Korinne's Blessing

Other churches might call it a christening, but for us it's just a simple blessing that's given to babies after their born. Here is Miss Korinne Dawn, all dressed up in white frills. I believe that lace bonnet was handmade. Fancy!Korinne looks mighty serious in that photo, but let me assure you that she's normally all smiles! Speaking of smiles, we took the opportunity to snap a few family photos since we were all together. Here's my mom with her three girls:
And here is the Sparks Family. Kory, Tandy and wee Korinne. Sorry that it's kind of a dark photo. It was a bit cloudy out that day. Doesn't Tandy look like a proud mom?
And here are the LeVines! Nice that all our outfits sort of coordinated that day! Simon wasn't in a great mood, since he was fighting an ear infection. He always looks so serious in photos!

Joey's School Project

Sorry I haven't updated in a while! Time to catch up!

Joey's class was studying different careers and professions, so the students were all assigned to do a special project on what they wanted to be when they grew up. Each student was given a giant blank paper doll, which they then had to decorate. Of course, Joey wants to be an astronaut. Here is the finished product:
Note those killer silver boots! While I helped a bit, Joey really did most of the work on this project himself. (As it should be!) I helped him design and cut out the main helmet for the spacesuit, but then Joey decorated it with stickers (the flag and the USA) and drew in the face:
He also designed a couple patches for the spacesuit, including this name tag:
Joey was very proud of his astronaut project! In fact, it was his idea to take photos of it for the family blog.
Great job, Joey!

Halloweenie!

Here are the kids in their Halloween costumes. First, Joey as a chef. Specifically, he is Alfredo Linguine, the chef from the movie Ratatouille. (That's why he also has the stuffed rat.) Originally Joey wanted to be the rat from Ratatouille, but I thought it would be much easier to come up with a costume for being a chef than for being a rat. He got lots of compliments when we were out Trick-or-Treating.Kristin was a mermaid this year. We were all set, and then my mom asked Kristin if she was going to have a red wig so she could be Ariel, the Little Mermaid. (At which point I gave Mom the Look of Death™.) So then she insisted that she needed a wig for her costume. It was a very busy week for us, and I just never made it out to a costume store to find her the red wig she wanted. Fortunately for us all, she was satisfied with this shiny tiara. So, she wasn't just a mermaid, she was a princess mermaid. Princess mermaids, as you know, can have whatever color hair they want.And here is Simon, our little stinker. Originally he was going to be Dash from The Incredibles. We had the costume all ready but when we tried it on him, Simon was swimming in it. The outfit was just way, way too big. Of course, I'd waited until the last minute to try it on him so there weren't many options. I just dug through the costume box and found the skunk costume Joey wore when he was two. I personally think that it fit with Simon's personality much better than Joey's. Simon really IS a stinker!

Hulking Out on Halloween

During Saturday's game, in honor of it being Halloween, Joey's soccer team (The Hulks) decided to show its holiday team spirit by giving everyone green hair! The bright green perfectly matched their uniforms.What do you think, Joe? Is it easy being green?Joey was the team captain this week. They all take turns being the team captain. It's the captain's job to lead stretches during warm up. And here, Joey goes up for the coin toss at the beginning of the game. And there's Matt, the referee extraordinaire!Happy Halloween, everyone!