Land-ho!

We closed on our land! It seems appropriate that we officially became the owners of a property on Turkey Roost Rd. the day before Thanksgiving. To celebrate, we took the girls, Nana, Aunt Dani, and the cousins up to see it.

The girls approved!

As did everyone else, I think.

We stopped at the neighborhood restaurant for lunch, I doubt this is the last time these two will play here:

and we stopped at Forks for ice cream; hopefully the start of a new tradition!

Black Friday

We have a new tradition! Somewhere, Sabine heard about Black Friday. As she is becoming quite the little consumer, she was bound and determined to check out the craze this year, her purse burning with allowance. How could we say "no" to this face?

We braced ourselves to brave the masses, traffic, and chaos by inviting some good friends to join us...only to drive up to almost the front door of a nearly-empty mall!

It was an unexpected but wonderful surprise! We all enjoyed ourselves, and actually made some great holiday purchases. Aspen even got to be one of the big girls, for once.

We also snapped this picture of these two dear friends, in about the same place as the original, about four years ago: 

When we got home, we opened the first box of Christmas decorations.





We are definitely getting into the spirit!

Thanksgiving

Aunt Dani hosted a gorgeous Thanksgiving spread, as always, this year, but we somehow forgot to document much. I think we were too busy eating. Sabine was nice enough to take this picture of the adults, quick before the kids disappeared to play the entire day!


Our contribution this year was an apple pie:



and we got one token picture of Sabine with the puppies. Next year we will try harder to get a picture of all the kids!



Per tradition, we we did remember to turn on Christmas carols for the drive home. 'Tis the season!

Friends

If nothing else, the girls stay very busy with their friends. They are both very social, and we get all sorts of pictures, nearly daily, of their sweet interactions. There's lots of play dates, but also school, Brownies, and dinner parties with parents' friends. Here's a smattering that we just HAD to document!

Halloween

The girls got their pumpkin scooped and carved this year, they still aren't big fans of the "slime" but they do like the roasted seeds!



Not to mention, the final product!





Sabine's school had their annual Halloween parade, which Aspen had to miss for the first time ever, because she was in preschool, herself.



Grandmom and Grandpa came down to help everyone get ready...



And Marie Antoinette and Rapunzel were ready to go!



Even Charlie got in on the Halloween spirit this year.



The Ninjago cousins showed up, and there wasn't much time for more pictures, these kids were ready to go get some candy!



Sabine stayed out later than ever, after finding her crew of neighborhood friends, while the cousins and Aspen came in a bit earlier. It was a very...lucrative Halloween.