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http://www.thegigglegallery.blogspot.com/

Thanks! :) Happy Reading!

Happy Birthday Grandma T!!!

Happy, happy birthday, Grandma Dear! Happy days will come to you all year! If we had a wish than it would be, a happy, happy birthday to you from we! Hope your day is great! We wish we could be there to celebrate with you! Hopefully the pictures will make it seem like we're closer than we really are. Enjoy :)

Sam's birthday shenannigans (sp??):

One fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish--Sam gets a betta fish from the Oakesons :)

A fantastic cake alla Marjan :)

Making & launching a rocket with dad: Mom partying with Seth in the Moby:

Sam and his new power rangers swim-getup:

Leah sparkling on the 4th of July:
The patriots:

Adam & the kiddos:

SUCH a cute baby! Check out the hair!

Missing a few teeth down under:

The Gale boys:

Summer haircut time--this time Dad did it (not Sam)!

Odds & Ends from the last 3 months

So it's been a while since I've updated.... here, in no particular order, are the latest updates...

We got a hundred feet of snow yesterday (ok, 10 inches...). I'm not a huge fan, but the kids had a ball:

Leah's 8!! Here she is with her impressive birthday cake:

Here's Leah & Anna playing the Jolly-Santa game with the rest of the girls. The goal is to see which team can stuff the santa suit with the most balloons. They had a blast.

Darn cute kids in their Christmas clothes:

With Uncle Ben:
Leah's dance recital:

Thanksgiving day with all the cousins:

Spencer at the 3-D movie "Bolt":

Best buddies, wearing hats Sam made in kindergarten:

During Thanksgiving dinner, Sam insisted that he wanted the thigh... go figure. He ate a couple of bites & decided that maybe he didn't want it after all. Too funny.

Leah & her friends model their latest creations during play date:

Note to self: Be suspicious anytime Spencer is too quiet.... here are his latest adventures:

You probably can't tell, but he's hiding in his changing table... it took me several minutes to find him--he was quiet as a mouse & never answered when i called his name.

Kids on Halloween:

Here's the latest in the last while... a sort of catch all of events and happenings the last few months.

Adam & Spencer celebrated their October 26th birthdays together with family, cake, ice cream, and presents (Spencer's favorite part).



Spencer won the "great pumpkin" contest from Harmon's grocery store! We entered the drawing several weeks ago for both Sam & Spencer. Last Saturday afternoon Harmon's called to tell us Spencer had won & that we had to pick up this gigantic pumpkin right away. Unfortunately, Spencer wasn't feeling very well and was in no mood for fanfare--or pictures. :) At least the other kids had a ball.

More on Spencer: the other day I somehow lost him. I looked frantically for several minutes, all the while calling, "Spencer, I'm going to have some M&Ms...would you like to share some with me?" in hopes of drawing him out of his hiding spot. I grew panicked, however, when I couldn't find him anywhere. As I paused & considered my options I heard a small noise coming from the closed pantry. I crept toward the noise, and silently opened the door. Inside I found Spencer--who had snuggled his booster chair up to a shelf, and conveniently arranged the candy jar in front of him. No wonder he didn't come running when i offered M&Ms...he had them all--why share??!

Funny enough, the very next day I lost Spencer again, and after several minutes of searching demanded that the whole family stop what they were doing to join the search. We searched another several minutes before finding Spencer hiding in the van, enjoying a handful of dripping otter pops. I'm slowly learning that when Spencer is missing i should first check all possible treat locations. Sigh. :)



So, I've been looking for my kitchen scissors for weeks now... going mad in the process. It's no wonder i didn't find them in the house--they were hanging from a tree in the front yard. Duh. I happened to see them as I walked by this morning. (Kids! You can't live with them, and you can't...welll... you know...) Look carefully at the first picture below to see if you can find them. The close up below (2nd picture) pinpoints their exact location.

Sam's very first day of school--a kindergartner!!

The kids had a ball at this year's "Foothill Fall Festival". Sam came away with a seriously cool hamburger cake, and Leah won several bottles of pop from the bottle-walk. It is too funny that of all the bottle-o-pops the children could have selected, Leah and Sam both picked the ones they decorated themselves (center two bottles).

Sam and AJ: Unfortunate Adventures in Haircutting

So Sam and his playmate, AJ, had some free time on their hands and thought it would be fun to play beauty shop at the Gale home.

How do kids think of these ideas? (and WHY do they go through with them??!) How do they find the scissors that i can't seem to find when my life depends upon it? And most important of all: How did I miss this while supervising them through the kitchen windows??? Maybe I should get my vision checked!

Imagine my horror as I realized the extent of the damage and marched across the street, offending children in tow, to tell this child's mother! Thankfully her father answered the door, and was very understanding--in a sort of "what else can I do about it?" sort of way. His summary of the situation was this: "...well....I'd punish her, but it looks to me like the haircut is punishment enough...". Amen to that.

So check out the before and after pictures. First we have AJ...who thankfully had part of her hair held up with a pony tail so the destruction wasn't as complete as it could have been--although it was still incredible.






And here we have Sam. These pictures were taken right before we "fixed" his hair to look like Mr. Clean. The pictures don't really show the damage very well... but either way, he got off much easier than AJ did (SO SORRY Cory!!).



Now for AJ's "after" shots. The front actually turned out pretty cute--except the big chunk of bangs Sam took out. The back is....well....pretty short.

Sam's hair has never been this short. And, we would have had to shave him completely bald to match AJ's handiwork, but decided that this was good enough. It's a good thing his smile is so brilliant. The last picture makes me a little nervous, though, he's starting to look like some punk professional athlete...

History Repeats Itself!

Oh to be a 1st grader... and a seamstress! I'm so proud of my Leah and her first sewing efforts! She's a chip off the old block! ;) It seems like just yesterday that Lanica (was that her name??) and I were sewing our own masterpiece creations when we were the same age. Delightful yellow outfits with white polka-dots. They were special--quite special. As mom said, they were too "special" to wear out in public--we didn't want to ruin them, did we? I wish I had a picture of that... I'm sure there's one floating around... Mom?? Gram??

Anyway-- when I returned home from work yesterday, Leah informed me that she & Claire & Mariah had been sewing with Marjan, but that her project wasn't finished. This morning I haven't been able to keep her from it. And, at last, here is her first creation! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!!

And--not to disappoint... I've tossed in one picture of the boys too...