Moore Family Happenings

Both Abby and Emma entered the school PTA reflections contest. The theme was “Beauty Is . . ” Emma drew a picture and Abby wrote a poem. Both girls’ projects won at the school level and advanced to the regional level.

The regional level consisted of all the school districts in Cook County outside of the city of Chicago. So a lot of schools.

Abby’s poem won at the regional level and has advanced to state. She is the first kindergartner at her school to enter the literature category and have it go all the way to state.

Emma had a hard time with this -her’s not going on any further. I explained to her that when one of us in the family wins we ALL win and we get to celebrate together. Seemed to make sense to her so she made Abby a cake.

See what I mean about all of us winning

Abby’s poem:

Beauty

Beauty is nature-trees, evergreens

Beauty is your heart inside.

Beauty is playing with my family.

Beauty is love.

Beauty is a pretty dress and makeup.

Beauty is my sister smiling.

Beauty is laughing with my friends.

So cute, eh?

And now for the miss.

The other day we were all driving along in the mini just carrying on like a normal Saturday afternoon.

From the back we hear “You know that guy Luther? He discovered black people”

Oh dear Abby! I about peed my pants-which let’s face it isn’t that novel of an occurance and Jared nearly ran off the road.

Good times. Good times.

Downloaded a few pictures from the camera. Christmas will have to wait. These are more important.

A lesson in Wii-ing

A  little decoration for NYE!

Emma decorated her door for the New Year. I particularly like the fireworks-that look strangely enough like bloodshot eyeballs.

We have tried sooooooooooooo hard to keep Lily in her bed (and fully clothed but that’s a whole other conversation).  She doesn’t put up a fuss, but the minute you leave her she’s back in Emma’s or Abby’s bed.

For some reason I feel like I’ve written this before. I probably have. Let’s just humor the almost senile poster, k?

At least she has the snuggling part down. Emma is SUCH a trooper for putting up with this on a nightly basis.

Incidentally, Lily will take naps in her bed, but not sleep there at nightime. Go figure.

And finally, because I know you’ve been waiting patiently for this picture-

All we have accomplished for “he-who-shall-not-be-named” ’s room. Over achiever??

Oh and by the way, I don’t frequently-or ever-take random pictures of furniture. Pretty sure Abby is the one who took the above photo and filled the camera with various pictures in and around the house.

Like this one:

(yes this is Little House on the Prairie)

or this one-

Lily FINALLY has feet big enough for snow boots. (And yes she’s almost 2 1/2). She was so excited this morning to put on all her gear and head out with Dad to shovel.

And of course the other two had to follow suit.

Emma turned 7 yesterday. The B-I-G 7! For days she has been reminding me that her birthday was coming up, and not to forget to wrap her presents, and not to forget to make her a cake, and not to forget that she wanted breakfast burritos for breakfast (smart girl) . . .

Anyway, I’ve always felt bad that Emma’s birthday was so close to Christmas so we decided to throw this somewhat spur of the moment surprise party for her. Can you believe that 13  six and seven year olds were able to keep it a secret for a whole week?! Props to them.

I thought maybe we’d have 5 kids show up-I mean schools out, holiday travel, snowy night, etc. Nope! There were 11 girls there. Add our 3 to the mix and you can imagine all the shrieking and screaming that ensued for 2 hours. Jared and I could only look at each other in sheer disbelieve.

Fridays are “Mystery Reader” days for first graders. I signed up for December 18th thinking it’d be easy for me to remember (Emma’s class-Emma’s birthday).

Well here’s the catch, you have to come in full costume-including something that covers your face.  The kids take turns asking questions that you can shake your head ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to and eventually they figure out who it is. Yeah, pretty sure there aren’t many costumes that can accommodate my gut. Except for . . . .

I even wore my Nicole Richie shades for the occasion. (which I sadly have no pictures of me wearing)

After all that is some seriously white snow up there!!

And since we now have a Santa suit-no need to mess with the crowds or waste $103940398 taking pictures at the mall. Jump on up gals,

Seriously, I’m a mess. 

Emma has been waiting for almost 2 years now to lose a tooth. When we were in KC for Thanksgiving she discovered not one, but 2 of them were lose.

Well after a week of wiggling it she finally lost her first one! She is probably the last one in her class to have that cute toothless grin. Course after losing the first one it was old news and I don’t think she’s touched the other one since.

Which is fine. This ATM never has cash on hand anyway.

The scariest thing about this post is that it’s coming 1 day after the actual event and not a month or two later. Something is clearly wrong with me.

Let’s start with some classic Moore sayings this Halloween:

(me) “Lily what do you say when you go to someone’s house on Halloween?”

(L)  “Give me candy!”

Lily was convinced this is what you would say. We had to work on “trick or treat”. When you think about it, though, she hit the nail on the head.

(Abby to Emma) “You’re costume should be a boss because you’re always telling me what to do.”

If anyone can figure out what a “boss” would look like it would indeed be a great costume for Emma.

I hope this isn’t going to shatter your world, but I don’t have many pictures of the girls and their costumes. They got to wear them a few times, but each time I said I’d get a good picture later. Well later came (the night of trick or treating) and they were all bundled up and ready to go before I could get any!

Abby was a cowgirl:

Lily was a ladybug:

and Emma was a rockstar:

With our little friend Rapunzel!

Some randomness:

This year when carving pumpkins Jared wasn’t messing around. He swapped a knife for some tool I probably don’t even know how to pronounce.

Lily doing the preliminary sketches of her’s.

Abby doing the grunt work:

I don’t know why a picture of Emma didn’t make the cut. She was probably too worried about her appearance to scoop some seeds

And finally a cleaner, cuter Lily–

My phone died. I don’t know what’s wrong, it worked for two days after my FL trip, but that’s about it. BUT I did manage to get the pictures off of it. Smart thinking, eh?

So this is how we roll in my house. Caught Emma having a snack, with no pants or underwear on. Nice.

and a classic shot of Lily-

If you haven’t heard me complaining about all the rain before, well, here ya go. I went to FL a couple weeks ago (with just some girlfriends-HEAVEN), but came back and it hasn’t stopped raining. Everyday it rains for almost the entire day.

Well last week (maybe??) there was a lull long enough to dry some of the ground off so I took some pictures of the girls on our way to pick up Emma from school. Their school is close, down the street through the park and voila. These pictures were taken in the park, by the waterfall.

(and none of them are good because my camera sucks-although Jared says I just don’t know how to properly use it because I refuse to read owner’s manuals. But anyway . . .)

I love that last picture of Emma and her bff. The hand holding . . .precious.

A couple weeks ago we took the girls out on a hot date! First the Shedd then on to Margie’s Ice Cream.