Bigun Up!

Ella may be having the best month ever. I'm going to go ahead and photo dump it now before all of the Halloween stuff gets in the way. Evil Genius insisted on getting in on the action too.

Carrots from the garden. I like the cape and the puffy shirt

She was excited about growing carrots in the garden this year. We ended up with a pitiful garden this year. I never got any plants from Mom so all we planted was seeds. We planted some beans that came up pretty good, but once it got really hot they stopped producing. It looked like our muscadine crop was going to be huge, but the birds ended up getting them all before they got ripe. So these tiny carrots really are the best produce.

a milk mustache?

In gymnastics, on the high balance beam!

She insisted I take this one while shopping.

She is loving gymnastics, but it's starting to get into some of the harder stuff now. Actually growing in her sport is really fun for me to watch. Fears are overcome, confidence is being built! That's what it's all about.

Ella is the Cheshire Cat

EG is a Greek Goddess

they are having too much fun

At Trunk or Treat at the church!

Ella lost a tooth in a sticky piece of candy!

Of course the Cheshire Cat smile glows in the dark

Ok, I know I said no Halloween stuff yet. But it's already started! Kelley worked like a mad woman to finish off those costumes. We may put on another coat of the glow in the dark paint for the cat smile, but they turned out amazing. My mom made Lena's Goddess costume and Kelley came up with the gold parts. My part of making their costumes consisted solely of wearing Ella's shirt so it would be stretched tight enough to add the duct tape stripes. I am still totally in awe of the creative execution it takes to pull these things together every year.

Trunk or Treat is an annual event that our church puts on, where cars put out a theme with candy. It attracts a lot of the local community and the members dress up, so it's always a ton of fun. It was great to see so many kids dressed up!

Ruby

Quite the fuzzy rabbit. I'm sure she'll be delish in a stew or something.

 Ruby is the newest addition to our household. It's a Red Something (bolt, i want to say?) rabbit. They bought Ruby while at the State Fair. This was a bit of an impulse purchase, I certainly didn't agree to it beforehand. But I guess there could be worse options. as long as it doesn't chew stuff, it is kind of cute.

Ella's swimming!

On a team! It's her first team swim practice!

Nailed it

This is the really cool part. After the Olympics this year EG wanted to start gymnastics, and she was able to go ahead and get into a class. Bigun had to wait until Monday to start her olympic dreams, but now she is finally swimming on the Pullen Pirates kids swim team! It was her first team practice ever.

I am absolutely thrilled about this. She loved it. They did about half a mile in 45 minutes including drills on all 4 strokes and worked the turns a bit at the end. Coach wants them to start showing up 15 minutes early for some dryland and stretching before hitting the water next week. She looked really comfortable in the water, and I've never seen her move like that. She wasn't the fastest kid out there, but wasn't the slowest either. And she had fun.

As a parent, seeing your kid get into something that you are into is an amazing feeling. I've been swimming on a Masters team for 5 years now and absolutely love it. I get in the water as often as possible every week and race open water swimming events all summer long from 1 mile to a 12 miler last year. Watching the next generation enjoy picking up the torch is absolutely amazing. Ella is pretty adventurous too, I might even be able to get her into an open water event next summer. For now, she's got practice on a regular basis and a couple of meets coming up. I AM SO EXCITED!!