The gnome spectrum, goodbye to Seb, &c.

Let's just start right out with a gnome: A gnome with a gnome-ball on his hat, to be precise. (Something's weird about his hands too. Are they also gnomes? Or bunnies?) Gus drew this gnome.

Gus also drew this Gost.

Moving on to the slightly more alarming end of the gnome spectrum, these are gnomes drawn by Clementine. They have hair (over their hats!) and bunny ears (on top of their hats!) and noses…above their eyes??

More above-eye noses, regular stick-like ears + bunny ears, crowns on top of hats, arms coming from hats, and legs coming from heads.

To keep you from having nightmares about that, we'll end with the cutest bat in the world (by Gus, of course. The words are the names of the animals pictured, plus one more: Flapjack, Flippy-flap, and Turtle)

Speaking of turtles, Junie crocheted this one. So cute! She has been making a whole collection of sea animals, while we've been having an Ocean Unit for homeschool.

Junie's octopus

Daisy's tiny octopus

We made coral reefs out of colored pasta and it was super fun

Daisy and Junie learned a duet to play in church, and it was super fun to hear them practicing all the time. They are now tackling "Sleigh Ride" for Christmas. We'll see if they can get it learned soon enough!

Beautiful fingers (with Junie's double-jointed thumb in action…)

Halloween ghosties

Gus and Teddy playing with magnets

Girls on an outing in Salt Lake (we rode Trax up and got pizza for our yearly girls' meeting—sometimes it's been afternoon tea, but not this year)

Diver with pet octopus

Two firemen

An infestation of pandas—and bats—tucked up underneath the piano

Clementine with Evie

An interesting burn on my arm, received while frying chicken (or was it salmon? I got burned two nights in a row and don't remember which one this was) and having the oil splash up on me. It hurt pretty badly for a while. Then it became less or more alarming in successive stages. The kids thought it looked like a turtle, or perhaps a a beaver.

Abe's birthday dinner (and Sebastian's goodbye dinner; not sure why I didn't think to get a picture of everyone that night). He chose kiss cookies for his dessert…

…and we made plenty of them!

Sebastian packed up his car to the very brim and headed off at 4:30 am the next morning for Denver, to start his new job the next day! We felt very tender and sad seeing him off, along with hoping it would all be great for him, of course! I packed up a week's worth of fridge meals in the cooler to see him through the first several days.

The day before he left he brought me this pretty bouquet of flowers. So sweet!

His car (clearly attended by the car-sustaining angels I have been pleading to stay close by since he bought it) made it all the way to Denver admirably! Yay!

Here is his cute little house (he lives in a room downstairs; there are 4 other housemates)

And his car pulled nicely in to its parking spot!

And the beautiful sunset over his house that first night. Seb is the child that loves sunsets and sunrises as much as I do! He used to always send me pictures of the sunrises while he was working at the airport in Salt Lake, and hopefully will keep doing so from Denver!

After a week or two he sent me this impressive picture of his meals all lined up and prepared for the next week. He makes them all on Sunday and then takes them to work all week for lunch (and eats the other ones for dinner). Every week when he shows me what he's making I wish _I_ were eating it! His meals look so delicious! Here are a couple others he's sent:

Here's another picture Seb sent of a pretty street near his house. All in all, I think everything is going well for him! He likes the city and his house. (Doesn't see much of his housemates, but none are objectionable so far. The other guy downstairs works night shifts and is moving out soon.) I hear from him pretty often by phone or text, and it's fun to keep up on what he likes about work, what he's doing around the house, and of course what planes he's working on! I hope he will continue to like everything!

Daisy got asked to a homeschool Homecoming Dance with this nice young fellow. It was his first date, as this gloriously awkward picture shows admirably. Daisy wore one of my old dresses (I think I wore this for Philip's wedding?), altered a little to fit her. She looked so pretty! (The top picture shows the color of her dress much better!)