Molasses Cookie & Our Guests Are Here!

Mmmmmmmmm....... our house smells good right now. Jordann had a friend over & finished baking the cookie dough.


Grandma & Grandpa made it here this afternoon -- after a non-stop flight from Dallas to SF. They did a little site-seeing before getting to our house a little after Jo & I made it home. I think G'pa is eating one of the cookies here while sitting behind our little Halloween candy vignette.
I think my candy display is disturbing Jo...
Our door has also been decorated. Jo drew this frame a few weeks ago & it has held several famous paintings so far -- Mona Lisa, George Washington (sorry I didn't get pictures of these.) Jo wanted to make a picture for Halloween but Glenn said we should celebrate Reformation Day instead. So he drew a picture of Martin Luther. I wonder who came by & added the horns? Hmmmmmm......

Homecoming!

Jordann enjoyed dressing up every day for Spirit Week.  This was how she looked on Super Hero Day.

I took some pictures at the game tonight for L.  Here's your old sports med team.  :-)  Shelly's mom & little sister were there.
Caught Glenn texting during a slow time of the game.


And here's some of L's little friends.  We sat next to them and Stephen's parents.
It was a great game.  Much better than last year!  28-0 - we beat the Mt. Diablo Red Devils.  We saw the end of the JV game, too.  It was 0-0 'til the very end and we scored in the last 30 seconds.  Pretty exciting!

I Saw the Travelling Pants!

They were spotted at El Torito tonight.  Here's Lauren's contribution:
Glenn was there, too, but he was taking the picture.
Mmmmmmm..... so, how's the Mexican food in Michigan?
So, here's a picture of Glenn, since he didn't get into the one at the restaurant.  He & Jo washed windows today.

"Goodbye, Matt!"

Friday night we had a little party to say goodbye to Matt.  He graduated from college this spring and will be moving to LA to work & go to grad school.  Lauren is already gone but they got to Skype earlier that day.  I included her picture since I won't have many pictures of her now that she's in Michigan.  We've been having a lot of fun with Skype.  That's even how my sister told us she's expecting again!

I just realized Angie's not in any of these pictures.  We celebrated with one of Matt's favorite games - the Indiana Jones version of Life.  I didn't even know that existed but I think I enjoyed it better than the regular version.  Uncle Alan would be proud, I knocked one of the players off the board!  (Not quite full-contact Monopoly, but it was getting close at times!)


Funny faces!  Now you can see who Lauren takes after.  Take a look at her blog post yesterday -- more funny faces.

Attack of the Killer Tomato Plant & Other Things We've Been Doing

Another busy week!  My Etsy shop has been busy.  Lots of people are already buying Christmas & Halloween things.  I went to Michael's yesterday and couldn't believe how many Halloween decorations were out!  Martha Stewart has some fun kits.  Anyway, back to our week.  Saturday night we went with some friends to the Giants/Dodgers game.

Yes, we are wearing coats, sweatshirts, and scarves!!!  It's hard for this Texas girl to remember to bring a coat & scarf to a ball game here in Northern California.  :-)  We enjoyed hot coffee and garlic fries that night.

And the complete opposite on Sunday -- we had a going away picnic for Lauren at the park.  It was HOT.  (Back on our side of the hill.)  We enjoyed pizza, cake, and she even got a few gifts.  I gave her her book but I think Sarah & Becca's reaction to it was even better than L's.

See, I needed a picture of Sarah for the book and Lauren's latest pictures included Sarah's "special friend".  

And, why does this always happen?  Do you notice anything about the photos below?

I think they were sitting over by themselves solving the gas crisis and the situations in Georgia and China while we're over in our group listing to stories about how Sarah met Ben.

Tuesday -- Went grocery shopping with Jo.  She picked out dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.  So I made them along with mashed potatoes & green beans, all her faves for dinner.  Here's what happened at the dinner table:

And, just in case you don't know us, my kids really ARE 14 and 17.

And now for the photo you've all been waiting for....  here's what my tomato plants look like now:

This is TWO plants grown in pots the size of the one you can see on the right.  I fertilized them once when I planted them and water them about every other day.  I've been eating a handful of grape tomatoes every day for the last month and an Early Girl about every other day.  BTW, the chair is there to help hold up the plants!

Our Fourth of July

Doesn't this look delicious?!?!  Glenn made dinner for us Thursday night.  He made a delicious lemon chicken recipe that he found on the food network, green beans, rice, and red white & blue berry shortcake for dessert.  Yummy!!!  If you go see the recipe on the food network website, Glenn's looked MUCH better.  I should have taken a picture of it but it didn't last very long.  

Oh, Thursday L called me at work, told me her friends were dying their hair purple, and asked if she could dye her hair, too.  I said, sure, as long as you're paying for it.  She wanted me to go with her to pick out the color.  By then she had decided on a more natural red color.  Her hair's so short that there was a lot left over so she did MY hair, too.  :-)  We were wondering what Glenn's hair would look like red... may try that on his vacation!  Here's what she looks like now.  Doesn't look too different in this photo, though.  

So, our 4th of July started with a houseful of teenage girls.  Lauren had some friends over and Glenn cooked breakfast for them.  He was going to make red/white/blue pancakes but decided to just serve the berries with them.

Our Sunday School class had an all-day cookout so we went for lunch.  There were LOTS of people there.  Our class is getting really big.  Lauren was there for a while before she went to the city with some friends.  She's going to post some photos on her blog later today when she gets off work.  The swimming pool was full of little kids.  I took a picture of the 'big kids' table.  They were playing some kind of secret card game.  (I think they were making up rules as they went along.)

Glenn and the 'really big kids' threw the football around for a while, making us all nervous.  They were on each side of the swimming pool throwing OVER all the little kids.  

That evening we went for a cookout at our friends' house.  E has a new game -- guess what it is?  And guess who played it?  We had a good time laughing at J & G trying the expert level & me trying the easy level.  I look like a real rocker here with my red streaked hair!  lol...

Happy Independence Day!!!

First of all let me say, Blogger is acting funny today.  Things keep moving around on my page so I'm not sure how this will look when I finally publish it.  We went to the Singing Flag last night in Concord.  Here we are above waiting for it to begin.  We were hanging with  a pretty tough looking group:

Boy, were these kids patriotic!  Angie got to the park at 6 AM (that's IN THE MORNING!!!) to spread out our blankets.  So we had some really good seats.  The show started at 7:30 PM but we all got there around 6:30 and had a picnic, talked, and looked around to see who else was there that we knew.  We figured by 7:30 there were close to 2000 people there!  

It was a good show.  They did some patriotic music, some gospel, and sections on "American favorites" - cartoons, movies, Disney, etc.  Some were even sing alongs.   The girls were really getting into it.  Too bad I didn't take a picture of us singing "Old MacDonald" and quacking.  (Our section was the ducks.)

You can see the actual singing flag better in the photo below:

There were fireworks at the end.  And, of course, the kids jumped.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th of July.  And tell all those Pipes' hello for us!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Today we said goodbye to all our pumpkins and ugly gourds. But yesterday we cooked, ate, talked, ate, played games, ate, watched football, ate, drank coffee, went to a movie, and then ate some more! (Today we went to the gym!)

Jordann had the vegetarian Thanksgiving meal.

Lauren was a little more adventurous:

I gave in and let everyone decorate today. We even got our tree up! But NO shopping. Everything this year is handmade... except for a couple of people. Glenn & I want to go toy shopping for the little ones and I'm thinking about something electronic for Lauren. It's kind of hard to make gifts for my girls. They usually see me making them and I end up giving it to them as soon as I'm done. See the green hat Jo's wearing in the picture above? I made that and matching gloves for her this week.