.:Meet the Ritchies:.

Every day Claire has a question of the day as part of her homework, where she has to write a paragraph answer.  Today’s question was “If you could suddenly give yourself a talent that you don’t presently have, what would it be?”  I read it over her shoulder and said “ooh, that’s a great question!  Do you know what my answer would be?”  Claire looked at me with a confused look on her face so I thought perhaps she needed a hint, so I said “You know, what’s something I love to do but I’m not very good at?” … and she looked up at me and said … “cook?”

No. That wasn’t it.  But thanks Claire for adding to my huge ego that I have about my talents in the kitchen.     (the answer was SING! for those of you who were wondering).

Oh kids, they say the darndest things…

Claire - 18 months old

Mark had the wonderful idea to make our own personal pizzas for dinner tonite, so while the Beavers were effortlessly kicking some Stanford blankety blank, I went to the grocery store for toppings!   Veda and Claire each put sauce, cheese and olives on theirs and Claire added some canadian bacon to her half.  I love how they both put all the stuff towards the center of their pizza squares.

Claire is not pictured because she is nursing her index finger after touching the pan, five seconds after I said for the fourth time to NOT TOUCH THE PAN

I topped my personal pizza with pesto sauce, a sprinkle of mozzarella cheese, canadian bacon, gala apple slices and some yummy feta cheese.  It was soooooooooooooooooooo good!

and Mark topped his with all of the above, minus the apples and the pesto… he didn’t really want me to take a picture of his, but I wanted to because it was cute… he’s getting used to me taking pictures of everything, just in case I make a blog out of it, though tonite when I asked him if he thought it was weird that I was taking pictures of everything and he answered, ” (long pause)…no”… which I took to mean “yes, but what can I do about it?”  He’s so good at humoring me… I love him more than sugar!  (and for those of you who know me well, you know that’s huge)

Claire’s volleyball team – the Madeleine Magic – won 1 of 3 games today, improving 200% from two weeks ago!  Thank you to all of you who came out to watch her play!

Yes!  I have changed our artwork above for the new month, and I was only 10 days LATE!  Yay me!  No seriously, my ultimate goal is to have my incredibly handsome and beautiful and amazing web designer (who doubles as my just as incredibly handsome and beautiful and amazing husband) upload a new cartoon of us on the 1st of every month, however that did not happen this time.  But here it is, and yes folks – that is a beard on Mark’s face (or the best that I could do to imply a beard) because he has officially declared it “beard weather”!  Did I mention how much I love this season?    Mmmm hmmm…

Claire learned of a website from her poetry teacher today, it’s called wordle.net and it’s so much fun!  check it out!  we typed in our blog site address and made a word cloud out of my applie pie post!  How fun!

Happy October everyone!  It’s my favorite time of year so get ready for lots of posting about Halloween and boots and sweaters and leaves and rain!  All things fall!

xoxo