audrie and annie's costume party

Audrie and Annie threw a costume party this weekend!

 

Audrie was a furry monster (appropriate, I thought!).

Annie was an adorable little monster, too.

Jamie dressed as an inmate (a prisoner in a house of girls...?).

I wore my poodle skirt outfit.

Here's our wacky little family...

I tried to get a couple photos of Annie for her first Halloween...

Annie did great wearing her costume. But since she is such a chilled out baby we were not surprised how good she did.

Love her little monster feet...!

Jamie made quite a sight welcoming the guests...

Audrie wasted no time getting started on the candy!

Our first guest was Kayla, the little yellow duck.

And Lily made her party debut at three weeks old!

And her brother, Cole, sported his Buzz Lightyear costume with style!

I honestly intended to get individual photos of all the little kiddos as they arrived, but it just got pretty exciting quick as everyone showed up, so I didn't get each of their photos! We did attempt a group photo though...

Baby Leo the Lion (who is a week older than Annie) arrived later with his safari parents.

And the strikingly handsome Dr. Will Burris came to the party late (probably got held up in surgery).

And referee Brett Ward was calling all the shots (Mel made his adorable costume herself!).

But the costume award definitely goes to the Burrows...

Jim and Emily stole the show with their batman and wicked witch attire!

At some point in the evening I guess Audrie decided her costume wasn't good enough, because I noticed she kept adding accessories to her wardrobe! I tried to get a photo of her styling, but I could only catch a few blurry ones here because she was a busy hostess.

Most of the kids played in the sandbox or in the garage where I had set up a bunch of Audrie's bigger toys. We had planned to have our usual pumpkin carving contest, but we were all just too busy talking, eating, and chasing kiddos. I think I counted 19 kids and 32 adults... good times!

We all joked about how our Halloween plans have definitely changed over the years! But it was a fun way to celebrate and let our kids have some fun, too.

I had fun making a ton of those ghost suckers...

I made them with those Tootsie Pop suckers (the first time Audrie had one she got to the middle and freaked out because she said there was "poo poo" in the sucker!).

I put up a few decorations around the house.

Our friend Candace brought some little gifts for the girls and had made the cutest name tags ever!

And somehow I didn't take a photo of all the crazy good food we had. But it was tasty and gobbled up fast.

I was sad that I didn't get photos of everyone, but we had a good time throwing Audrie and Annie's first Halloween party. Thanks to all the little ghost and goblins who came to help us celebrate!!

puppet show

I know you're thinking "how many MORE times can we listen to Audrie sing The Little Mermaid??". Well, lucky you... now here it is in PUPPET format! (Well... Audrie thinks she is putting on a puppet show so we won't tell her any different...)


Puppet Show 1 from Rachel Cornett on Vimeo.

And one more just because I think it's funny! (This is what we do when we get home from work... turn on the little Audrie Entertainment Center and see what is playing that day.)

Untitled from Rachel Cornett on Vimeo.

youth in harmony

This past weekend we had our first concert of the year with the children's choir I direct on Monday nights (newly named the "Northwest Arkansas Youth Chorus). The kids did an awesome job! And even though it's always tough to put on our first concert with only about 6 rehearsals, we still managed to impress their parents. We're off to great start and now will begin working on our Christmas music... which I love! You can check out our website for our concert dates and event calendar for the year: http://www.nwachoir.com/.
It's always an interesting rehearsal night on Mondays because I go from teaching the younger choir (grades 2-6) and their wacky random stories... these are the kids that raise their hands in the middle of a song to tell me that their uncle gave them a pet frog for their birthday last year. And then after that rehearsal the teenage group (grades 6-12) comes in with their faces buried in their cell phones and I have to strike up conversations about Taylor Lautner or Glee (thankfully I'm fluent in both subjects... ha!).

They are a fun group of kiddos though. And I couldn't do it without Jamie's help (he does all the finances and business side of things... and lets me cry on his shoulder when it gets overwhelming). As worn out as I get sometimes from keeping this organization running... I try to think about how much I would have loved to been in a children's choir like this when I was a kid!

zip!!!!

This weekend we went with our friends, Kate and Dave, to do the new zipline course near the Buffalo River. It was SOOOOOOOooo fun! I highly recommend it to everyone. I really hope I get to do it again soon.

Jamie did make me hold a bird at the check-in center (I have a bird phobia) so that wasn't cool. But since it was a day for adventure I gave in.

We all got harnessed in our gear and cute helmets...

And tried to look brave...

The gave us a big speech about safety and all the guidelines, blah blah, and off we went!

Kate made it look easy...

I was so not graceful the whole time but I had a BLAST. It was tough to coordinate the landings at each platform, so after a while I gave up on mastering it and just went flailing into each tree stand. But still so FUN!

And it was really nice to get to spend some quality time with Jamie. A HUGE thank you to our moms for keeping the girls so we could spend the day together!

I did squeal quite a bit even though it wasn't really super scary... just the perfect amount of thrilling. I got a little nervous each time I had to step off the platform into thin air, but I was never too scared. (I did come pretty close to smacking into a tree at one point but it was my own stupid fault... the guide wasn't too happy with me.)

It was so fun spending the day with Kate and Dave, too! (The weather was AMAZING and the scenery was gorgeous.)

Jamie's mom let me borrow her little point-and-shoot camera for the day since I wasn't about to bring my big fat Canon camera to swing through the trees. (So these unedited photos are straight from her camera card... thank you, Donna, for letting me borrow it!)

The whole tour lasted about 3 hours (but it did not seem very long at all). The kicker was at the very end, we got to the last platform and they mentioned... oh, by the way- to get down from this last 50 foot platform you have to rappel down off the side. I did get a little scared then (I think Jamie even got a little nervous too!).

(Here's the view over the side of the edge looking down to the ground...)

And Dave rappelling down...

Here are two short videos I took. This first one is of Jamie (we had to yell out our name and "zipping" loudly each time before we took off, so that's what we are yelling about)...

(Here is the youtube link.)

and this second video is of me, shooting the video, while I'm zipping along (it's a little dizzy-ing, so be warned...)!

(HERE is the youtube link.)

If I remember correctly there were about 8 ziplines that we did and they were each different. Some were longer lines (slower) and some where short and fast. And each cable was tightened differently so sometimes there would be a little DROP as you stepped off the platform and I loved that. We were in a group of ten people so it was fun getting to know them. And at the end we all rode in these Jurassic Park style jeeps back to the top.

Anyways, tons of fun!!