We moved the piano from the white house over to the brick house. We've been slowly getting it fixed up. Cassie started piano lessons in the fall and Takumi just started them last week. They've both been really good about practicing every day and they seem to be picking it up very quickly. Takumi's favorite song to play is "Mary had a little lamb." Cassie's favorite is "We wish you a Merry Christmas."
Here are the kids finally convinced that fall is here and they should wear a sweater. Takumi is wearing the Dale of Norway Nagano Olympics sweater that Lois made him. And Cassie is wearing one of the sweaters that Darleen and Grunde gave to Takumi.
Here are Cassie's shark teeth. She was planning to grow 18 rows of shark's teeth but the front row fell out and she was left with normal teeth.
Takumi insisted that I include a photo of a tractor.
While we no longer get nightly "diaper dances," we do still gets lots of dancing performances.
CongCong is a student at Middlebury. We are her host family which means that we try to get together once a month or so. It's a little difficult though because she is so busy. Here we are playing Chinese marbles.
The kids stuck with their "Peter Pan" theme for Halloween. Takumi was a pirate (not Captain Hook) and Cassie was Princess Tiger Lily.
The cherry tree's fall look was remarkably similar to its spring look with red berries replacing the red flowers.
As usual we went to White Plains, NY for Thanksgiving. Here John is giving the kids a ride into the kitchen.
It was once again beautiful weather and Big George took lots of photos of all the cousins.
The kids were very concerned with the cutting of Andrea's birthday cake.
Lois worked hard getting out all the advent calendars, creches and Christmas decorations.
Lois put up something new every day while the kids were at school and they would come and search the house to see what new Christmas decoration had gone up.
Here's Cassie making her list and checking it twice. She very much likes making lists in all of her little notebooks.