he cracks himself up

mahala's no slumber slumber party

the birthday girl, complete with whipped cream filled chocolate cupcakes and decked out in her new silky owl pajamas

















"movie" time with cocoa and popcorn...and lots of pillows and blankets even thought it was 75 degrees outside

















pillowcase decorating-the kids were amazingly into this activity-i never knew kids to have such long attention spans

















before the party, mahala labeled the goody bags with her excellent writing. so of course it is 2 weeks before her real birthday but this way we didn't miss anyone going out of town for the holidays. she had 10 friends over (schuyler and penelope from back in the days of co-op, leela and argil from preschool, and sofia, lucas, toby, eva, simon and emeline who are family friends) and even though there were so many kids and they all had way too much chocolate, there were no meltdowns! yea!

one more from halloween

just one more photo from our halloween experience. we went trick or treating with this crazy bunch of kids (this is at tomas and ceci's house). they all look so tired-and this was BEFORE trick or treating!

at grandma and papa's

i was craving sushi so i convinced mahala to 'help' me make some. she preferred eating it though!

much fun was had with grandma and papa. lots of ice cream, lots of playing-mahala said that she wants to spend every weekend there!

halloween day

halloween day! it was busy. we first had baby aiden over and then we all went to tyler street to hang out with mahala and noble's co-op buddies. then we went trick or treating with our buddies on spaulding street. how exhausting, but our little otter was happy. our starfish was too tired for most of the fun, but we got some good photos.

my little otter

finally, mahala gets to be an otter. this was at her school celebration-held on thursday. she helped me mostly with the face, but was very patient while i made the rest of the costume. i told her "i don't sew very well, so this shouldn;t really be taking this long" and she would reply "you're the best sewer ever!" that's a good way to keep me making homemade costumes!

what a nice family...

hanna and mike came over for dinner....and don't they look nice with our kids?