Simpsons in Seattle

Caught this cute photo of everyone snuggled in our bed reading the other night. Nora's starting to get the hang of reading and is loving being able to read to us!

Found this little gem when going through photos on my phone the other day! These cutie pies were doing experiments while I was cooking dinner.

Last weekend was Veteran's day holiday and we took advantage of the day off to explore the city a bit! It was a bit exhausting cuz we packed so much stuff in, but it was also super fun.  On Saturday, we went to the new Burke Museum of Natural History at UW. They have a ton of animal bones to check out, and then we walked over to UDistrict for some super yummy eats at Taste of Xian and Sweet Alchemy.  On Sunday, we took a trail ride near Snoqualamie. The Palouse to Cascades trail is over 100 miles long so we only did a small small section of it (9 miles r/t!). It was a lot muddier than we expected and soooo bumpy for me on my road bike but the kids mostly enjoyed it. After we worked up a hefty appetite, we went to Feast Buffet for dinner. It was our first time there and it was like a Vegas buffet - a GINORMOUS spread that included crab, lobster, sushi etc. The dessert station was especially good and the kids loved the cotton candy station and the build-your-own shaved ice s

Look who got upgraded to a big girl flute! She looks so mature playing it, doesn't she? 

Nora-bearski got ANOTHER award a few weeks ago! This time, she got the Sensational Sockeye Award. (Sockeyes are the school mascot). The award is for students who demonstrate respectful, responsible, safe and caring choices. The reward is a certificate, a special lunch with some teachers and her picture up on the "big screen" during Wednesday lunch.  I was surprised about all these awards because a) she can get into her fair of trouble at home and b) I don't remember Evie getting them. Well, we suck because when we asked Evie about it she told us she's gotten Sensational Sockeye 3 times - once in first grade and twice in second grade. That made us feel bad for not celebrating it with her when she got them like we did with Nora.  The best part of the award so far has been that Nora has mentioned a few times how she tries really hard to be good at school because she wants to beat the other kids and get another award, haha. 

We started celebrating Halloween a bit early last Friday with the school's Spooky Spaghetti event. It consisted of a "spooky" tunnel walk through a dark hallway, a spaghetti buffet dinner, lots of dancing, and games spread across the campus. Evie had a BLAST running around with her friends whereas I think it was a bit overwhelming for Nora. She stuck by my side and wanted to go home pretty quickly. Too bad, cuz she was the cutest little Ladybug Girl there was!  In line to enter the party! Ladybug girl! On the day of, I volunteered at Nora's classroom Harvest party. I ended up manning the STEM table where I helped the kiddos create a spider web out of cups and string, and had them try to see how many spiders (ie: little blocks) could stay on their web. It wasn't nearly as fun as the cupcake decorating table! Oh well, it was still fun to see Nora interacting with her buddies. The kids got to dress up in costumes for the 1 hr party and boy, there were a