October 2004 Pictures
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Sometimes Ginger gets so tired, she can sleep through just about any circumstance, including falling asleep with her nose in Devin's sneaker. |
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Greg started playing with the praise band at church again. A rockin' electric guitar in a Southern Baptist church is actually welcomed these days. |
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Devin hunted for pumpkins on a school field trip. |
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Ginger shows her affinity for apples. If the next day's gastro-intestinal problems were any indication, I would suggest not feeding apples to dogs. |
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Each year our church youth group has a Disciple Now weekend where all of the kids are broken up into small groups of their peers and corralled into one of several host homes. We love hosting a group. This year we had 8th grade boys. Here we partake in a get-to-know-you game where a raw egg is spilled into a clear tube. The two participants then see who can blow the hardest and thereby get the other one covered with egg on his face. I made this last kid participate by competing against him myself. He was scared to death of the event. But I let him win. |
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We volunteer to help out in the church nursery every so often. On this day Caitlin wanted to join me (not sure if it's because she wanted to help or if she just wanted to get out of going to the church service). She played with the 2 year olds and kept them occupied. Future baby-sitter in training. |
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When Devin had a friend over to play, I thought it would be nice if we fed the horses some carrots, but the horses wouldn't come over to our fence. At my suggestion, but with 100% Devin courage, he hopped over the fence, walked to the other side of the field and led Jackson back with some enticing carrots. |
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A wonderfully arrayed spider dozes in the backdrop of the neighbor's horse, Grey. |
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Devin and I caught some fish at Joe Pool Lake Marina. The boy loves to fish. |
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Ginger gets a little TLC including a tummy rub from Devin and Greg. |
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Our friends the Crosses bought a new house. It's humongous. We all pitched in and redid the kitchen by pulling down the wallpaper and texturing the walls. Then painting and glazing was done. We were sustained by Home & Garden TV where a home improvement marathon was taking place. |
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Last month I showed pictures of Devin extracting his first upper tooth. This month, the second one came right along. He was a bit more distraught this time for some reason; must have caught him on a bad day. We tried the apple method and the string method. But he was persistent in pulling it out himself and finally succeeded. |
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Devin helps Mommy put out fire ant killer. |
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Angela decorated three tables for the annual Ladies Festival of Tables. I will never understand the desire to take part in this event where hundreds of tables are decorated in individually themed arrays. If it was a guy thing, there would have to be a trophy for best decorated, most inventive, most unique, worst, etc. |
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Being that our house isn't in a neighborhood, we have to jump at opportunities whenever we can, like an ice cream truck happening by. |
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Caitlin and Devin were baptized together in October by Rev. Mark Stayton. Many family and friends were on hand. We are very proud of their decisions which they made a couple of months apart. We decided to wait on the baptisms until their dad returned from Iraq. |
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Let's carve pumpkins! Hey Devin, watch where you're stabbing that thing. This year we used patterns to help carve which made for some really nice and intricate results. The second from the left pumpkin says "BOO" surrounded by bats in a design that Angela made herself. |
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Caitlin, Bailey Cross, Devin and Reagan Cross are ready to fight crime. I guess Bailey will be there as an angel when the criminals die? |
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Angela and Greg have a blast on Halloween. |
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Devin gets some air at a neighborhood Halloween carnival. This year Greg will be coaching Devin's 1st Grade Upwards Basketball team while Caitlin tries her hand at her first sport, playing in the Upwards Basketball 3rd and 4th grade girls league. |
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The Speed front porch awaiting salivating trick-or-treaters with spooky music. |
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Again, not being in a neighborhood has its drawbacks. We only had two trick-or-treaters come to our house. So Angela and I decided to flag down cars in front of our house to give them candy in what Angela called Drive-Thru Trick-Or-Treating. Angela stood in the road like a sweets-yielding apparition while I held out a sign that read FREE CANDY. We had 5 cars stop for us. But the vast majority would slow down to see what in the world was going on and then speed off when they got close. It further freaked them out that because of the smoke machine and the whipping wind, it appeared that our house was on fire. We had a blast though, commenting that it felt like we were in Junior High again. |
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Greg and Devin eagerly await the release of X-Box's Halo 2 on November 9. The release date has been all over the calendar. But it looks like they are finally nailing down a day and sticking to it. Stores will be sponsoring midnight release parties and tournaments to commemorate the event. |
