November

This month included:

Armor of God Family Home Evening.

Snow and Ice

Democracy

Play

Celebrations,

and lots of food and family, which I think about covers the rest of the post.

For Anthony's Birthday,

we played at the Hands on Museum,

Ate at Sava's,

and had dessert at Kilwins.

 Our actual Thanksgiving was mellow.  We mostly wore our pj's all day and ate baked potatoes for dinner...but with Martinelli's and by candlelight, to make it feel fancy. It also to reminded us how grateful we are for electricity.

But the next day we headed to Pittsburgh to visit Anthony's three cousins who are studying in Pennsylvania right now.  It was fun to be back in my home state visiting family, even if it's not the family from PA. :)

Dessert-coma. 

Second cousins

 

First cousins. Sterling Quinn, Anthony, Josh Thun, and Jake Quinn.

And the wives: Rachel, Sam, and Sharon.  Sarah was helping the bambino inside.

It was a gathering with amazing food and even better company.  The Thuns were so generous in letting us stick around for a few days, and it felt good to be with family.

In other November news: 

I finally finished the family history wall!

And Eliot just wants to share his love with the world, even if he has to say it with Sign Language.  He often tries to give strangers the "I love you" sign, but most of the time it ends up looking like the "rock on!" or satanic sign...and sometimes morphs into the lone middle finger.  sigh...

Anyway, on that note, we love you!!!

Knights, Nights, and Halloween

October's been busy and lots of fun. 

Ira's transitioning from purely a dragon obsession, to a knight and dragon obsession.

Of course, Eliot as joined right in.

I always thought these old curtains would turn into Superhero capes.  

Nope. They're "king capes."

Cardboard didn't cut it, so we upgraded to a sword we carved from foam.

Eliot's been into pretending to be a dog lately.  Yeah, that's him drinking a bowl of water on the floor.

Beautiful Michigan.

Making applesauce with the apples that Uncle Don brought us last month.

Mmmm...  Surprisingly easy and delicious.

We loved General Conference, and celebrated with more food.  We had some neighbors over to chow down with us.

Preschool field trip to..

On the way home, Eliot paritally ate 3 of his 4 apples.

GE's Family Fun Night at the Henry Ford

I'm a detective, just in case you couldn't tell.  It seems like no one really could.

Anthony was a king.

It was a festive night of costumes, story telling, and treats.

 Anthony had a trip to New Orleans

So the kids and I went to Coldstone,

And the Hands On Museum

As the Social Chair of the Ypsilanti Cooperative Preschool, I was in charge of throwing a potluck dinner again.  Fortunately I wasn't working alone this year, and my co-chair had some awesome ideas: decorate a picture frame and get a polariod of you and your "VIP guest."  My activity was donut fishing, which I thought was totally original, but later that night I googled it, and discovered it's a pretty popular way to tease cops during protests.  I must of subconsciously picked it up sometime during my protest years. :)

Eliot decorating Slimer.

At a preschool silent auction fundraiser last year, we won 4 piano lessons.  So we decided to experiment with Ira.  He LOVES his teacher Maurice, but isn't so cool with his parents encouraging practice.

Trick or treating again at the Toledo Zoo with our friends the Dodsons.

Ira's showing interest in "word building."  Yeah, that's what we call it to try and sound cool and unintimidating.

I've never seen Ira look so bored in his costume.  Lets just say he was "relaxed" during circle time.

His preschool always invites siblings to the cool activities, like Halloween parties.

 Real Trick or Treating.  (meaning around the nieghborhood, not the zoo, museum, grocery store or preschool.)  Wow.  

Eliot's making some progress in his language skills.  With some effort he's now putting 2 words together almost daily.  Somehow the words "Milk Duds" just flew out of his mouth as if he's always known what they were innately.

Fall Family Photo Shoot.

We took the pictures ourselves using a remote, though we didn't realize the battery was low.  It turns out when the battery's low, the pictures take sporadically about 50 times in a row, so there's a lot of really random ones that I'll just throw in the mix for your entertainment.

Eliot's ears were cold, so...

Expressing just how cheesy we are.

We bought a new battery, and tried again with a working remote the next day on the way home from church.

But really, the boys just wanted to sword fight,

and i just wanted to eat lunch, 

so we lasted a few minutes and went home.

There you have it.  We'll understand if your threshold for Quinn images is exceeded for the next year.  Happy November everyone!