Halloween a day early

Us Nevada folk have a bit of a scheduling issue with Halloween - Oct. 31st is Nevada Day, so sometimes Halloween gets celebrated at odd times. This year, trick or treating was happening on Oct. 30th in Carson City, and the 31st in Reno. So, we spent the evening of Friday the 30th at grandparents place in Carson with the whole crew. Here's the kids:



And Nanny leading them out for trick or treating:



Julien had a haul, and sorted it out on the floor:

Easter pics

For some reason, out of the whole year of photos, somehow my Easter pictures end up being the best. Despite being a pretty secular bunch, something about getting everyone together, and the traditions of the egg hunt for the kids and brunch for everyone else lend themselves to good picture-taking. As the kids are getting older, though, they get faster, and it's harder to catch them in the act. I did get a few good ones this year, though...

Sofia, waiting in the gates for the fun to start:



Julien goes for the tough ones first:



Sofia digs deep:



Julien hits the front yard for better pickings:



And then gets very serious about candy unwrapping:



I didn't get many decent pictures of the cousins this year - they were moving too fast - but here's Luther finding an egg:



And Julien and Ramona eating watermelon:



Fun Easter, all in all, and a perfect day for it.

Nanny's 90th

Hosted a little birthday party today for Mich's grandmother's 90th birthday. A bunch of people, including the kids went to see the play "peter Pan" first (nice young at heart movie) then came back for dinner. Here's Great-Nanny with five of her grandchildren:



And a picture of her blowing out her candle (little help from Luther):



Oh, a close-up of the cake. It's the Excessively Espressive Espresso Ecstasy from Marcel Desaulnier's Death By Chocolate Cakes. That pretty much describes it:



And a cute picture of our friend John enjoying his cake at the kiddie table:



Good friends, fun time.

Horse

Had all the cousins over last night - my job was to be the "horsey."

Kids Table

Kids Table
Originally uploaded by turi_b.

Had the Tobey/Dahls over for dinner the other night - Here's a Turi's-eye view of the cousins digging into post-dinner ice cream.