Halloween

I was not going to dress up for Halloween this year, but then there was a costume contest in my organic chemistry glass, and the winner got an extra point on the next exam, so I figured it might be worth it to throw something together.

To the average Joe I'm a bear.  To a chemist, I'm something slightly more specific.

When a molecule has polarity (slightly electric positive or negative regions), you write it with a lowercase delta and the polar charge.

Notice anything?  I'm a polar bear!  I still don't know if I won the contest.  Votes hadn't been tallied by the end of class.

Liam got to be Loki again, this time with the up-coming Thor Ragnarok movie as the inspiration.  We kind of meshed up a combination of the costumes he wears in the movie to get our version. I bet you can't even tell which one below is Loki or Liam

(PS, neither Loki nor Liam are levitating knives, they're flipping them.  Cool.)

Reese is really into cats lately, and wanted to be a black cat.  She and two of her friends all dressed up as cats together.  It must be popular this season, because Reese tells me she counted a total of 19 cats at school today!

I think she's one cute cat!  She even did her own makeup.

And here's a black cat gif to make things even.  Also this may or may not describe the way Reese behaves when she's pretending to be a cat.

Lagoon

Had a great time with my Dad at Lagoon.  He invited me as his plus one for a company party.  It was awesome because we went on all the big rides, ate some lunch, and went home before we were too tired.  And we saved the wet ride for last, which turned out to be a great idea!

South Carolina

Our first activity of summer break was to fly to South Carolina and spend the week in a house by the beach with family

We visited a lighthouse

We got photos on the beach

We played with cousins

And make shapes in the sand

We stopped at an East coast frozen custard joint

We went to live music in the park, where we also got balloon animals (or swords) and face paint.

We played with Gramma and Grampa

And did a lot of driving...

And flying

And had a blast!

Family Pictures

Thanks to my sister Nikenzie, we got some family pictures taken!

Last year I wanted to get some family pictures, but I didn't think we needed anything too fancy, so I figured we would just coordinate our Christmas outfits (the kids get a fancy outfit to wear to church around Christmas each year) and get a family member to take a photo.  I chose the colors red and gold because I figured they were Christmas-y, but not overtly Christmas-y so that we could hang the photo on the wall all year round.

Part of the outfits were matching ties for Liam and Will with red and gold stripes.  I didn't think about it, but when they wore the ties to church everyone else noticed that the ties were obviously Gryffindor ties.  Will was continually asked if he was Harry Potter.  I was surprised, but immediately owned that title.  Yep.  Totally meant to get matching Harry Potter ties. And that's why we now ready Harry Potter as a family, so Liam knows what people are talking about.

Even though it wasn't really planned, this year we had to continue the theme- so our coordinating colors are green and silver- Slytherin!

Christmas

Christmas was on a Sunday this year.  Since Will is the Bishop and I'm in the church choir, we all went early to church and didn't have much time to open gifts in the morning.  I told the kids there would be time for one gift before church, and then when they opened that gift I told them they could look in their stockings if they got all ready to go before it was time to leave, which worked out ok.

Both Reese and Liam had moments of jealousy that made me question why we even do gift-giving, but they ended up recovering and we were able to have a mostly pleasant day.

We did our traditional graham cracker gingerbread houses

And then went to visit family.  It was a Faber year, so we had dinner with my parents

 

Then Will packed up the kids and our dessert buffet to have dessert with his family.  When I was a kid I remember one of the exciting things about Christmas was that all the neighbors would share gifts of goodies with each other, and we would end up with a counter full of sweets.  This was the first year that I felt that excitement again. Except this time it made me feel loved rather than hungry.

Meanwhile, I stayed at my parents house as my sisters gave a harp concert.  It was beautiful!  They are so talented.