Thanksgiving with family

Thanksgiving in Wake Forest, NC at The Ruperts

Lots of photo ops for all 8 of the girl cousins!

What a group.  Everyone had such a great time together!

Uncle Matt and Ruby got along great!  Who doesn't love a cuddly baby!?

Thanksgiving day cupcakes???..by Mary.  So good.

Time for BB gun lessons!  Grandma acted like she disapproved at first. 

But then...Grandma helps Reagan take aim!

Working on Uncle Matt's suprise birthday party sign.

Suprise!!!!  Good job Kandi for pulling it all together.

Fun on swings

My turn

Yes, I landed safely.

a great weekend

It was a beautiful weekend here.  Saturday morning we headed up to a place called Ceasar's Head. It is about 30 miles north of Greenville and a very quick little drive to reach something so amazing! We drove up into the mountains and stopped first at this overlook, whcih is just a enormous place of flat rock you can walk out on and view an incredible valley of trees that were so colorful!  Some of the pictures I took look like a field of orange, red and yellow flowers.

Ruby was very happy in the backpack and Stella loved exploring.

After this visiting this spot, where we also bought some Smokey Mountain Frog Jam from Butch we drove on up to the official visitor's center of Ceasar's Head. There was another fantastice overlook and we hopped on some trails too.  It was a great morning and afternoon.

Saturday evening we stopped for dinner.  Stella quickly made friends with the people sitting beside us.  At the end of dinner Stella got up and went to sit down with them!  She chatted with Peggy, who was an older lady and was so kind to Stella.  Stella coaxed Peggy into showing her the contents of her purse and then also invited her to come to our house. Stella asked where she live and asked if she could go to her house instead.  Stella was asking us all day yesterday if we knew where Peggy lived and could we go to visit her.

On Sunday we raked up a pile of leaves to jump into...another beautiful day!

some more photos from SC

And another halloween related festival.  Miss Stella got dressed up 'for halloween' 4 times this year.  For this church festival I went with a different costume just to switch it up a bit ...a Fancy Nancy outfit we already had.  Part cowgirl, part sock hop, Stella was just happy to get to wear the make-up!

Some friends met us there to have fun.  This is Stella with her good friend Brady going for a ride.  They've known each other since before they were even a year old.

There was a trunk-or-treat there.  Everyone was so creative.  Here is Little Red Riding Hood in the forest.  There were also the Three Little Pigs among others.

Ruby rockin and rollin on the playground

Stella and Connor (Brady's brother)

Had to post this picture of some amazing baby blues!

Connor is such a sweetie!

Stella stuffing grass in her sister's pocket.

Ruby love to give her big sister hugs.  And will often cuddle up with her in the evening when it's time to sit on the couch before bedtime.  

"Stella, make a funny face."...

A table full of friends who had some fun with 'eye'shadow!

I'm getting a bit behind with my blog stuff.  I am in week 1 on a 3 week master's course through University of Pheonix online.  It sure is keeping me busy.  And any 'free time' -whatever that may be- is spent reading and participating in class online,  course work and such!