Natalie, the dolphin

Today Natalie was supposed to dress as her favorite book character at school. She has a bit of an obsession with dolphins, so her favorite book is "Dolphon Diaries". She had requested a dolphin costume:

Natalie, the gymnast

Natalie and I have been taking hula-hoop classes. Natalie is learning a lot of cool tricks, and I'm at the point where I can almost actually hula-hoop! We're both enjoying it and getting better each time, even though we are obviously at very different levels.

After the class is done and everyone else leaves, the gym we are in is just too tempting. A big open gym floor just needs to be used for some gymnastics:

I know she's a little sassy towards the end of the video, but I think it's worth it to see her eyes light up with a big smile at the end. She asked me to record this video for her, so she could see herself - she wasn't planning on me posting it for the world to see...

Student council

This year was the first year that Natalie was old enough for her class to be represented in the student council. Natalie decided to run for the post. She had to make a poster, and she had to do a speach in front of the whole class. She didn't get enough votes to get the position, but I'm still so proud of her for trying! Her poster is in the picture below. By the way, her school colors are black and orange, WDP is an abbreviation for her school district, and the scary looking ghost is their school mascot (they are the Phantoms). 

Natalie, the scarecrow

As usual, daycare had a Fall Fest. One of the activities was to dress up as a scarecrow - complete with straw hat and hay:

Time for fun.

Natalie had a friend over for a sleepover last weekend. The best sound in the world is hearing Natalie giggle with her friends - and they did a lot of that. In fact, they had the dress-up bin in full use before breakfast:

Field trip to the botanical garden

Natalie's class went on a field trip to the botanical garden - and I got to tag along as a chaperone! We had such a great time. The weather was a little on the cold side, but with no rain. The teacher from the garden was very good at showing us all kinds of things about plants and seeds. It was very enjoyable and educational, even for the grown-ups.


Natalie's teacher took pictures and made a really cool video out of the pictures:

Happy Halloween

For Halloween, Natalie requested a "special" breakfast. Here's how she started her day:

Poptarts decorated with a jack-o-lantern, a spider, and a bat (with edible markers), and a jack-o-lantern apple (so we could pretend it was almost healthy...)

Here's her reaction:

I think it was a hit.

This year, we went trick-or-treating with Natalie's good friend Izzy:

Natalie was a monster, and Izzy was "Intelligent Girl"

The girls had a blast. I don't think they were more than a foot apart for most of the time:

Going trick-or-treating

Fortunately, they both had their priorities in order - when they came across an old birds nest on someone's lawn, they just had to stop and investigate:

Such explorers.

This year, the weather on Halloween was very windy and very, very cold. Because of that, we were only out for about 45 minutes. Afterwards, the girls watched Halloween episodes of their favorite shows on tv while they dug into the loot. I'm pretty sure they enjoyed that part a lot, too. 

This was a great Halloween! We had so much fun, and we enjoyed the company of good friends. Couldn't ask for anything more!