Family pictures and catch up

Holy cow, I have been a huge slacker with the Banbury family bloggito. I apologize to anyone who has been checking this thing. I feel like ever since Instagram has become popular a lot of people have stopped blogging...including myself. I hardly ever check people's blogs anymore. Must try to make a better effort to record happenings along with pictures this next year.
Well, not too much has happened since August. We finally had family pictures taken after 3 years...must remember to be better at that too. :)
Here are some of my favorites...

It was a cold and windy day which is why most of the shots are of us in jackets. Lucy had a really cute top similar to Ruby's but we couldn't get her to take her jacket off. Ah well. At least she smiled in all the pictures, even though some of them were a little goofy. It's perfectly fitting though, she's such a goof ball. Our friend Mary did an awesome job! I'm so sad she's moving this summer.
Since the last post, we finished the basement, we are just dragging our feet on a few finishing touches like trim, etc. It'll get done someday when I feel motivated or it drives me crazy.
We had our first neighborhood block party which we kind of cohosted. It was so fun to actually meet most of the people on our street. I was the official face painter for the few kids that were interested. There was tons of good food, ping pong, badmitton, and other games for the kiddos. I can't wait for the next one. We have really cool neighbors.

To our left are the nicest older couple and to our right and pretty much the coolest family ever. We love the Hodges!!! They have a boy Caleb (3) who adores Lucy (and she loves him too) and a wee babe Ezra (5 mo.). We feel so lucky to have them living next to us. We became really quick friends with them.
We have a few neighborhood strays that the girls love the play with/terrorize. Now when the cats see the girls they run the opposite direction, ha ha! They love animals so much, especially dogs. Don't be surprised if one day we cave and buy a dog. These girls would be in hog heaven! I mean dog heaven, bah ha ha! Gosh I crack myself up. Ahem.

Trey and Kyle built this fun rope swing for the kids. This fulfilled one of my childhood dreams of having a swing hanging from a giant tree in my yard. We just have to beef the rope up a bit to make it suitable for adults to swing on.

This swing got used at least once a day every day in the summer and early fall.

At the end of August Lucy began preschool. Here is the customary first day of school picture. And in true Lucy fashion she is in some pretty funky poses with weird looks on her face.

She also started going to Studio J Dance Studio in September. She's learning ballet, tap, and jazz just like her mummy did many years ago. It totally takes me back when I see her in her cute little leotard and little dance shoes.

 Ha ha, I had to put this one on. She gives this photoshoot a half thumbs up. She was so excited!

We went to the Cleveland zoo for a fieldtrip with Lucy's preschool class. Yay for free Mondays!

We had a freak snowstorm on Oct. 24 and the kids were stoked so we had to find all the winter garb and then proceed to pile it on, which took about 15 minutes. Ruby was unsure about all the cold white stuff but Lucy just jumped right in. We made a cute little snowman and after that Ruby was donesky.

A few days after the snow melted and we were able to enjoy some warmer weather again before it really started to get cold. One of the girls favorite things to do was jump in the leave piles. Holy cow did our leaves produce some leafage. I couldn't be-leaf it. Bah ha ha! There I go again...

 All decked out for Halloween. I love our little house.

We had 2 sets of visitors come out but I only took a few pictures on our digital cam, all the rest are on my phone. Trey's parents and seester and her kids came out in August and my parents came out in October. We had so much fun exploring the Cleve since we really hadn't done much exploring on our own. We did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, West Side Market, Kirtland, Chagrin Falls, Patterson's Fall Fest, Apple Picking at Edys, Squire's Castle, and Horseshoe Park. We saw Elder Ballard in Kirtland because they were celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the visitor center there. The primary kids sang him a few songs and then everyone got to go shake his hand. Trey and I snuck in real quick since Lucy was feeling a little shy. It was really neat.

 Here's one from the cute town of Chagrin Falls. I will never forget this because as we were sitting by the river feeding the ducks and my mom was walking down the steps to get closer and tripped and ended up falling face first into the water! Luckily she was okay so we had a good laugh about it and tried to dry her off as much as possible.

For Halloween we had a fishy and supergirl. It was a windy, rainy Halloween but the girls still had fun going up and down our street. They made out like bandits! We also enjoyed the ward trunk-or-treat and going to the Boo at the Zoo with HSSA.

Not a whole lot happened in November. We had a yummy Thanksgiving with our friends the Johnsons. We made a thankful tree and added leaves on it every day and wrote what we were thankful for on them. Isn't that little stinker getting too cute for her own good?! She kills me.

December has been fun! Lucy got a haircut! A big one! She originally said she wanted it as short as Daddy's but I put the veto on that and we ended up with a cute shoulder length bob with some sideswept bangs.

Here is the before...

 And after!

 So stinkin' cute! Her daddy about died when I brought her home. He loves it! And she does too.

Trey snapped a few pics of me and the girls decorating the tree. It's so fun now that Ruby can join in on all the traditions this year. Lucy is really getting into it this year, it makes it so magical. We have a countdown Santa beard that we've been gluing cotton balls on to count down the days until Christmas. I can't believe it's almost here already! Time moves waaaay too quickly.

 Ruby likes to rock the no pants look.

And a crazy dress up picture to end on. I love these girls so much. They are all sorts of crazy fun.