Brooke's 10th Birthday Party

Yesterday Brooke had a terrific 10th birthday party with her friends. It was filled with swimming; making individual pizzas; eating cake and ice cream; opening presents; playing dress up, vet, and house; and watching the 3-D movie Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Happy Birthday to Brooke !

We began celebrating Brooke's birthday on Friday night with a trip to see Madagascar II. Then Saturday morning she was excited to open her presents. She will celebrate with friends on Saturday with a party at the local swimming pool.


Brooke wanted to open her presents first thing in the morning...


She was very excited!

And then she broke into karaoke to a new High School Musical CD.

The Tipi is unveiled!

Here is Brooke's tipi after all the hard work and fun memories. She wanted to make sure I posted the final picture so you all could see it.

Halloween Memories

It's nice to still have Brooke be old enough for trick-or-treating with us... She is already enjoying going with friends for Halloween, and I know in not too long of a time she won't even trick or treat any more. Brooke's already planning next year's costume....

This Halloween I was thinking back to when Derrick was in high school and hid in the pasture on Halloween evening in Wisconsin trying to "catch" the kids who threw eggs, put nails on our driveway, soaped our windows, or took away our mailbox as pranks. And then Chesa or one of the dogs came over to check out what Derrick was doing and sit with him. I can really understand why Derrick was being so vigilant. It seemed like there were years of Halloween pranks on the Kratt property.

I remember a different Halloween when I was in high school. We rode the bus the day after Halloween. A few miles from our house suddenly the bus driver stopped the bus on the side of the road. We looked out the bus windows and saw this big thing lying across the road. I was embarrassed and so surprised to realize it was our mailbox that had been stolen the night before. It looked spray painted and all banged up. It had this big cement stump on the bottom of its pole that Dad had put on it to keep it in place, and so that it wouldn't be stolen. It was so heavy; it must have been so hard to get it out of our ground and way down the road -- but somehow they did! So I think for several years after that Mom and Dad used a spray painted and beat up mailbox until the pranks seemed to subside.

"All Hail Queen Violet!"

Happy Halloween. It's the morning after and we are all a little sugar-hungover (except Brooke who wanted to eat candy for breakfast). We went trick-or-treating for a while last night, and then Brooke went again with a friend, and then they went to a Halloween party at their school. Shan and I stayed home and watched a couple of movies; nothing scary, we watched Baby Mama and Leatherheads. We did not have one single knock on the door (we live on a highway, so no surprise there) and no eggs or TP or anything like that thank goodness.