Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my parents' house.  My mom drove down so the kids and I could go up a little early.  We went in our van on Monday and Darrell drove my parents' car up after work on Wednesday night.

The kids LOVED playing with their cousins.  The girls especially loved playing with the little tables and chairs.



Our Thanksgiving meal was yummy as always.  We missed Derek and Tansy (and their wee baby boy who is due Apr. 3)

 

Tyler loved sitting with the big kids at their table.

 

Brooke made the cutest little turkeys.  That was the first thing Tyler ate for his Thanksgiving dinner.  The girls ate earlier and were napping during our feast.  They are such picky eaters that they wouldn't have appreciated all of this yumminess anyways.



One day we went swimming at the local Y.  This is where Tyler took swimming lessons last summer.  He was sometimes a little stinker in the summer and would tell me, "Just say no!"  when it was time to get into the pool.  So, I was a little apprehensive about what he'd do this time.  Happily, he was very excited to get in and climbed right in.  Emily wasn't so sure this was her idea of fun, but Megan LOVED the pool.  I eventually took her out of the float tube and put her in the "flotation device" while I held on to her.  She loved floating on her back.





Megan had fun running down the hall of the Y with Nathaniel while we waited for everyone to get dressed.



I helped my mom put up the Christmas tree one day while the kids were napping.  Megan kept saying, "Oh!  Oh!"  when she saw it all lit up.



Tyler loves my parents' "appliance garage."  He and Doc (from Cars) had a grand time playing with the garage.



Emily's hair is getting long enough to be in her eyes so she gets to have her hair done everyday now.  (Note the bare feet.  This cute little stinker likes to take her socks off during her nap and her socks and shoes off in the van.  She threw a right royal fit the other day on the way to church because she couldn't get her tights off.)



Being big just like everyone else.  (Notice the stuffed animals that the girls can't get enough of.  Because the kids have SO many toys that don't even get played with, I pack 1/2 of the toys up and then rotate them with the other 1/2 every now and then.  The stuffed animals were all packed away until one day I got the box out and "love was in the air.")



Darrell, Brooke, Kimberly and I went on our annual Black Friday spree.  Since we had to travel 2 hours to get to any good deals, we left at 7:30 p.m. Thanksgiving night.  We arrived at WalMart around 9:30 or so--just in time to stake out our first bargains that were available at 10:00 p.m.  Despite the many signs that said, "Do not touch until 10:00," there were still people stashing their items right by them and by 9:53 everyone was grabbing anything anyway.  Darrell was proud about grabbing his two $2.84 waffle irons.  He even had some words with a fellow customer who was cutting in line to "look" at the boxes.  I didn't get the sheet set I wanted, but I did get the sheets in white (even though it's a king size set for our queen size bed.  Oh well.)  We got a bunch of other deals and then staked out our spots at 11:20 p.m. for the 12:01 a.m. deals.  Around 11:55 everyone was grabbing things.  We got the things we wanted--a cell phone car charger, a 8GB flash drive and a portable MP3 speaker--although no one was really going for those things anyway.  We then had to stand in line and wait for 12:01 a.m. to "arrive" before they would let us buy our items. 

We got to Target at 1:00 a.m. and still had to wait in a small line to be allowed to enter the store.  We got most of the things we wanted even though the store opened an hour earlier.  Our last stop was Kohl's.  It had just opened up in the area and it was CROWDED!  The line to check out went along the entire aisle snaking around the whole store and probably would have taken 1-2 hours to check out.  We weren't THAT desperate for any deals.  We decided to call it a night since there weren't any other stores that opened until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. (as Darrell said, "That was SO two years ago.") and we weren't going to hang around until then.  We made it back to my parents house around 4:15 a.m.  Thanks to my mom and dad who hosted a cousin sleepover so the crazy parents could go get their Black Friday fix!  No, we don't have any toilet paper stories to tell this year.

That's What I'm Talkin' About

The girls are talking and it's so fun to see them learn new things all the time.  Tyler was very fluent in his own language when he was the age of the girls (17 months), but he didn't really connect with English until a few months later.

Emily is into one syllable words, while Megan can say one and two syllable words/phrases.  Here's a sampling of Emily's words--da (daddy), bah (ball), no, milk, mo (nose), eyes, boo (book), boo (boot), bear (for any stuffed animal), bah (bonk--when she bonks her head on something), shoe, sock, pone (phone), ban (banana), bock (blocks), door, uh oh, and joo (juice.)  Megan can say cracker, car, apple, Daddy, shoes, ball, uh oh, ah puppy (for any stuffed animal and for her blanky), pop pop (popcorn), pop pop (bye bye), good girl (when she is done having her teeth brushed), toot (whenever she toots or someone else does--yeah, so glad she proudly learned that one), and thank you.  (It just melts my heart to hear her little voice say thank you whenever I give her something.)

Although Tyler was delayed in speaking English, he is going gang busters over learning the letters of the alphabet.  Every day we read his Clifford dictionary before his nap and he learns more and more letters all the time.  It's so fun to see him spy letters E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E.  Here is what he knows (and the word he associates with the letters):  T and t for Tyler, M and m for Megan, E and e for Emily, O for Olivia (his cousin), A for Aubrey (another cousin), R for Ryan (his friend), D for Daddy, I for ice cream, J for Jonathan (another cousin), S for Sam (a boy from school), and V for vacuum.

I feel so blessed that I am able to be a stay at home mom and that I get to teach my children things and be the first one to see them learn knew things.

Winter "Fun"derland

We got our first snowfall of the season last night and we took advantage of it today.  It took me 20 minutes to get the kids all dressed in their winter gear (and only 1-2 minutes to get it off.)

Megan and Emily weren't too sure that they liked the snow at first because it was deep and hard to walk in.  Here is Megan with tears.  (Emily's wearing Tyler's old mittens.)


But once we got over by the playground where it wasn't so deep, both girls got the hang of it and had fun. 




Megan wanted to swing.  I was barely able to use my cold fingers to loosen one strap on each baby swing so they would fit over their snow clothes so we could keep the girls strapped in.


Tyler loved, loved, LOVED every second of being out in the snow and tromped all over the yard.  He and Darrell stayed out for a long time after I took the girls in.  Tyler wanted to got out again and play after dinner tonight, but it was getting colder and dark.

Halloween

We had a great Halloween at our house.

The festivities started last Thursday when Tyler had a Halloween Party at preschool.  He got to wear his Lightning McQueen pit crew costume.  (It came with a hat, but he refused to wear it.)  The girls and I showed up a little early to pick Tyler up from preschool so that we could hear the kids perform their Halloween songs.  Here is the 3 minute video.  The kids were so cute.  Tyler was a little distracted and didn't sing (even though he DOES know the songs because I've caught him singing them).  (I think he was looking for my parents in the crowd.  They had stayed with us the night before as they were heading to visit Derek and Tansy for the weekend.  They headed down the road while Tyler was at preschool, but he was thinking they would still be in town.)

I think it's hilarious (kind of) that Tyler jumped off the porch at the end of the 2nd song and a bunch of kids followed him.  Then he did it again when they sang the song a second time.  Ah, that's my boy!

Saturday we carved pumpkins.  We grew our own pumpkins this year and got 8 smallish ones.  The kids watched while Darrell and I carved the jack o' lanterns.  Tyler colored his with Crayola washable markers.  (The girls held their markers until Emily figured out how to get the lid off.)



On Saturday night we went to the church for a soup and pie dinner followed by trunk or treating.  The kids had fun wearing their costumes, and Tyler especially had fun getting candy, but I didn't take any pictures that night.

Yesterday we went to Darrell's work to go trick or treating.  The kids had a blast going from office to office getting candy.  The girls were fairies like they were last year, but this year they could go get the candy themselves.

Here's Darrell trying on his boss' talking and dancing witch hat.

Here's Megan yesterday afternoon playing with the buckets like purses.


Last night we all went to a neighbor's yard for a few Halloween games and then Darrell took Tyler around trick or treating (until Tyler got scared by some dressed-up yippy puppy at someone's house and decided he was done).  The girls and I handed out candy.  I wasn't sure how the girls would do with their wings, but they really liked wearing them.

Emily's waiting for the next trick or treaters.  Below she's knocking on the door.

A Tradition Continues

We grew up playing family games at our house on Sundays.  We loved it.

After I graduated from college and had some awesome roommates, we always used to have friends over on Sunday evenings to play games.

Now I get to play games with my own little family on Sundays.  A couple weeks ago I pulled out our Candy Land game.  Tyler doesn't really get the whole concept of moving the gingerbread men around the board, but he loves turning over the cards.  Darrell had never played Candy Land before so after a (very) brief explanation he played with Tyler while the girls looked on.  (They got to hold a gingerbread guy and "play" on the Chutes and Ladders board, all while sitting up to the table just like big people do).






Afterwards we played "Ring Around the Rosies." (Tyler calls it "Ring Around the Horsies.")  The girls LOVED playing it and kept wanting to hold our hands to do it again.


The best part was dog-piling Darrell when he fell down.

A Video to Share

I came across this video on two different blogs in the past two days.  It's too beautiful not to share.  Here are the links to the 2 blogs.  The first is a blog by a young mother who lost her 18 month old daughter after she fell into a canal and later died.  She shares her story of grief, pain, hope and joy here.  The second is the blog of the mother who was burned in this video.  Check it out here.

Outside

The kids love, love, LOVE being outside.  I'm so grateful for our fenced in backyard.  The kids love to play in the sandbox, in the gravel under the playground set and in the dirt.  It is a kids' paradise out there.

(If you look closely in the picture of Megan by the slide, you can see a green tomato in her hand.  The girls love picking the tomatoes and carrying them around.  Megan says, "Ap-ple.  Ap-ple.")



























 














All three love swinging.  They totally luck out when Darrell pushes them because he stays right by the swings and keeps them going.  I, on the other hand, will give each a push and then go pull some weeds or groom the jungle of tomato plants we have.



Here they are helping Daddy with the lawn.









Helping with the harvest--apples and pumpkins












We've loved being out in the fall weather.  I don't know what we'll do when it gets cold.  (Boo!)