Happy Halloween!

Some of our Halloween fun in Kansas!

The Costumes:

Lemon Meringue!

Roaring 20's Flapper!

Morgan LaFey from the Magic Treehouse!

Violet from A Series of Unfortunate Events!

Davy Crockett!

Hello Kitty!

(Peter was a pirate and Eleanor was Katara)

The Ward chili dinners/games/Trunk or Treats:

The Jack O'Lanterns!

Courtney did this one all by herself!

Elizabeth did this one all by herself!  She used cookie cutters all the way around the pumpkin.

The candy!

Applejack Pumpkin Patch!

We had a fun outing early Saturday morning! There was sure lots to do!



A train...


A slide, corn crib, and ladder...


Rubber duck races and a bounce pillow...


A zip line and park toys...


And of course a tractor ride to get pumpkins...

Wichita Winners!

Eleanor 2nd grade



Sam 4th grade


Peter kindergarten


Penny preschool


Look at this cool thing Jeff made! Look close and you can see what he used to make it.

The Sunflower Sweeties!

We love visiting in Andover!

Here is an email I received from Heidi before our arrival:
"The girls are so excited. I am too. They were planning to have a party tonight at 10:30 to celebrate 24 hours until your arrival. I told them that was fine if they were still awake. Elizabeth has been counting the hours till you'll be here for about a week. Before that it was days. It's good math practice for her. They have been working hard on decorations for your bedroom, especially Courtney. You may need to take them down so you can sleep. They asked to stay home from school tomorrow to work on them. Which is a big deal since Elizabeth is trying to have perfect attendance."
Courtney even missed her after school snack to finish the decorations!
The girls can have visitors for lunch in the cafeteria, so we bought Wendy's and ate it with them at the special Visitor's table at Sunflower Elementary school.
Elizabeth 3rd grade



Sarah Kindergarten


Camille. Preschool


Courtney 5th grade


Our bedroom decorations





They made the spiders!

Twins Update!

30 Weeks and trying to keep these little turkeys incubated until at least Thanksgiving!

Ricks Chicks Rule!

We had such a fun weekend in Utah with so many of the Ricks Chicks!

Katie did a great job of organizing everything including these cute notebooks:

The Ricks Chicks have an origin and here it is!

We all sang together at a church Quartet Festival and referred to ourselves as the Ricks Chicks.  

That was our first and last performance on the Quartet circuit!

But we have have been busy in other ways--including producing posterity of whom we are extremely proud!

We had fun getting to know each other better, sharing tips and recipes and just talking:

Kathy headed up a wonderful tribute to the Head Chick: Here's my Mom when she was 17!

It was a little bit of heaven!