Happy Halloween!

The girl: Monarch Butterfly!

Happily watching the Halloween parade at school. 

  The boy: Captain America!

 Captain America throws his mighty shield.

 Porter might be a future method actor. He really got into jumping and posing for Tim!

 Watch out, villains, TWO super heroes will be protecting all the candy tonight!

Porter Odds and Ends

3.5 yr old check up confirmed Porter is big. 41" and 40lb, the size of a 4 1/2 year old Dr. K says. 

Rainbow soup. I started out trying to make some plain old chicken soup for an under the weather Porter. I discovered we only had purple potatoes and sweet potatoes from the farm box and the result was purple broth!

Making "ice cream cones" at soccer.

Our daily pilgrimage to visit the neighbors' huge Halloween display.

More Endeavour Shuttle Fun

We went and camped out on the curb in South LA today to watch the shuttle roll by at 2mph towards her new home in the California Science Center. It was a much longer wait than we expected because of all the delays as it shifted and turned to squeeze by signs and power lines and curbs.

 After much diversion with take out BBQ and people watching and marching bands we decided to walk down Crenshaw Blvd. towards the action to get a look before we needed to head home. It was incredible to see all the prep work that was done. The kids were pretty excited to get to stick their heads right in this dismantled signal to check out the red, yellow and green lights.

Finally getting a glimpse!

Here she comes, with a major entourage like any LA star!

 Huge! And completely worth the wait. I read somewhere that they did not clean the shuttle up after the last re-entry so it will always be all scraped up from the final space voyage. So cool!

We all can't wait to go visit at the Science Center when the exhibit opens next month! Maybe after some rest. We were all a little pooped after that day of hiking around the city in the crowds and the sun.

Floating Head

Porter really likes to be buried in sand. 

Mystery Reader

Stella's preschool is featuring a guest reader program this month where parents arrange for a family member or friend to be a surprise guest to the class one afternoon. Sarah asked us to come and Matilda was thrilled with the idea. It was super fun to go in the one-way-glass-window observation room to watch the teachers give the class clues about today's guest. The clues for M were she likes to swim, she likes to camp, blue is her favorite color, salty fish is her favorite food and she has two pet rats named Watson and Leopold.

Matilda did an awesome job reading the book turning it at each page to show the pictures.  

  

 It was really sweet to see Stella so excited. Matilda and Porter both just loved the special experience. 

Picture Day!

Posing for a standard by-the-front door shot on her way to school.

Happy smile just before drop-off in the school yard. 

Week in Review

Here's a quickie look at what we have been up to over the past 7 days.

Monday is soccer day.

It was hot, 99 degrees at 5pm! The coaches were nice and did not run the kids too hard.

Random snuggle shot.

Watson eats a snack on Tim's shoulder. Please don't comment to him on his weight; he is a sensitive rat who knows he has gained a bit.

Sweet Leopold sits happily on my shoulder to watch some Homeland. 

Another resident makes himself seen.

We went to a Galaxy game Saturday night. Sadly they lost but in addition to a great game we got an amazing sunset.

We broke Matilda's old engineer overalls out of the bin for Porter to wear to a Travel Town birthday party this weekend. There was dangerous stick-swinging action. 

Matilda takes a shot at poor old Thomas. 

Maybe even more dangerous than the stick-flying is the mad candy-grab that follows. There were tears.

At some point this weekend Matilda went in to console a sobbing Porter and this what we found a few minutes later.