On Saturday, the family went to Homestead Gardens to attend their annual Fall Festival - games, rides, food, live music, and lots and lots of pumpkins. I’ve included a few photos and short video clips of us taking a pumpkin ride. Enjoy!

[Runtime: 00:23 (Mommy and Isabel) | Runtime: 00:20 (Daddy and Emily) | Please make sure you have the latest version of Macromedia Flash installed on your computer to watch this video. To download it, please visit: http://www.macromedia.com ]

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It’s been so much fun watching the girls develop. The girls are now eating table food, which means Mom and Dad are finely cutting food they prepare for themselves. Gone are the days of blending all sorts of food into a liquid form, freezing them in ice cube trays, and then microwaving them when the girls were ready to be fed.

Both girls started out eating anything, but now in the finger food stage, Iz is much more picky - she sticks mainly to vegetables. Em, on the other hand, is two-fisting the food and eats at twice the speed as Iz!

The girls are crawling like crazy. Iz now has her upper teeth coming in.

These are joyous times indeed.

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What a fantastic photo! Catch Emily’s curls and Isabel’s red hair. It’s easy to grab a big photo of this. With appropriate permissions notwithstanding, simply click this image to go to Flickr and then choose different sizes under the “additional information” label. Then choose the size of the photo you’d like to download and click download!

Note: If you are unable to choose a size or download a photo, it means either 1) you have not logged into your free Flickr account; 2) you need to register for a free Flickr account (and tell me so I can add you as a friend or family connection); or 3) you have a Flickr account and are logged in but have not been idetified by me as a family or friend. If you want to download any photo of any size and need help, let me know.

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Iz started to crawl a few days ago. It’s not fast or frequent, but it’s there. I also had a great time yesterday with the girls. Em was in the exersaucer and Iz was on the floor. The dynamic is that Iz will catch Em’s attention and Em will lose it - laughing and laughing and screaming. This only encourages Iz to be even more silly in order to make her sister laugh that much harder.

There were tears in my eyes I was laughing so much.

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I’m not sure what’s happened, but I have far less time to post. My apologies. We certainly have a lot of photos to upload…even some movies. Anyway, one of the things I want to be sure to document is when the girls hit a particular milestone.

Right around month 9 we were concerned that the girls were not sitting up. The girls were due to go to the doctor and sitting was one of the markers. Granted, mom and dad never really tried to have the girls sit. So, sure enough, when we put the girls in a sitting position, they were fine.

Well, since we gave the girls opportunities to sit up, their development has flourished. Now Em can sit up on her own from a laying position. It’s quite extraordinary to watch.

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There’s been some sickness in the household lately. Both Emily and Isabel had been diagnosed a few weeks back with Fifth Disease, which sounds scarier than it is. The basic symptoms include rosy cheeks and slight fever or cold-like symptoms. However, the fevers became worse, and with Isabel’s tendency to tug at her ears, Mom wisely got them checked out and both were found to have ear infections. No biggie - just give them antiobiotics.

One unfortunate side-effect of the antibiotics is that it causes diarrhea. I know, I’m sure too much information for you. Just have a little sympathy for Mom and Dad as we have the joy of handling the stink. Frankly, seeing this video reminds me of my experience (and they must take the antibiotics for 7 more days still!).

[Runtime: 01:05 | Please make sure you have the latest version of Macromedia Flash installed on your computer to watch this video. To download it, please visit: http://www.macromedia.com ]

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On July 4th little did we know what was in store for us. For a while, we enjoyed a relaxing day at home, and we even spent some time with the girls in our new kiddie pool…

The pool time was cut short, however, as dark clouds rolled in and storms knocked out power to the house. What a wonderful holiday - all night we were without power and the house grew to over 80 degrees inside. On top of that, fireworks shot off from 9 to 11 pm, which is wonderful when the dog barks nonstop for the entire time and the task is to get our hot sweaty girls to sleep.

The next day the power eventually came on, but the house would not warm up. Seems our 17 year old a/c unit decided to become problematic. Fortunately, the repairman was able to get it working again. Let’s just cross our fingers.

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As a college freshman I was placed with two other roommates. Needless to say, I was and still am a relatively light sleeeper, so I had a difficult time sleeping if there was noise or light in the room. There never really was a solution to my dilemma, but I found that if I put a pillow on my face when I went to sleep, I could at least cut down on the amount of light that I could see when I tried to get to sleep.

Now, flash forward 15+ years. I still have the bad habit of sleeping with a pillow on my face. But just look at how Emily sleeps and tell me this was not passed along genetically.

I know this looks almost criminal, but believe me when I say that Mom and Dad both pull the blanket down from her face, yet she insists that she cover her face with it. Like father, like daughter.

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Needless to say, Mattingly is happy with any “non-dog” food he can get and has been known to enjoy leftovers.

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I would like to announce that my brother and his wife have two little additions to their family!

Without knowing the specific details, their little boys were born prematurely at approximately 31 weeks (I’m sure Ron can be more specific). Since they still need to develop, they’ll spend some time in the NICU. Please pray for Ron and Sarah and these precious ones.

Here is the scoop:

James Robert (4 lbs 8 oz)

John Bowen (4 lbs 0 oz)(3 lbs 14 oz)

They were born this morning at approximately 3:30 am 2:30 am.

Congrats to Ron and Sarah!

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