Here's the Diehl

With girls this silly, there is always something to smile about.

This van never fails to produce some danceable tunes.

I finally made the time to use my new ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchen Aid. Love this thing. You freeze it. And you then make your ice cream mix (follow any recipe) and then you attach the bowl to the mixer and mix it all up for about 15-20 minutes. It works great! I made pumpkin frozen yogurt. It was terrible. Terrible tasting, that is. It may be because I used plain greek yogurt...so the whole batch just tastes like bland canned pumpkin. Glad I'm not serving that on Thanksgiving. Schuyler and Julia still liked it.

Brian ran in a last-minute 12k and we cheered for him. It worked out great, we just had to walk down the block because the race went right through our neighborhood. Since is was a USATF sanctioned event, we were expected lots of runners and really fast times. It was not that. A nice small race with a good core group of recreation runners. Brian did great! Jules drew a picture of "daddy running"...which took her longer than the entire 12k to complete.

That magical red monster with the high-pitched voice. Strangely enough (since we don't own a lot of Elmo paraphernalia (thank God)) Schuyler's choice of first words has been none other than "Elmo" and "Bella". In that order. Glad to see her priorities are straight. Fridays working from home are getting pretty tough since the little one is mobile now. So, I bit the bullet. I pulled out the Elmo "Babies" video and called it a day. Sure enough, it gave me a good 20 minutes of work time. Enough to finish my work.

Julia earned her candy this year, man. We were out for an hour and half and her bucket came home FULL. She couldn't even carry it. I wanted to keep going to see more spooky houses, but she just wanted to come home. It was by far the longest she has ever walked, but she did awesome. And I had several houses comment on how polite she was (unlike the kids that visited our home apparently and took handfuls of candy). We saw some great houses and had so much fun. This is Julia and her friend Ellis before the madness began. One of the top ten finalists in the Del Ray Halloween Home Decorating Contest. After grabbing some loot. One of the many spooky decorations at the winner of the decorating contest. The big question: where do these people store all this stuff?

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's......the SUPER Diehls! Yes, we had a theme for this year's dress up. Super heroes. Julia decided months ago that she wanted to be Wonder Woman. Who am I to argue with that logic?! So, I also found a Superman outfit for Schuyler, and she donned that plus a sparkly crown for Supergirl. I was Cat Woman...I'd argue her as a modern-day good guy, at least according to the latest Batman chapter. And, Brian...I had figured out the perfect costume for him (thanks Jamie!) because he's totally not into Halloween (and it's one of my life missions to convert him). Clark Kent. Shirt, tie, tshirt underneath with the Superman emblem. Perfect. Except that he didn't wear it....until he got into bed. Not quite what I had in mind...but that's ok. I don't have photos of him or me anyhow. He's still my Superman, especially after the last month of total chaos. I'll be his Lois Lane any day. Take that bad guys! I'll de...