Thanksgiving

We had a really nice Thanksgiving and I didn't even get all that terribly stressed out! Sean did a great job with the food prep and I got to just concentrate on getting the house ready and setting the table, which is the part that I really enjoy the most. I have really been enjoying our house the past couple of days. It is nice to have so much more space. I would have never been able to comfortably have that many people for a sit-down dinner at my old house. I love having a formal dining room and being able to have my grandma's dining table. I remember so many family dinners around it growing up. I also remember playing under it with my sister and cousins! As I was sitting here, I was thinking about holidays when I was little and how much my grandmothers would have enjoyed seeing Audrey and Henry yesterday. I guess I am getting a little nostalgic and missing them both tonight. It is also fun to see Audrey and Henry develop such great relationships with their grandparents. I know they are building those same kind of memories with them. My family has so much to be thankful for!

We have been really busy and been having a lot of fun the past couple of days. Friday was Audrey's last day of school before Thanksgiving break. They had a little performance and a
"feast" to celebrate. All the girls wore Indian shirts that they had decorated with fabric markers and beads. She had a head-dress with pink feathers and a pasta necklace. The teacher had chosen a name for each girl and wrote it on the back of their shirts. Audrey was Princess Wise Owl. Jason worked from home so that he could come with us. Saturday we stayed home the whole day and cleaned house. Sunday we got up and hurried around to get Audrey to church by 7:45 a.m. She did a great job singing the Thanksgiving song in the choir. It was her first official performance and she looked so cute in her tiny choir robe. She sang every word with a smile on her face and so much expression! She loves choir and LOVES being on stage. She was excited that she got to be front row center. Sometimes Jason and I wonder how two people like us got such a diva for a daughter :) Monday I had Mommy Moments at church and afterwards Karianne and Tristan brought McDonalds back to our house for lunch while we waited for the chimney sweep to show up. Karianne is very artistic and has a great eye for decorating. I was showing her my downstairs bathroom that I had started to work on and then kind of came to a stand-still because I didn't know if I would be able to do anything else before Thanksgiving. I was pretty bummed about it because I figured it was the bathroom that most people would be using on Thanksgiving and I had really wanted to finish. The problem was that I had started to tear down wallpaper and I got the first layer off pretty well but the layer underneath was original to the house and didn't seem like it was going to come down without tearing up the walls and there definitely wasn't time for plaster repair! I loved the original wall paper because I thought it looked a little bit gaudy but kinda cool, vintage gaudy. I mean we are working with pink tile from the 1940s here. Karianne had an idea to antique it with brown paint to make it look like it was supposed to be torn in places. She said that she had a little bottle of brown craft paint at home, and that we could put the kids down for naps and get this bathroom finished in a couple of hours. She came back with paint and brushes and we got to work. I ended up totally redoing my bathroom with things that she and I had lying around our houses and it got finished in 1 day!!! The only thing that was purchased was a couple of new hand towels. Here is a picture of the end result. The curtain is an vintage tablecloth and my grandmas china is on the shelf. I love that I found a place to display some of it. I'm not sure we will keep the bathroom like this forever but I think it is kind of a fun look for a little while. I had so much fun and this is totally unlike something I would have done on my own! Plus when I decided to change it there will be no guilt because it was all free. This Thanksgiving I am thankful God has given us awesome neighbors who have become our friends and make everyday life so much more fun!

Thanksgiving Countdown

Well, I'm starting to feel the pressure pretty heavily of the upcoming holiday season. Up until last week I have kind of been in denial about how close Thanksgiving is. Time has been flying. Now with it only 2 weeks away, I am going to have to get my act together to get everything done! And right after Thanksgiving we need to start Christmas preparations because I have foolishly volunteered to have a couple of Christmas functions at my house at the beginning of December. Audrey is already practicing Christmas songs for choir at church! I want to start things early because lately it seems to take me a long time to get things done.
This coming week I have a doctors appointment, Henry has his 18 mo. check-up, we have a Thanksgiving "feast" at Audrey's school and a Give Thanks Harvest Celebration at church. Audrey's choir is also singing at church next Sunday, which means that we have to get her there by 7:45 a.m. to get her robe on and to warm up. This will be her first official performance in choir. I can't wait. She is so excited and has been practicing with her CD quite a bit. Well, I need to get busy. There is a mountain of laundry in the basement and we need to go to the store to fill a shoe box for Operation Christmas Child. I am supposed to be coordinating it for our Sunday School class and they are due tomorrow!

Picture Day

Yesterday I took the kids to get pictures taken. I thought that I would try to beat the Christmas rush and could get 18 mo pictures taken of Henry at the same time. I found outfits for them that actually coordinated at Gymboree, much to my amazement and Jason dismay. I have been banned from the mall for the rest of this month. Yesterday morning Jason said "now don't get mad if Henry won't cooperate and you don't get any good pictures, just reschedule". When I took them for Henry's 12 mo pictures it didn't go so well, there was crying and screaming, begging and frustration! I told Jason that if Henry cried I was just going to have them take pictures anyway. Pictures are supposed to capture the moment so that we can remember what they really were like at each age, aren't they? Jason doesn't really understand what a pain it is to get them both dressed in matching clothes, and get them to the photo studio without someone spilling something on their clothes, or snot or droll ending up everywhere. Anyway, it was a really gross, cold and rainy day and we had to rush around and make a stop at Target (from which I am also banned for the rest of the month) before pictures. I came prepared with bribes, I mean incentives. I told Henry that I had m&ms for him and he could have some right after he got his picture taken. He said "OK" and plopped right down in front of the photographer and gave a cheesy smile. We had been practicing smiling for pictures for a couple of days and he was really hamming it up. Well, it went smoother and faster than pictures have ever gone. Even the photographers commented about how quick and easy it was. They did so well and we got so many good shots of them they I spent way too much money on pictures. It was impossible not to buy a lot when I looked at there chubby, happy little faces! I have plenty pictures to share and will be giving one to everybody, whether they want one or not :)

Update from this week

This week has gone by pretty quickly. Monday I had moms group where we had a speaker about recycling. She also talked about vermiculture to compost and now I'm inspired to give it a try. I thought Audrey would get a huge kick out of it. We are calling it a worm farm instead of vermiculture though. We haven't started our worm farm yet, we are still getting ready. It will consist of a Rubbermaid bin with holes drilled around the top, with moistened shredded newspaper, and a few worms. We will keep it in the unfinished room in the basement and it will have a lid on it. You feed them your vegetable and fruit food scraps. They also eat and break down the newspaper and reproduce to the right amount for the food that they are given. Now who is thinking I am completely crazy right now. A bucket of worms in the basement!?! It seems like a really fun project to me and I guess the by-product of the worm farm is really great fertilizer that is completely safe around children and pets. We will see how it goes. I'm not sure where I will find the worms this time of year.
I have been trying to sort through and organize the toys before the Christmas onslaught. I gave some girl toys that Audrey had outgrown to a friend of mine and she traded me a box full of trucks, action figures, boy stuff. Henry and Audrey have been having a good time with a bunch of little Bob the Builder tractors. Henry has been talking so much lately. Last night Audrey was talking about numbers and said the word seven, and Henry piped up "eight, nine, ten". We all stopped and looked at each other in amazement. I asked him what he said and he repeated "eight, nine, ten". We are trying to teach him the alphabet. He will repeat the letters after us and cheer for himself at the end. He is also getting pretty good at animals and the sounds they make. He is at such a fun stage. I can't wait for Christmas! It is going to be a blast. Well, all except trying to keep Henry from destroying the tree.

This Weekend

We were pretty busy this weekend. We spent most of Saturday catching up on some long overdue cleaning and organizing. We actually made it to early church (a few minutes late) and after Sunday School we went out for lunch with the Greens. They had never been to Kobe steakhouse so we wanted to introduce them to it. Our kids had seemed to like it and I thought theirs would too. Well, Emma is more timid than my daredevils and was pretty concerned about the fire and the noise. Audrey then felt the need to be afraid, since her best friend was. They spent most of the time with their hands over their ears and pushed back from the table so they wouldn't get burned!
Even Henry, who seemed to enjoy it last time, wasn't as thrilled today. In fact the only kid that did seem to enjoy it was Ethan, Brett and Ange's 2 year old. He pretended to chop and slice with this plastic toddler utensils. The hit of the restaurant was the giant fish in the lobby.

Leaves, leaves, everywhere!

Jason raked up our front yard this evening and Audrey took the opportunity to jump in the pile. We don't have a very big yard and it didn't look like there was that many leaves, until they all got in one pile. We ran out of lawn bags and we haven't even started the back yard. It was such a nice warm day. I can't believe it is November!

Audrey's Room

Well Audrey's room is basically done. We haven't really decided if we are going to refinish the floors or get new carpet (I'm leaning towards refinishing) but we aren't going to do anything until after the holidays. I need to hang a couple of things on the wall and put up her shelf, but other than that here it is.

Before

AfterThis wall was the compromise. It is light pink, even though you can't really tell in the picture.

Happy Halloween

We had a fun time yesterday. Audrey had a fall party at school. They didn't wear costumes they wore orange and black. She came home with orange and black fingernails, her face painted and tattoos on her hands. They played sweep the pumpkins with brooms, and for snack decorated their own pumpkin cookies. We then went and met Jason for lunch. After that we had to stop by Wal-Mart for some cookies to take to our Halloween get-together. When we got home Henry went right down for his nap, but Audrey was still on a sugar high and never went to sleep. I made cookies while they were napping (or pretending to nap) and when they got up it was time to start the transformation into witch and spider. Audrey really wanted to be green so we gave it a try. I wasn't crazy about the greasy green make-up but she got a kick out of it. It looked pretty good at first but after about an hour it was smeared and her hair was starting to stick to it. It was pretty hard to wash off too! Henry was pretty funny during trick-or-treating. He wanted to walk up to the houses himself, and would say "treat" and "thank you". He was pretty protective of his candy bag. After trick-or-treating our neighborhood we went over to the Green's to have mummy hot dogs and chili. It was a very late night last night and Henry is still sleeping! Today Audrey has already gone through her loot and we have sorted the candy into chocolate and non-chocolate. Audrey still insists that she doesn't like chocolate. It works out pretty good for me and Jason. Jason was standing behind Audrey during trick-or-treating telling her to pick a peanut butter cup (his favorite).