They are having so much fun.
Amy's turned out pretty cute! It's because it's Amy herself!
I'm boring. I did the one on the top like the one from the box. I copied. Elli did the other two. Ouch! Amy's arm is missing the tip! Someone snuck a bite before I could take the picture...and some frosting!
Just in the past few weeks, Elli has turned into a young lady. She got makeup for Christmas and is putting outfits together that I never would, but they actually look cute. She did a real bang up job on her side of the house all by herself, even though the frosting was hard to work with.
I didn't get a final photo, but it was fun. We picked at it for a couple days and then the frosting got hard, so I nibbled what I could and threw most of it away.
Elli is on my far left, closer to Riley. She may need to be moved closer to me soon. She is always so silly.
Amy is close to me on my left and does pretty well. 
And there's the spread. Riley and I sit at the ends and man the conversation. I am thankful this year that Riley is home with us. It sure has been nice having him around for every holiday.
The roll look yummy and they were, but they are the normal roll recipe. Plain.
This is his plate. Full of plain. Turkey, beans from a can, rolls, roasted carrots, and potatoes. Those potatoes are actually pretty good. Maybe I'll put that recipe up. He asks for those at Easter and Christmas, too. I shouldn't complain though. Plain is easy.
There's the acorn flour on the right and the pancakes he made from it on the left. It is highly nutritious and delicious.
The kids were hesitant at first. Elli, who hates anything brown and will only eat white bread, but no crust of anything, was very skeptical. Maybe adding butter will help.
Hey! Look! They are good and she liked them! (Even though the pancake on the plate looks like she didn't have any yet, she really did like them.)
Remember all those acorns? Well they were in the garage for a while and the squirrels wanted to help themselves. I had to keep shoeing them away. Can they smell the acorns or what? Luckily none came searching inside.
Here's Amy before we started on the trail.
This is the other family. They are funny and we had great time!
It was one big loop and ended right where we started from. Thanks for showing up, "other family"! We had fun and hope you did too!
This year was a bust for costumes. The kids had big plans, but I just didn't have time to gather supplies and help make them. About an hour before go time, Adam tried to put this together. It was pretty good for a last minute costume, but it fell apart 20 minutes later. Elli ended up being a midget marine and Amy was a cheerleader like last year. They all got plenty of candy and had a good time anyways.
They all used their costumes from last year. It was another last minute scramble. Good thing I didn't throw anything away. Adam is a ghost buster again, minus the knee pads and brown pants.
The hair is pretty scary though!
She looked a little too comfortable in front of the crowds and cameras.
Adam had high hopes for his boat at this year's Rain Gutter Regatta. He sculpted and sanded and painted his boat weeks ahead of time. Last year, he had the fastest boat and he thought for sure he had the whole competition in the bag.
But, his sail was too heavy and he cut away too much of his boat. It kept falling over and although it was the slickest looking boat, he lost every race.
It was so hard to watch him fail and to see the disappointment on his face when race after race, he got beaten. But, he tried his best and learned a lot about being a good sport I think. We don't really talk about it anymore though.
OK... This very fuzzy photo is the very first day of school. One of the kids was playing with my camera (which they know they aren't supposed to and no one would confess to!) and put the focus on manual. Even though it's out of focus, you can see the genuine happy, excited looks on their faces.
We had one more weekend to go before school and we had nice weather. It had to be Philly. We tried walking around Independence Hall last year but it was too cold and we missed a lot of what Riley wanted to see. So, we parked the car by Trader Joe's and walked around the city making our way back over there. 
We stopped at Dairy Queen for lunch and a treat and sat down to wait for our tour.
On the way back to the car we saw China Town a few blocks over. We walked thru part of it and it was pretty Chinese! Wish we had more time and could have shopped a little.
Right before school started this year, Riley found a great deal on a motorcycle. He had been looking at the Triumph and talking about the Triumph and dreaming about the Triumph for long time. It was time. He actually won this one on Ebay.
Riley calls her Susan. The girls love to ride around the block but Adam and I are waiting until he has a little more practice driving it. And the flames will be gone as soon as we can have them painted over.
