Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving at our house this year with Coco & Grandpa.  We had a semi-homemade year, opting for some Whole Foods prepared foods.  I did do some cooking though and Elle was a great sous chef!  

Fetching my sweet potatoes for the souffle

Both girls and Grandpa got involved in making turkey cookies (since Scarlett declared she wouldn't touch pumpkin pie!)

After spending a few weeks with her grandparents, Abbie was back at home with us

Dinner time!  Can you believe that's all Scarlett would eat?!?  Elle ate most everything, except stuffing and cranberries

The next day we started the age old tradition of sibling wishbone breaking!  Elle won and Scarlett was NOT thrilled with that outcome.

We enjoyed our weekend of eating, visiting and doing a little shopping for deals!  

Fall Vacation - Asheville

Our last stop on our vacation was Asheville.  It was about halfway home from Chattanooga and since we got a late start, we decided to stop for the night.  Since we were there already, we decided to make the best of it.  We enjoyed breakfast at Tupelo Honey, then went on to the Biltmore for the house tour.  It was already decorated for Christmas, so it was really pretty!  We had lunch in the stables (delicious) and Scarlett thought it was really cool to be where the horses used to stay.

We ended up at home about 7 on Sunday night.  It was a quiet drive home :o)

Fall Vacation - Chattanooga

Our vacation continues...  On Friday night we met up at Joe and Kella's house with them and their new baby McKinley and our friends Daniel and Jessica and their 3 kids.  

Scarlett was instantly in love with McKinley!

All the kids!

These 4 were fast friends too.  Scarlett and Alison are only a month apart and Elle and Annalee are only a few weeks apart.  

Old friends!

On Saturday morning we met up with Sarah, Chris and Owen at Ruby Falls.  The girls loved the waterfall and Elle especially has not stopped talking about it since!

It was so fun to see everyone, but it was time for us to start our journey home!

Fall Vacation - Atlanta

We left for Atlanta on November 1st and stayed the week visiting as many people as we could in a short amount of time!  In between our visits, we took the girls to see some cool stuff in Georgia.

On Monday we went to Athens and showed the girls our old stomping grounds from college.

On Tuesday we went to the Atlanta zoo.  It was our first time seeing pandas and they were oh so cute!  

The girls "NEEDED" souveniers.  Elle named her panda Space Mountain and Scarlett's is Atlanta.

We took a minute to pose with Willy B

The girls even got to feed the giraffes!

On Wednesday we met Courtney and Zoey at the aquarium.  We had a great time catching up and seeing the fish.  Zoey, Scarlett and Elle became fast friends.

Thursday and Friday were spent visiting with family, then we headed up to Chattanooga to see friends.

October Catch up - All Halloween!!

Time for some October catch-up and it all has to do with the countdown to Halloween!  The girls agonized over what to dress up as for months.  

Our countdown started with a trip to the Life and Science Museum for their annual Halloween train and pumpkin patch.  It was a little cheesy, so likely a one time event, but the girls enjoyed it just the same.  We took the train out to the woods, picked a little pumpkin and decorated it with stickers, and played a few games (the coolest was the mini punkin chunkin station!).  

Right before Halloween we headed to a local farm stand to pick out carving pumpkins.  They had tons to choose from, but we opted for the largest one we could find.  As it turns out, it was also the thickest one we've ever seen, so power tools were needed!  

The final products!  We ended up with 9 pumpkins total.  

Scarlett was tracked out for Halloween (doesn't matter anyway as her new school doesn't acknowlege Halloween), but Elle's class had a party!  They paraded out in costumes, sang us some songs (that I'm sure everyone has heard and memorized by now!) and had a pizza party.  

The cutest of the 4 Elsa's :o)

Elle and her best friends, Ryan and Shanaya

Cameron picked out Abbie's costume...the only girl that couldn't object, she was deemed to be a stegosaurus!  The costume only lasted long enough for a photo op, but hey, there's always next year!

Ready for trick or treating!  My little Elsa, Tooth Fairy and Stegosaurus

Finally we have a perfect trick or treating neighborhood!  The girls got tons of candy and we saw hundreds of kids throughout the neighborhood.  

They can't possibly eat all that (not to mention half was peanut filled), so we traded it to the Halloween fairy for some cool toys!  Don't worry, they both got to fill up a sandwich bag before turning the rest over to the fairy!

Camping - Almost!

We had plans to go tent camping last weekend, but when the lows were forecast down to 43 we decided to skip it.  Then this past weekend, we decided to try again, but a downpour right as we were trying to set up camp ended our time in the woods.  We decided to set up the tent to dry out on our covered porch and make the best of our camping disasters!  We roasted marshmallows over the grill and slept in the tent.  Scarlett declared it to be "the best night ever!".  I do think she's the ONLY one that slept well though!

Elle's first day of school

Elle started her last year of preschool last week!  She's been so thrilled to get back to school and so far she loves her class!  She's still working on learning her friends names (usually she describes what they were wearing which is super UNhelpful for figuring out who she played with!)  It's hard to believe this is her last year of preschool!