Citi Global Community Day

The whole family went out and participated in Citi's Global Community Day on Saturday, November 6th. Our job was to rake leaves at a local hospital in Hagerstown.

Landon and Abby had a great time helping rake and pile the leaves (although their favorite part was running and jumping in the leaf piles.)

Abby gave a talk in Primary last week and talked about her service at the hospital. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning and serve others in the community.

Day with Trains

A few weeks ago we got to watch my nephew while my sister and brother-in-law had a weekend alone to celebrate their anniversary and "Babymoon" (they're expecting baby #2 in April...woohoo!!)

Coldon and Landon are only 7 weeks apart and are now at the age where they really enjoy playing with each other. Coldon was great the entire weekend and we loved having him at our house. On Saturday, we took all the kids to a little train museum/railroad exhibit. They all enjoyed learning about the trains and visiting them inside.

The highlight though was the Thomas train going around this little track. I think we stood and watched this thing for about 20 minutes before finally dragging the kids away!

Halloween 2010

The City of Hagerstown designated Friday night (October 29th) as the night for trick-or-treating this year (I'm not sure exactly why they never seem to do trick-or-treating on Halloween, but I was glad for it this year since it meant we could actually go!!)

This also worked out perfectly since both of my sisters were able to come up with their families that night and join in on the fun. This meant that all the cousins on my side were able to party all together and they had a blast playing with each other all night long.

Here are the "twin-cousins" (they are only 7 weeks apart!) Landon was a lion this year (although he was mistaken for Winnie the Pooh on more than one occasion.) His costume is actually about 40 years old, it was worn by each one of my sister as well as myself when we were two years old.

The trick-or-treaters in action!! It was a pretty cold night so we didn't last too long, especially "Lady Gaga" and the "Skeleton" since they refused to wear any coats over their costumes!! We did make it to the "trunk-or-treat" at a church at the end of our neighborhood so everyone still came home with a bunch of candy.

All the cousins together for a group shot. They range in ages from 2-12 but all get along great (and Chloe did a great job of entertaining the little ones by chasing them all around the house while the adults chatted.)

We commented that these were the best cousins pictures we have been able to get to date. I think it's the first time we didn't have at least one child crying. I guess the promise of candy did the trick!!

I have been reading a few other blogs that talk about how they are still able to pick out their children's costumes. This was NOT the case with Abby this year. She decided early on that she wanted to be Princess Jasmine and nothing was changing her mind. I really tried to convince her to be Sleeping Beauty since she already had the beautiful dress and with her long blond hair, she just looked the part. There was no convincing her however and after searching high and low for a Jasmine costume, I finally had to order one online. Fortunately it was on sale and it was very high quality (from the Disney store) so it all worked out in the end. However I think this year marked the official end of me being able to pick out Abby's costume anymore!