The Dresses

While visiting my parents over Thanksgiving, we looked through my mother's cedar chest.  We found my old First Communion Dress and had to give it life again.  Anna will wear her sister's First Communion Dress for the real day (since styles have changed a bit and a rust stain has appeared), but I love seeing Anna in my old dress.  She also is taller than I was at her age, so it is SHORT!  I remember being one of the smallest in my 2nd grade class, but clearly I caught up.

 Anna 12/2014

Betsy Spring 1977

Carolyn (in this generation's dress) Spring 2010....a bit longer  (Carolyn is older than Anna at the same grade level, so I may need to shorten this dress for Anna.)

Biggest Change for our Family (member) this year

Here is Matthew the day he interviewed for his job at HyVee grocery store.  He got offered the job on the spot which made his day!  He is a hard worker, which is good because he is sacking groceries and bringing in carts from the parking lot....manual labor.  He makes great money for a 16 year old ($9/hour).  Even I, his mother, would pay his inexperienced self only minimum wage, but HyVee is employee owned and CLEARLY takes care of its employees.

Extra picture is Matthew in his first tux.  In "the world is crazy" fashion, our high school provides these concert band uniforms for the 10-12th graders.  He also is in the Jazz band, which is great practice.  I think he is very motivated to earn a Band letter, which you can't get without extra work (like Jazz band).  It requires him to be at school at 7:00 am 2 days a week, so I give him a lot of credit.

Anna is Anna!

This is all I have for Halloween this year.  In case it isn't obvious Anna is the the princess Anna from Frozen.  Costume design by Aunt Debbie (reusing a dress she handed down), Carolyn (created the cape) and me (the blue gauze like sash that made the outfit seem more princessish to me).

It was Joel's last year of trick or treating and he wore some mask of Ken's, not really wanting to dress-up.

Carolyn, Matthew and I went trick-or-treating for canned goods again this year, easily one of my favorite events of our Youth Ministry.  (Carolyn was a cat, Matthew was Mine-craft dude again, although he mentioned that "it was getting stale" or something like that.)

There are pictures, just none at my finger-tips and this is a power-blogging moment.  (Someone sent me a photo and someone else has a shot on their phone....they may never see the light of day.)  Oh well, Anna loved it best of all anyway!