Micah smiles (a lot)

Just a quick post to share a few recent pictures of Micah. While I'm of course biased, I must say that he's a handsome young man. There's something about his smile that makes your heart happy. I couldn't resist taking a few shots of him that can be used for future teasing. The one with him in the tiara and a propped bottle is all Hannah and Olivia's doing. I was rushing around trying to get ready for church and found him like that (with Hannah and Olivia close at hand). Despite the Sunday-morning frenzy, I had to stop and have a good laugh.

Halloween in the Desert

In Arizona, October is like Spring. It brings everyone out of hibernation. For Halloween, all the neighbors decorate their homes and then have parties on their driveways and in the street. For us, Halloween means pulling the "pumpkin man" out of storage. The pumpkin man is tacky, but we love him. I remember driving up to our house as I returned from work at Halloween time a number of years ago and, upon seeing this large blowup creature, being horrified that we (all Danilo's doing) were displaying such a monstrosity. But he has grown on me over the years, and now Danilo and I both associate the start of the holidays with the installation of the pumpkin man. Who knew it would bring our children -- as well as countless children who (I'm not joking) come to see the pumpkin man and even have their pictures taken in front of it -- such joy?

This year, Hannah and Olivia were both ballerinas (I couldn't believe my good luck, when they agreed to wear ballet outfits that we already owned for costumes!), and Micah was a pumpkin.

Here's a picture of me with my little pumpkin:

At Hannah's school, they had a Fall Harvest Festival (no "Halloween" celebration), and all the kids brought jack-o-lanterns to display -- there were hundreds of them all glowing and lined up so that you could walk along a path and see them. Here is Hannah's "winking" pumpkin.