or-treat to Taylor and Travis' house), Sabrina's hair wouldn't stay on, so Tom was her entourage holding her hair in place.  

Sabrina's Art

Here's some of Sabrina's art. She's not quite as prolific an artist as Celia is (as posted yesterday), but she does seem to be more concerned with composition and how the image fills the page. She'll often start drawing something, and then stop and think and say she doesn't have room, and then ask for a new piece of paper. She also went through a period a few weeks ago where she would fill an entire page with a single color. For example, we picked her up from nursery one day and she had a piece of paper that was scribbled all black. I asked her was it was and she said it was "a dark, dark sky, but it's not finished yet." Then when we got home she filled in the gaps and made it even darker. She had other single-color pieces she described as things such as water and grass.

 

Here are a few of our favorites of her pictures of people and things. This one is a picture of Mommy and Daddy swimming, and the smaller purple figure to the right is "a nice swimming ghost."

 

This, as captioned, is "an alien and a circled waterfall."

Compositionally, this one is our favorite.  Moving from left to right we have a baby, a smooshed baby, and a daddy in the circle.  To the right of that is a flower.  The patterns in this make it look like it could be an indigenous paining on a cave wall.

 

This one is a "kid with big, big hair and short legs with a bee on her hair"  I love that bee.

Celia's Art

Celia comes home from school each day with multiple works of art.  Because they're getting out of control, I've posted them here so I can start recycling some!  I've organized them by topic:

RAPUNZEL (by far her favorite subject in art):

 This one is Celia on my bed pretending to be Rapunzel

OTHER PRINCESSES:

HALLOWEEN:

This one is her dressed as Ariel at Trunk-or-Treating.  It was a huge picture and I had to cut off the front of the car (which had a Mickey Mouse antenna ball):

SCHOOL/SCHOOLWORK:

This one is Celia is her "Sweeter than Candy" Halloween shirt running into her friend, Gabby, at school.

I love her profile pictures.  I think they're pretty impressive:

I think she said this one is her with me.  We love eachother:

This one may look like the backside of the previous one, but it's actually the paper that was underneath when she was coloring.  She made me keep it because it's "Modern Art."  (Where does she get this stuff?)

At Celia's school, they get little paper bear everyday.  If they are good, it's a green bear.  This is Mrs. Anderson, Celia's teacher, thinking about which bear to give Celia.  Of course she would never get a yellow or red bear!

This is Celia at School wearing her Zebra pants and her "I'm a Trusty" shirt.

Mermaids always make math way more fun.

CHURCH-RELATED:

This one is for me, (hence my name on it), and it's a picture of Celia getting baptized by her dad.

This is Jesus.

At a Sunday School lesson, they were asked to draw something their mothers have taught them.  Celia drew herself learning to not "have an attitude."  

TRAVEL:

This is Celia at our tent at Kenai while we're dipnetting.  Celia's playing with her bucket and apparently Sabrina is "in the tent getting her clothes on."  

This is an Alaska Airlines airplane.  Recognize it?

This is Tom dipnetting with Sabrina watching.

OTHER:

Celia with Sabrina:

A minion from "Despicable Me."

And my personal favorite just came home from school just yesterday.  She says she drew a picture William had on his folder.  Awesome:

Stay tuned for a few pieces of Sabrina's art (not nearly as many, I promise.)