Their Indian artwork.

Posing by the Indian circle.

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Last week, Becky's three oldest girls came over for a costume party, which became an impromptu tea party with the addition of some odds and ends.

Just as I was finishing up the hot cocoa, my sister-in-law unexpectedly showed up with her children. Hurrah! Every last upstate girl tuzzin was there, excepting the twins.

She's looking for a bit of hot chocolate underneath all of those marshmallows.

Annie hasn't lost her love of all things elephant and kept this on for the entire time.

By the end of the tea party, some of them had layered themselves into unknowing clowns, not the least of whom was Candida.

Cassie in the upstairs landing.

And by her feet...

There's no good placement for this picture, which is usually an indicator that I'm making the wrong choice in posting it. For the last few months, I've been at war with a mountain lion in my pantry (water heater) closet. The beast chewed through a plastic bottle of vegetable oil, a bottle of corn syrup, a third of a vegetable shortening lid, and sundry other more typical raids. I set traps, but couldn't find ones big enough for a mountain lion. Then Becky discovered a ketchup bottle on her basement shelves that my mountain lion had chewed through. She gave him lots of poison, and he died on her basement floor. (The soup can is for perspective, and, yes, he's a rather small mountain lion. But no less ferocious!)