Happy Birthday Ben!

A delicious waffle and bacon birthday dinner!

Blowing out the candles. He did have one left. Every boy needs at least one girlfriend, right?

Opening presents

soccer cake

Here's the cake I made for Ben's birthday. Once again, it looked much, much better in my mind! I ran out of time, and black icing. I wasn't sure if my piano students were coming, and then they did, leaving me like 15 minutes to decorate. Oh, well, Ben liked it and that's all that matters, right?

A mound of presents.
A specially decorated table.

Candy Shops

This is what cracks me up about my kids and Halloween. So, they've been trunk-or-treating and most years we take them trick-or-treating too (we didn't this year because everyone around here were trick-or-treating on Sunday and we figured they had enough candy from the trunk-or-treat Saturday night). They have a bag full of candy and what do they do? They each maticulously set up a "candy shop". They organize everything carefully. They have regular priced candy and then the "expensive pile". You can trade a regular for a regular of course, but if you want something from the expensive pile you better be prepared to trade three of your regular for one expensive, or, of course, you can trade an expensive for an expensive. They crack me up. "When is someone going to come to my store?" "I have the best candy shop in town." "Skittles, going once, going twice, sold!" What a group of silly billies. I guess they can't help it, I am their mother after all! Hadley lost interest in Trunk-or-Treating half way through and started in on her candy. She would suck on a sucker for fifteen seconds and then hand it to me and say, "I'm doned," and start in on the next sucker. By the time we got home she was done with candy and had not watched a Barbie movie for two whole hours. She went straight to the computer to get her Barbie fix. Her little face is sunburned from three hours of soccer games in the middle of the day and a mom who was too sick to think about sunscreen. Ooops!

Halloween 2010 cont.

Hadley was so excited about the whole prospect of Trunk-or-Treating that I couldn't get her to be still for her picture. Oh, well, she looks cute anyway!

Halloween 2010

Here they are, our little trunk or treaters. Julia devised her own costume, a secret service agent. Emma decided to be the pioneer girl I had made for Julia last year. Hadley was enamored with the idea of being a "kitty", even though it's a jaguar costume my mom made for my brother Derek years ago. It has been worn and loved by many a child! Ben also dawned another of my mother's creations, the skeleton costume. I impressed myself with my face painting skills. Ryan finally decided that if he had to dress up to get candy he'd settle for G.I. Joe snake eyes costume at Wal-mart. Right after the group photo Ryan took off to be with his friends, so I didn't get an individual picture of him :(

Ben and soccer

We put the oldest four kids in soccer this fall, and they all loved it and have enjoyed playing. No one more than Ben though. He seems to have inherited the Matthews' soccer genes. He know what to do when he gets on the field and he does a great job!

One Shining moment

For a brief beautiful moment I was sure that our little Hadley was an artistic genius. I had left her with a blank coloring page and when I came back, this is what I saw. I was duly impressed until I noticed the red scribbling all over Tender Heart's face which is undoubtedly her contribution to a picture that had been colored by someone else. Oh, well, I guess we'll still keep her (LOL!).

12 years and done

It's pathetic, I know, but I actually started this afghan for my brother Jeff before he left on his mission over 12 years ago...I just finished it a few weeks ago. An odd combination of perseverance and procrastination. I know you said you don't really want it Jeff, but if you change your mind I'll send it your way!