Happy Thanksgiving!

This year I'm thankful for...



* Eric arriving safely to celebrate with us.

* Calvin's amazing artwork (That's Calvin with trees and clouds).


* My church family

* God's goodness and provision in our lives.

* My mom, sister and brother

* Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection.

* Staying at home to raise my boys.

* One dog.

* The color green.

* the promise that summer will come again.

* Isaac's energy and excitement for all things big and small.

* Forgiveness.

* My amazing friends

* The unknown future that will surely be filled with more good things, more growth and maybe more babies. :)

For what are YOU thankful?

Jelly Belly

We're in Chicagoland for Thanksgiving.

Eric's family took us to the Jelly Belly Store that had tours. It had a lot of videos about the history of Jelly Bellys and the other candy they make. It seemed directed toward adults, but the boys loved the train ride and free candy afterward.

Longies

My mom (after much prodding, pleeing and begging from me) knit these wool longies for Isaac. They are used as a diaper cover, but he can wear them once he's potty-trained, too. He really likes them.

And just because he was saying "cheese."

A Note on Lola

As many of you now know, we had to surrender Lola a couple months ago. She has been in a foster care and I checked the website yesterday and she was no longer listed. I wrote the woman who had her and this is what she replied:

She finally did find a home, thank goodness! Her anxiety here was worsening, to the point she chewed through a door and killed the Guinea Pig when we were gone... at that point I asked around, found a friend of a foster home to " foster" her, and there she has stayed for good. They are retired and she is hardly ever left home. They absolutely adore her, and being older, feel very safe having a big dog in the home. She also has 5 acres to run on so gets plenty of exercise. She was a hard dog, but the patience won out in the end! I can see though how you could not live with her, with the kids ... but she is exactly where she needs to be now.

So I'm feeling pretty good about the situation and hope you do, too!

Curtains

My friend, Sara (Kate, Ella and Luke's mom), is helping me make curtains. I do not even own a sewing machine, so it's actually been pretty fun. Except the cutting. I hated the cutting. Here's one window done. We still have 10 more panels to do on 7 windows left. I'm hoping by Thanksgiving they'll be done.
How ugly is this?!

First snow?

Cal has been praying for snow and was so excited to play in it once it happened (even though I was NOT). It was actually great packing snow since it was starting to melt. We spent a lot of time throwing snowballs at Tootie as she tried to catch them.

Finger Painting

The 15 minutes of finger painting and the 30 minutes of clean-up is rarely worth it.

Mado make three masterpieces and she would only use pink and purple since "those are her favorite colors."

Potato Heads

Every once in a while, the boys get really into all the potato heads. Cal likes making crazy men...

but here's Isaac... he lined up all the feet like this. Usually he takes a potato and puts one thing on him everywhere. He'll make a potato head of just arms, for instance.

Jas and Stef visit

My brother, Jason, and his wife, Stefanie came last weekend. We had so much fun. I took the boys to a birthday party on Saturday morning while my brother played Rock Band and Stefanie cleaned my house (she even cleaned out my fridge!). Jas and I went to the mall during naps. Then we all hung out. Our friends Laura, Isaac and Mado came to babysit while we went to eat awesome seafood for three hours. It was great. (Thanks, Joslins!)

Have you ever seen anything more hilarious? Stefanie told Cal, "I'm going to go dress-up. I'll be right back." Yes, that's her- the sheriff. She used mascara for the beard and even came up talking in a southern accent telling Cal he was "gonna do time." Isaac didn't know who she was and Cal couldn't stop staring and smiling.

75% off Halloween costumes

How could I resist?

Gymnastics

We have discovered an new amazing winter playdate place! It's a gymnastics place that has open gym a couple days a week. I wish I was a kid again. I asked if I could participate and they told me I would have to attend "adult open gym." I'm hoping I can get a crew of gals to join me for that (I'm assuming Eric would not consider it an acceptable date night.)

This was Cal's favorite thing. He would put a cover over the hole and then "accidently" fall in.

After he fell in...
Isaac is in there...
Mado

Isaac does amazing somersaults.

At the end of this long trampoline, you jump onto a super soft mat.

Parachute time

There were at least 6 huge trampolines plus the long one. It rocked. I wanted to show off my skills SO bad.

Blooper Reel

Anne, an amazing photographer and friend, agreed to take some fall photos of the kids this week. Calvin was very cooperate although I know he just wanted to play. Isaac just ran away laughing most of the time. She took 300 pictures! Here are the not-so-pretty ones...

And yes, I realize most are Cal. And the ones of Ike really aren't so bad but I needed to include him, too.

Anne said this picture is a good representation of our life... (Calvin was signing "helicopter" and Isaac was signing "airplane." And I was probably saying, "Ok, let's try to smile at Anne now.")