Go Green Alligator Pandas!

 Eva doesn't really identify with the name that was democratically voted for by her intramural volleyball team: The Green Pandas. She wanted to be the Alligators, which happens to be the team name of her t-ball team a couple of years ago. So, to make things right, I call them The Green Alligator Pandas.

 Today they played the Turquoise team. I don't know what they voted on, but I'm going to call them The Terrific Turquoise Tarantulas. The Terrific Turquoise Tarantulas won the first game. The Green Alligator Pandas won the second game, and Eva contributed to their winning score with several awesome digs that made her mother very proud. Then, the Terrific Turquoise Tarantulas won the tie-breaking third game. Darn. But kuddos to the Tarantulas.

 This picture looks weird, but I just had to include it because it's a picture of one of Eva's awesome point-scoring digs.

And in this picture it looks like her arm belongs to Elastigirl, which is totally awesome. Elastigirl could be very valuable on an intramural volleyball team.

Halloween!

 Eva helped me make these cute, yummy little hot dog mummies. You just wrap refrigerated roll dough around the hot dogs and bake them for 15 minutes. It looks like Eva was really getting in to the Halloween spirit while she made her hot dog mummies. Frightening.

 We had excellent weather for Halloween this year, the best Halloween weather I remember since I lived in Texas many, many moons ago. Halloween got caught between two snowfalls, just at the peak of warm spell between. It was almost 70 degrees during the daytime, and Eva didn't even wear a jacket while we were trick-or-treating. Of course, I carried it around and kept asking, "Are you cold enough for your jacket yet?" because I just can't imagine why a person would refuse a jacket after the sun has gone down.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 had a good time on Halloween. I don't think they caused near as much destruction as the real Thing 1 and Thing 2. Rebecca's wig recovered really well from Rocco's attack on it. He must have thought it was a bird because he tore that thing up and left little blue feathers flying all over the basement.

Unlike years past, these two put off costume design until about 5 minutes before we left for trick-or-treating. We're not exactly sure what they were supposed to be, but it doesn't seem to have mattered.

These two, on the other hand, have been planning their cowgirl Halloween costumes since springtime. Giddyup!

First Snow

Our first snowfall of the year really packed a punch last week. We lost a couple dozen tree branches and had to call the power company to have them detangle some from our power lines. The city has set up a tree branch drop-off site, and we're hoping to get our branches over there this weekend because they're taking up a lot of yard space. It was an exciting way to start the snow season, but I hope our trees don't suffer too much more trauma this winter.