the ladybug princess

Busy weekend. Erin had a birthday party to attend yesterday afternoon, Danielle took all the girls to a live show today (it was her birthday present to them, though, really, it felt like a birthday present to us). She had them with her, out of the house, for over 5 hours. The silence around here was deafening. John and I had planned on seeing a movie during our respite but looking over this weekend's options, there wasn't anything we wanted to see. I guess because it's been, well, years since we've been home at the same time and the kids haven't, we just didn't know what to do.

So........we did some yard work. Pathetic, isn't it? Beyond pathetic really. The front of our house needed some attention and with both of us working we did everything that needed doing in about half an hour. Then John suggested we"go to the mall" but I guarantee you that we hadn't been doing yard work long enough nor was it hot enough for him to be suffering from heatstroke. I wondered if there was a catch. Yep, he wanted to go to the Apple store and Palm store and look at the iphone and other new schmancy phones. Well, it was nice to just walk around together for a while and we didn't buy anything except for some leggings for Kate and Allison's costumes. Then we had a leisurely japanese food lunch and went to a couple of furniture stores because I'm interested in a new kitchen table, even though John isn't. We didn't buy a table either.

Later this afternoon, with the normal chaos of the house resumed, we headed to a pumpkin patch to join our friends for a costumed get-together. Erin won "most-enthusiastic to be dressed up for halloween" member of the family:


Kate won "least-enthusiastic":


Events of the afternoon included pumpkin power-lifting:



Ladybug lifting:

Running away from parents:


Taking pumpkins that don't belong to you:

Looking cute on command:


And the annual herding our children onto haystacks for the impossible group photo: