Other November Happenings

I woke up one morning to this- it's no wonder her nickname is Mina Monster.

Emiko and Mina performed in their year end dance recital. Of course I forgot the camera...and the pics I got on my phone are less than stellar (but you get the idea):

Even though he was on a business trip, Brian sent me flowers on our anniversary.

Thanksgiving Week

The weekend before Thanksgiving we hosted our 6th annual pie party! I love that Emiko helped decorate..."pie party" in bendaroos.

Of course, Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here...so we didn't actually celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. Instead, we traveled down south to Dunsborough for the weekend with friends. It was Brian's birthday the day we arrived. Our friends bought a cake for Brian!

The next morning (before we had to get back to start cooking our Thanksgiving feast) we drove to Canal Rocks. Beautiful! A group shot:

Some of my favorite ladies...

Mina climbing the rocks...she had so much fun! Everyone was calling her Spider-Mina.

Some of the dad's took the kids exploring- can you see them scattered amongst the rocks? (If not, you can click on the image to enlarge)

Mina and Josh. Josh was actually her primary teacher for awhile and now they're best buddies.

Scenery shot:

Brian carving the turkey.

Group shot at the adult table- yummy food!

Mina chose to eat at this table all by her lonesome (even though there were enough seats to accommodate her at the kids table)- she cracks me up...I bet she wanted the iPad all to herself!

On our drive back home we stopped at the Bunbury Dolphin Discovery Centre. There are wild dolphins that regularly make visits to the shore and you can feed them. The tricky part is that you never know when/if they'll come to visit. Generally they come every day, mostly in the morning. Of course, we didn't see any dolphins. Bummer. They had already come earlier in the morning (& although multiple visits do occur we didn't get one). However, we did get to play around a bit on the beach.

And now we're home. We're grateful to have made some awesome, fun friends here that we can celebrate American holidays with! Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too.

Family Pictures 2012

We had family photos taken at the beach this year. You can tell from some of the pics that it was fairly windy...but I think they turned out pretty good.

13 years!

November 13th was our 13th wedding anniversary...lucky 13! Brian had to go to Japan on business so we didn't really get to celebrate (although we managed to squeeze in a quick dinner date the weekend before). The above photo was our engagement picture- we look so young! Anyways, it's been a great 13 years and I feel so blessed to have such a wonderful husband.

Halloween 2012

This year I had one trick-or-treater come knock on our door. LAME. When will Aussie's realize Halloween is one of the coolest holidays ever?! At least we had 3 parties to attend. I was in charge of the American Women's Club party...so I literally was too busy to take any pictures. I forgot my camera at the school party. I did get a few pics at the ward trunk-or-treat.

I forced the girls to be Cleopatra again this year.

Group shot.

I thought about making Mei a matching Cleopatra costume...but in the end it was only a thought.

Batman paid a visit & Mei got to sit on the "Bat-mobile"

Proof that I actually was at the Halloween events...

Procrastination resulted in this:

Hope everyone else enjoyed Halloween! My favorite part was eating the candy corn Brian brought back from America when he was there last month on a business trip- yum.