Phoebe's Christmas List

Pretty long this year.  Although she gets all 100s on her spelling tests, the spelling is terrible when not being tested.  Some highlights:

A life size lamb (or a real lamb)
Real bow and arrow
Fancy Colored pencils
To see a man with a curly mustache
Ride the Coney Island roller coaster
A coconut cake with Mounds on top
To be President of the United States

Brooks Museum Holiday Party

Telling Santa what they want for Xmas.

Phoebe and a light up jumprope for >mancontrol<.

Making a gingerbread house inside the museum.

Merry Christmas!

Trimming the Tree

Ice Storm Snow Day

The kids had off school for a piddly little ice storm that only gave them enough to make the world's teeniest snowman.

End of the Season Pt. 3

More work on the wigwam they started in the Spring.

This little puppy was a regular visitor over the weekend.  Not sure where he came from but Phoebe named him Pickle.

Practicing their Mastermind poses after a few games.

Archery.

This might be a new tradition - finding our Christmas tree in Arkansas.

It stayed on all the way home.

And just a few days later there was 10 inches of snow.  A friend e-mailed us the pictures.  The kids were really bummed to have missed it - all they got in Memphis was a little ice storm.

End of the Season Pt. 2

Going to miss breakfast at the local greasy spoons - like this optical illusion biscuits and gravy. That bowl of gravy is actually pretty big but its dwarfed by the biscuits.

Its not Thanksgiving unless the Peanuts' football scene isn't reenacted a few times.

A hike through the woods to the graveyard.

One last trip to the dock.

Bonfire.

End of the Season Pt. 1

We go to the cabin the day after Thanksgiving with a cooler full of leftovers to close the place up for the winter and have one last big weekend until Spring.  Can't think of a better place to spend the dreaded black Friday than in the country where there are no lines and you can get someone to make you something by hand on the spot like this guy making an awesome wooden hatchet.  He even burned Frankie's name in the handle before charging him a fiver.

And you can still get good old stuff on the cheap.

At the cabin, the kids wanted to go to the cave which we hadn't done all year.  They wanted to repel down to it so they got the longest rope they could find.

It was good to be back.

Kids in a cave think every rock is an arrowhead.

Sitting in a cave like a gnome is probably the other best way to wait out black Friday.

Warming up with some UNO.

Shuffling - harder than it looks.

Thanksgiving

Two turkeys!

Dinner table.

Wishbone!

I guess Frank didn't get enough because he picked the carcass.

And then Phoebe grabbed it from him and did this:

Intense pre-wishbone snapping stare-off.