Maisie's New Haircut

As is seen in the Halloween post, Maisie's hair had grown to be quite long. Problem was, she wasn't overly fond of taking care of it, and neither were we, after fighting through massive knots and tangles on a daily basis. We gave her an ultimatum; take better care of it, or we'll cut it off. She opted to cut it.

As you can see, she doesn't seem to broken up about it. In fact, she couldn't stop giggling, she was so excited once she saw the finished product. I have to give myself some props here; I did it myself with a straight razor, something I've never done before. Check out just how much hair was actually taken off in this process.

Maisie is just like her mom; we both have A LOT of hair.

Either way, she's happy, we're happy, and she has a very cute, flattering haircut that she loves. Hopefully as it begins to grow out she'll be able to get a better handle on the maintenance aspect of it. One can wish anyway.

Hurray For Fall!

I love Fall. It is by far my favorite season. There's something about how the light goes all golden, and how you can smell the sort of dry-leaf smell in the air as you crunch along the sidewalk that just makes me feel festive. Not to mention, the turning of the leaves signals so many fun and festive things to come; it's a precursor to the holidays.

One of my favorite Fall activities when I was growing up was playing in the leaves. One of my older brothers used to rake the leaves into a sort of floor plan, where we all had our own bedrooms, and there was a living room area, and you weren't allowed to walk over the "walls", you had to use the doors. I love those memories.

In the past, we've posted pictures of our kids playing in the giant piles of leaves we rake up from our front yard. It seriously is a giant pile, it can easily accommodate half the neighborhood. This year, the leaves took much longer to fall then they normally do, but we still managed to get some good pictures with a few cousins.

One of Maisie and Dany's favorite things is to be buried completely, except for their faces.

Morgan and Rory wanted to help get in on that action.

Spencer and Morgan were mostly just content to sit in the pile and play.

And here's that light I love so well in the Fall.

Everything looks nicer in light like that.

A day or two later, I was making pies for the Bayly get-together. I swear Fall seems like the only time I ever make pie. Lately Rory is very interested in anything to do with the kitchen; she always wants to help out, and be a part of any stirring, mixing, measuring or rolling that takes place. And so that Saturday, I had a little pie helper.

She does quite a good job, for only being two. It was fun to see how proud she was of her work.

And something that doesn't happen every year, we had a new niece born into our family a few days before Thanksgiving! Millie Jane Rogers, at a tiny 5lbs 13oz's.

Aah, I love the Fall.

A Witch, A Princess, and a Girl From Oz

No, it's not the beginning of a bad joke, it's what my kids were for Halloween :). Maisie has been into Harry Potter for months, and once she found out her cousin Henry was going to be Harry, Hermione was the only thing she wanted to be.

I splurged on the time turner. I couldn't help myself. Dany is still very much into princesses, and loves any dress she can twirl in, so this year she was Snow White.

And Rory was completely enamored of her sparkly shoes as Dorothy. She never wanted to take them off.

We got the two oldest dressed and ready for school, and watched them parade around with their classes that morning. All the pictures we got were blurry, so I'm not including them. That night, we got them all ready to go out around the neighborhood.

After visiting the Great-Grandma's, we walked over to Grandma Roger's where we met up with the rest of the cousins.

I think this was something like the tenth picture out of twenty; just trying to get one where they're all looking. And here are the two kids from Hogwarts, taking a break from fighting against the Dark Lord.

Is it wrong that I'm just a little bit jealous of their outfits? Every year Grandma Roger's goes way out for Halloween dinner, and this year, she outdid herself. The kids got to eat Mummy Dogs, Spider Jello, and Monster Apples, with bloody-finger cookies for dessert. The kids get so excited to see what Grandma comes up with every year. Here's a video with Maisie showing off her meal, but it's sideways and the sound is bad.

After dinner, it was off to prowl the neighborhood. By the time the kids got home that night their bags were stuffed, and they were giddy from sugar, but they had a great holiday. Happy Halloween!