Happy Halloween!

The girls had the cutest costumes this year (if I do say so!). Elizabeth was a garden fairy:

And Abby was a rainbow princess:

They had so much fun dressing up and getting sparkles in their hair. They had lots of fun trick-or-treating. Elizabeth ended up with more treats than Abby. Abby would get a little scared if there was anything too frightening outside a house or if she thought their might be a dog inside. Not Elizabeth! According to Brian she was so excited to get to all the houses that a couple times she tried to go through the bushes rather than down the sidewalk to get to the next house!

They both had lots of fun though and now we have lots of candy to share.

Soccer

Abby decided she wanted to try soccer this fall. Here she is all ready for her first practice!

We were able to find pink soccer shoes, pink shinguards (under the socks) and a pink soccer ball. She is all set!

Here she is at her first game.

After a little bit of a rough start she is having tons of fun and is excited for the games and practices. We are so proud of her for being brave and playing with her team.

Elizabeth is the best cheerleader. She loves going to the games and cheering for Abby.

Elizabeth starts dance class!!

Elizabeth was so excited to start dance in September. She was finally big enough. Every week when we would take Abby she would ask, "Mommy, when do I get to go to dance?" Now it is time!

She is having so much fun! She is the youngest in her class by 6 months to a year, but her teacher says she listens really well and does a great job!

A funny story...

Abby has loved kindergarten. We were looking at her homework assignnment one night and saw that we were supposed to make flashcards of "word wall words". There wasn't a list provided so we asked Abby what they were. She replied, "They are the words on the wall. You put the letters together to make words". Well that wasn't as helpful as we wanted so we asked, "Can you give us an example of one?". This is what she said:

"Well, it is like when you have a 't' and an 'a' and a 'c' and you put them together to spell mouse."

Hmmmm...

Happy Birthday Abby!

Well our Abby is finally 5. She has been waiting for this day for so long. We have been telling her for years that she can't ride the big yellow school bus until she is 5. For her that is the most exciting thing. This year her birthday was on the first day of school, so she did get to ride the bus on her birthday - and she started kindergarten! What a busy day.

The first thing she said when I woke her up in the morning was: "Guess what mom, now I'm five." She was so excited to be five! She was excited to get dressed and ready to go.

Here are Abby and Elizabeth all ready to take Abby to school. We drove and walked her in on Monday. I think she liked having us walk in with her, but then she sat down at her desk and started working on her pages that were there. Her teacher made her a birthday crown to wear during the day and we brought cupcakes for her to share with the class during snacktime in the afternoon.
Then...she got to ride the bus home from school. Here is Elizabeth waiting for the bus. We waited and waited and waited. The bus was supposed to come at 3:33 p.m. It did not come until about 3:50 or later. It was so hot outside!

But finally it came! We were so excited to see how Abby's first day went.

After school Abby told us all about her day. She talked almost nonstop for over an hour. She was very excited and had lots of fun.

We planned to have her ride the bus on Tuesday morning, but we were a few minutes late and missed it so Brian took her in on his way to work. It think it worked out okay though, because now at bedtime, she reminds us she has to go to bed early, so she can get up early and be ready for school so she won't miss the bus again! I love it!

I think Abby is going to love school. She had fun every day during the first week. On Thursday evening, we told her that she only had one more day of school for the week. She was almost in tears as she told me, "but we just got started." I quickly reassured her she could go again on Monday after a couple days off for the weekend, just like Daddy gets some days off from work. But she was a little disappointed again on Sunday when we told her we were going to church - she was ready to go back to school.

Pretty as a Princess

Abby decided she wanted a princess birthday party - so that's what we did. It turned out to be a lot of fun. She invited all the girls in her primary class and all the girls from her preschool class last year. Everyone dressed up as a princess. We ended up with 15 princesses. Here are our two princesses:

We had everyone coloring princess pictures as they came, and then they all made a pretty beaded necklace. After all the necklaces were finished we played a princess game where each girl got to try to put Cinderella in the window on the castle (kind of like Pin the Tail on the Donkey).

Then we had cupcakes! Each cupcake had a sparkly jeweled ring on it. After cupcakes we played musical chairs with princess songs (of course)! Then we opened presents right before everyone went home.

Abby had so much fun. She was so excited for all her friends to come and to be princesses. That morning as we were putting up decorations, she kept saying, "Mom, this is going to be the best party ever!"

Pretty girls

We finally tried on the dresses I ordered Abby and Elizabeth for Kelsey's wedding. They are so cute and the girls were disappointed that they couldn't wear them yet. Now we are really counting down until the wedding....

Elizabeth has just woken up from her nap. That's why we have the "crazy curls".

Finally a piano!!

Yea!! I've only been waiting for more than 10 years. I promised Mom a picture - so here it is.

Vacation Posts

So I've finally got our trip to Utah on here. I realized that since I did several posts, they show up in reverse chronological order on the blog. If you want to read in order, you'll have to scroll down. Sorry! The first one is "McPheeters Family Photos". They are all kind of long with lots of pictures. But we had lots of fun and it was hard to choose just a few pictures to post.

More family fun...

We had a few more fun days with family before we headed home to Texas. We spent a day with cousins at the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. Everyone had lots of fun looking at the dinosaurs. Here they are playing in the sand and water.

Everyone wanted to sit on the dinosaur at once!

Digging for dinosaur bones.


The night before we left, we went up to Morgan. The girls wanted to ride Grandpa Kimber's horses. Elizabeth loved it. She was so relaxed and natural. She didn't want to stop. We had to convince her to let Abby have a turn.

Abby was a little more nervous. She was so stiff, it was hard to get her situated. She did pretty well, but was more than ready to let Elizabeth have another turn.

Abby and Elizabeth visiting with Grandma Kimber and baby Tavin.

Thanks everyone for such a great visit! We loved seeing you all.

Yellowstone again - June 4th

After the previous cold and rainy days, the day started out beautiful. The sky was blue. It was a great day for our last visit Yellowstone. It was so nice to see sun!

We got some great pictures of the mountains.

Part of Yellowstone Lake was still frozen.


By early afternoon, it had started raining again. But we still got some good pictures of waterfalls. The water was really high and fast from all the runoff.

We stopped to see Old Faithful again. It had stopped raining, but everything was still misty so we didn't get a great picture.

We all walked around and looked at the other gysers and hot spots around Old Faithful. The girls especially were glad for a chance to get out of the car and run around.

After our walk, it was time for Old Faithful again. This is one of the best shots we had of it. The wind was blowing a little, so it made it easier to see.

Sunset over the Tetons.

We sure had a great trip. We loved visiting Yellowstone and Jackson Hole with Grandpa and Grandma McPheeters. We all had tons of fun.

We headed back to Utah the next day after we stopped and visited my college friend Amy. It was so good to see her again. Her boys are such fun and were great to share with my girls. I'm glad we were able to stop for a visit.

Jackson Hole - June 3rd

We started the day by taking the tram from Teton Village up the mountain.

The girls had fun on the ride up.

There were beautiful views at the top.



And lots of snow! The girls had so much fun playing in it.

Time to go back down the mountain.

For dinner we joined the Bar T 5 chuckwagon. It was tons of fun. We took Brian and Abby's picture while we were waiting to go.


Here are Grandpa and Grandma McPheeters in the covered wagon.

And Brian and Abby.



Here's a good shot of our wagon train. Everything was peaceful here, but just a few minutes later a mountain man came riding by to warn us that he had seen Indians ahead! Then the Indians came too. They were to fast, so we couldn't get a good picture. The leader of or wagon told us that the Indians really liked the brownies served at dinner. So, Abby decided that she did not need a brownie. Even though we told her that the Indians wouldn't really come and steal her brownie, she wouldn't take one. The rest of us enjoyed them though!

After a great chuckwagon dinner, we enjoyed the show. When they asked for kids to volunteer, Elizabeth wanted to go help and she asked Grandma to go with her! They did the "yum yum" part of "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain". It was a fun show.