A great gathering with all the family. Succulent turkey with all the trimmings. Pie, pie, cake, cheesecake. What more could you ask for? We all had a wonderful time yesterday and for the first time this year, I am not out shopping in the black Friday craziness, so I have time to tell you all about it. As usual we’ll do this mostly through photos.

Kate and Jake spent the majority of the time waiting for dinner dismantling Grammie and Bapa’s toy basket

and otherwise finding anything to keep themselves occupied.

The adults as usual we’re very busy getting things ready to go. Here is the beautiful table and Grammie and Bapa tag teaming the turkey.

Then all the kids and adults were collected up and we sat down to a wonderful dinner.

And to close things out, some family portraits were captured. First we have the Giffin clan (from left to right) Candice, Bill, Jake, Amy, Karen, Kate, and Pete.

Then we have the Jester contingent: Candice, Jake, Tricia, Kate, Ruth, and Pete.

And because the ladies spent Thanksgiving morning hangin’ as the girls–parade, breakfast, etc. I thought we should grab a photo of Tricia, Kate, and Gma Roo.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sorry folks, this will not be a photo-based random Jake-ing but merely a story of intrigue and mimicry for our eighth installment.

On the car ride in to Tim and Lisa’s this morning, Jake and I were on our own listening to Viva La Vida by Cold Play. For those of you unfamiliar with Lips, the song is a prominent number in our household in the lip synching game because Kate knows the words and loves to sing it. Well, I did not realize how much it play time it was getting until I heard: “Sleep alone.” “Streets.” “Enemies Eyes.” “King.” These are words or small phrases from the song that at first I thought was a bizarre echo, until I listened very closely and realized, no, it was my son singing the phrases he knows. Here’s Jake’s cute, little voice and he’s hitting the right words at the right time to the beat.

I am absolutely dying in the front seat from amazement until I get a chance to turn around at a stoplight to take a quick peak. Then I am dying from the utter cuteness of realizing that this whole time my son has been holding his fist up in front of his mouth as a pretend microphone to sing along, just like Kate does. These are the moments I wish I was filming his whole life.

Have a beautiful day all!

Monster Jake!

Just kidding…

But a very messy face from eating pizza, yes!

Many of you know that Tricia’s birthday is not officially until December but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have her birthday on a Friday the 13th. And while we tried to thwart the bad weather this year so that the party would not, yet again, be canceled by snow; we were partially successful… It still snowed but not enough for people to not be able to make it.

While we were getting the food ready and waiting for guests to arrive, Tricia and Kate snuggled on the couch.

And Jacob worked diligently at his dinner so that he would be able to play with the guests for a while before going to bed.

Then, once the kids were in bed and some of the general embarrassment wore off from playing Lips…

Beatles Rockband came out and the band got back together.

Happy Birthday Auntie Tricia! We hope you enjoyed the festivities and that you do not hesitate to pop by for Lips or Rockband whenever you’re in the mood.

It was a cold, but luckily not rainy day, when Tricia, Kate, Grandma Roo, Jacob, and I all went on our merry way to the zoo. It’s been a while since we made the trip and the kids really needed to spend some time outside the house, so we decided to brave the possible weather for huge upside we’d get for our trouble.

Here’s Jake enjoying the puddles left by the last few days of torrential downpour we’ve experienced.

And here’s Jake when I asked him to stop his complete and utter exuberance in jumping ecstatically in the puddles.

We have Kate searching for the penguins who decided that swimming in the water wasn’t in their best interest today.

And the kids riding the bronze hippo after the real ones just kept sleeping.

The finale to the day — the fresh air and all the running around we did ended with the hoped for result, a completely exhausted Jakey-Jake crashing out in his seat on the way home.

Halloween rolled around and not only was it not raining, we had sunshine. What a concept for the great PNW. We tried to stay mellow through the morning, to save up our energy for the evening’s Trick or Treating, and to let Daddy rest up and recover from H1N1.

Grandma Roo joined us for the afternoon to carve Kate’s pumpkin and to cover the house for visiting Trick or Treaters while Kate, Jake, and I were out in the neighborhood with Uncle Allen. Here are Kate and Roo busy at work on their creation — The Bats.

Then, after Jake was up from his nap, we got the kids in their costumes. The first time the full skeleton crew was together.

Jake and Kate hanging out with their friends along the front walk, they’ve taken quite a liking to the skeletons.

Showing of their life-sized jack-o-lantern otherwise known as Grandma Roo.

And finally Kate, Jake, and Uncle Allen out Trick or Treating in the neighborhood.

Happy Halloween to everyone!

I’m trying to decide if I like Halloween on the weekend or not. It’s definitely less stressful with regards to trying to coordinate the travel logistics of getting the kids to each destination (school, Microsoft, neighborhood trick or treating, etc.) but then it becomes multiple days of celebration. Kate had her school party and her afterschool care (YMCA) party both today. Sugar, sugar, sugar, more sugar, a bit of candy, some cookies, punch, more sugar, and some… can you guess??? oh yeah, sugar. She had an excellent time and can’t wait for pumpkin carving and trick or treating in the neighborhood tomorrow.

Here’s Kate as a Jack Skellington skeleton mouseketeer (her costume kept expanding over the course of the day).

And she really wanted to show of her brethren from the front walk.

Plus, we had to get a close up of the mouse face painting she received at the Y from Meg.

I didn’t let Jake wear his skeleton costume today because I was worried his couldn’t last 2 days of wear, so I went the cheap route and dressed Jake as a PC.

He had a great day at Tim and Lisa’s hanging out with his friends. But he is very much looking forward to dressing up tomorrow night and going out Trick or Treating with Uncle Allen. Here’s Jake’s demonstration of the opposite of how the skeletons look.

Just wanted to give you all a couple more recent photos of the kids. Here’s Jake showing off his flexibility.

And Kate showing off her Thriller dance moves before meeting all the zombies at Thrill the World.

Not sure if you’ve all heard us talk about J4 in the past but we have some lovely friends we met through Aaron and Kim Stebner–Jerry, Judy, Julia, and Jillian (joined the clan a mere 6 weeks ago)–who brilliantly put out a call for friends to join them in some pumpkin hunting. So 5 kids, ranging in age from 6 weeks to 6 years, and 8 various guardians and consorts all joined up at South 47 Farm for some pumpkin-y, doughnut-y, corn maze-y, muddy, muddy, muddy fun!

We were lucky enough to hit a break in the rain so that we weren’t in a deluge as we were hunting, but the rain that was falling all week made for a near 4 wheel drive only experience in the parking lot and pumpkin fields. Here are Kim, Aaron, and Zach.

The kids found hay bales to run and jump on in addition to pumpkins everywhere!

Then we trekked out to the fields with our wheel barrow to find the “perfect” pumpkin… Kate bit of a bit more than she could chew (or at least than she could carry).

And Jake found his kindred pumpkin spirit with great efficiency.

Finally it was time for some doughnut refueling, courtesy of Uncle Aaron. Kate, Jake, and Julia all figured out the drill very easily.

While we’ve had the most amazing summer I can recall, fall is holding it’s own as well. There are the most beautiful maple trees lining our street that have turned that gorgeous crimson color whose depth and tone is next to impossible to copy. The photos don’t quite do them justice but I can’t resist trying to capture them for those bleak, gray, leafless days of February.

.