Sweet Sixteen Dance Party

To celebrate all of the birthdays that happen in Corey's family in the month of September (Corey, NanaB, GrandDad, Granny Great, and Ellie -- plus Uncle Doug, who couldn't make it), NanaB threw an oldies dance party.  I made Charlotte and Maisie a couple of felt poodle skirts for the occasion.

Maisie accessorized with a traffic cone party hat.

Quinn and Peter formed the local youth biker gang.

Ellie and Grandpa Great looked straight out of "Grease"!

Charlotte lent Granny Great a poodle skirt out of the dress-up box!

DJ Don was pumping the party tunes, and the kids hit the dance floor like pros.  No, I have no idea who taught Quinn his moves.

Time for the girls to dance!

It got a little chilly, so we headed inside to continue the party.

Happy birthday to all of the September Birthday Crew (and friends)!

A little piece of Tennessee came to visit

We miss all sorts of things about Tennessee, but one of the biggest ones is the Chabots.  Not that I mean they're big, but they were (and are!) such wonderful friends that it's seriously painful to even think about living so far away from them right now.  So, when they found themselves up in Michigan in September for a family wedding, we made sure to work in a quick reunion between all the nuptial activities.  It was like we had never been apart.  Thank goodness they have family up here and should have excuses for being up here from time to time.  Now we need to figure out how to arrange a Stringer visit to Tennessee so we can see them (and the Marshalls, Scotts, Herbs, etc. etc. etc.!).

We were having too much fun to take many photos, but I got a few quick shots of Drew and the goofball kids at lunch.

WE MISS YOU, DREW, KYM, LUKE, ODIE, AND GABE!!!!

The family pages

I am totally stuck on the next blog post, because it requires sifting through a bunch of adorable pictures and making Sophie's Choice-like decisions.  Hence, I am completely abandoning the chronological narrative and just posting something current.  More on those past events later.

Anyway, Charlotte had to bring in to preschool a double-sided paper with captioned photos of her family and pets taped to it.  It's going into a three-hole-punched page protector to be inserted into a binder full of all of the pages done by her whole class.  It was due, well, about five weeks ago or so.  I had a hard time deciding which pictures to use and honestly just kept forgetting about it.  I'm sure Charlotte's teacher has already labeled us as a problem family, because we were also shockingly late in getting her health appraisal form submitted.  We HAVE, amazingly enough, turned in her homework (yes, she has weekly homework!) on time and always return on time the class books that the teacher sends home with each kid every week.  I actually remembered to bring the class snack on our appointed day, but only because Charlotte reminded me.  I swear, I have more to remember to do for this class than I had to do for all of my law school courses combined.

Here are the family picture pages we finally came up with, after Corey had the brilliant idea to use the Comic Life program.  They turned out pretty cute and looked very nice after I had them printed out a two 8x10s and taped them to a piece of cardboard.  I can't wait to finally turn them in to her teacher!  (And sorry to all her aunts and uncles -- you didn't make the cut this time because we ran out of room.  It looks like Charlotte has a herd of orphans for cousins, but c'est la vie.)