It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

We've been busy getting out decorations. Ryan couldn't be more excited. The gal below looks pretty good considering she lost both feet this morning! She's up and back at it though. Hopefully she'll be the only casuality this year. Up until today, I'm the only one who has broken any Snow Village pieces. What was I thinking lifting McDonald's by the arches? Erik loves the lights. We'll see how his little hands handle the temptation! We are having 23 children, 5 years and younger, at our Christmas party...hope those 46 hands can handle the temptation too!!

Thankful!

3 Months!
It's been three months since we brought our little guy home! What a blessing he is to our family. We are so thankful to have him home with us. He is full of energy: climbing, running, and getting into everything. The big news is that he says "Mama" now. He seems to be a little more attached to me the last week or so. He has slept through the night for a little over a week and it has been wonderful.


We had five families for Thanksgiving this year. We have been getting together for the last five years. Since one family offered to make the turkey, Harvey decided to make a capon (a castrated rooster). It sounds more appetizing when you just tell people it's chicken. It was delicious nonetheless.

Thanks to my MIL, we had fancy butter! They went for the head first of course.

This is Tom our special turkey for the kids. After dinner we carve up Tom and all of the kids get a cup of popcorn.

Enjoying Tom

Enjoying the cups

Enjoying Thankgiving

What's Thankgiving without the helmet?

When I asked Ryan what he was thankful for he said, "Jesus being in our hearts." He gets Thanksgiving!

Chalk genius!

Gramma got Ryan some Kapla blocks and they are one of our favorite gifts. I am always amazed at how long Ryan will play with these and the things he makes (with Daddy sometimes too!). I'll take Kapla blocks over video games any day!

Snowpenguin

First Conference!

Big day for Mommy! It was my first parent-teacher conference. I know, it's preschool, but I spent a lot of years doing conferences and always looked forward to being on the other side of the table. It was fun to hear what he is doing in class and to see some of his work. The teacher said she was doing an assessment on opposites with another child and Ryan was sitting at the table next to them. She would say "up" and Ryan would say "down". After the third time she finally told him "one more" and then he had to let the boy she was testing answer. Yeah, I expected that. "He's very social." Yep, expected that too. "He is a talker." No surprises there! The only thing he got "working on the skill" was skipping. I can live with that! Overall, it went just as I expected: he loves school and he is doing great. What a happy little guy.

Daddy went to bed early so pictures today. Holidays are always a lot of extra work for him. Wait until you see our special turkey!

Hair!

Firstly, I know the picture of me in the kitchen was pitiful, but I actually had a friend ask if I was sick. No more make-up free/ bad hair pictures for a while! Well, unless the kids look cute!

So we had another boring day. I was up until 1 am last night going through my piles of papers/pictures/preschool masterpieces...I decided if we were having Thanksgiving here on Thurs. I better get started. Today it was more cleaning, therefore no pictures!

Erik really needs another haircut and it made me think about Ryan's hair at his age, so join me in my trip back down memory lane:

the fuzz


Didn't Baby Alive have this exact pose?

Scooting Along

My favorite way to blog...with a cup of joe and a piece of pie! No complaining, I told you to come over and have some!

I wonder what percentage of photos of Ryan have this helmet in them.

I wish falling was always this funny.

The playdough had to go, so we finally made a fresh batch...

Thanks for the cookie cutters Grandma! Since Ryan can't eat cut out cookies we put them to good use.

As much as I am looking forward to Thanksgiving, which is a lot...I can't wait for Friday so I can start bringing out the Christmas decorations. Erik is going to have quite the time learning to leave Mommy's Snow Village alone.