A beautiful Autumn day!

The temperature was perfect, and the leaves were beautiful, so for one afternoon, I told the kids to go out and play even though their jobs weren't done. Sam was next door at the neighbor's house and missed the photos.



These are taken from our front porch.



The kids are wearing stickers from participating in a mock election. They say "I voted."

New baby Avery

One of the best parts of the Halloween party was getting to hold a new cousin, Avery. Isn't she cute? Born Oct. 13th, I believe.


Spencer has always loved babies!


Sierra is getting to be a really good babysitter.


Sam was the first to ask to hold her. I was nervous to let go of her long enough to take the picture. This one was taken when she was only a few days old. Simon is not sure what to think.

Teppanyaki

October 9th we went to dinner as a family for Spencer's Birthday, at his request. Everyone was excited. We enjoyed the company of a couple that sat with us. We told them they could pretend to be the grandparents for the night and our celebration. They were very cute with the kids.

Simon gave us a taste of how "big" he is getting. He had to try everything, even the mushrooms and shrimp, and he insisted on eating with chop sticks. He even wanted his own soup instead of sharing with me, so the server brought him one. The noodles were his favorite. I wish I had caught the expression on his face on camera when the chef first lit the stove top on fire.





The meal was wonderful as usual, but the price keeps us from doing this very often!

Sea World 2006

Late in 2006, Scott's computer hard drive crashed and he lost a bunch of our photos. Then he used some restore programs to salvage what he could. The photos have been somewhere out of my reach, needing to be sorted and organized. Scott has finally been working on organizing them, and I have been browsing through them. All of our scrapbooks are at a standstill at this point in time, and I need to get some of these photos developed for the kids books. I had forgotten about this family photo at Sea World in October 2006.




Amazing how life changes in 2 years time. We look a bit tired, kind of like I feel right now!

First Post

I've gotten into this blogging thing, and then I mention blogging to family and friends and they say, "Oh, give me your address!" So I decided we should start our own family blog. (Like AS IF I need something else to do with my time!)

All of our names start with the letter S (Scott, Sarah, Sierra, Spencer, Samuel and Simon), so our initials are all SN, and if you say that out loud, we are the SNs, which kind of sounds like Essence. Forgive my silly attempt to be creative. Actually, Scott figured it out long ago, I'm just stealing the idea from him now. Thanks sweetie :)

So, as long as I am being corny, lets think of some ways Essence applies to us.

• Family is of the essence. That means it is really important. :)
• Our family, though not perfect, has a great essence. In other words, our family's intrinsic characteristics are great!
• Um, I guess that's it for now.
  

Feel free to comment and be creative about how the word essence applies to us!

This is sure to be a new adventure! Welcome to our blog!