Thanksgiving Weekend 2011.

Thanksgiving 2011 was at our house this year!  Since Aaron and I married over 10 years ago (wow) we've eaten everywhere from a restaurant with my parents in 2001 (our first apartment was soooo crappy),  our next little house in Austin with my folks and a few other friends,  Aaron's parents house,  Aunt Kathy's house in San Diego (I was sooo pregnant with the boys that we had to stop for Mylanta for my heartburn and I was wearing flip flops)  and Aaron's sister, Valerie's house.   Based on that lineage alone,  we have so much to be thankful for: people who love us and share their homes,  plenty of food lovingly made.  We've never had a year without somewhere to go. 

This year was particularly fun for me as I love  entertaining in our home here.  Our kids are also getting old enough to understand holidays and traditions.  Their excitement motivates me to make the most of these annual events.  Also,  for the first time in a few years I had the energy (sleeping through the night) to tackle and enjoy extra project.  We had 15 people for dinner and two sets of house guests:  Aunt Alene and then the grandparents.  Opie enjoyed getting to play with Lacey,  who I guess would be his mother in law? 
Unfortunately,  I took very few pictures!  A couple of these I stole from Alene who is excellent in the kitchen and behind the camera.  She's good at Lego building too.

Rachel evaded any photo that I wanted to take.  She also threw a coup about sitting in her high chair.  Daddy still had a lovely meal in the extra lawn chair. 

Aaron got up at 4:30 to put the 18 pound bird in the smoker.  It was fabulous and my whole oven was freed up!

I made this centerpiece using a Country Living as inspiration,  a growers bunch from the store and stuff I had around.

Aunt Alene caught the boys in their matching shirts.  Apparently Tommy was feeling feisty.  He told one of our guests that they "sure had a big,  fat head"  sigh.

  

It's The End of the Year as We Know It! And I'm Behind!

My last blog post was Rachel's turning 2 and now that's old news!  From Halloween till New Year's we're super busy and having fun.  All the kids turn a year older and Thanksgiving and Christmas are staggered between.  After having lots of colds and stomach bugs last year we've been very healthy this year,  and that I'm very thankful.  Here's a look at some of our happenings.

This is the usual business around here.  We're so lucky that Daddy loves to play and has a strong back!

 Only one very little snow and we're taking advantage of it.  The weather has been milder this year.  Less windy too.

The last snowman of 2011

Candyland!  Ben gets so excited to play games.  Rachel she loves to do what the boys to.  They're getting so big!

Our Rachel is Two Now

Rachel Autumn turned 2 this past month.   When she showed up in 2009  I hadn't realized anything was missing here.  I guess what was missing was a little girl because we just love everything about her.  Her brothers,  the neighbors, older women at church,  the dog-  all love her.  She's been growing into a happy,  independent,  talkative,  expressive little girl.   Happy Birthday Rachel Autumn!
I'm really not sure where else to take this post.  Here's a list of random things both that you may not know and I want to remember.
1. The morning that she was born there was the most brilliant harvest moon I have ever seen.  I will not forget it as long as I live.
2. When she was born she screamed the entire time they cleaned her, took her stats and eventually quit when they wrapped her up and were "done."  When they took me to our room Aaron wasn't holding her but watching her in a box thing.  "She's quiet."   After that she was the most peaceful baby ever.  Amen.
3. She has pinky fingers that turn inward,  like her mother and great grandmother.  The boys do too.  All over the house there's little handprints with crooked pinkies. 
4. She's never tired at night..... party girl...  ready for college I guess.
5.  Whoever gets her out of bed in the morning is obligated to hold her for at least 20 minutes.  She's our snuggle bug.
6. She now tells us "no,  no way"
7. When it's time for the last bedtime book she holds up her finger and says, "Just one more,  one more book."
8. She loves to play with her baby dolls.  When she gets upset she goes and gets one to love on.

October Has Come and Gone But Left Behind 10lbs of Candy....

Like most of our lives this "season" we've been busy!  In my mind I'm about three blog posts behind so for our faithful readers I'm doing a monthly wrap up.  The kids have been happy and busy and we've kept up with some traditions and done some new things.   Rachel is getting big and talking a lot.  She's enjoys being with her brothers.  She's at that challenging age where her words aren't quite up to speed with her mind so we're trying to understand her!  The boys are heading into that really magical age where the world is innocent and full of whimsy yet they understand so much.  The work in raising them is less physical work rather mentally and emotionally challenging.
Here's what we've been up to!

I've just had a lot o' trouble getting a good photo of all three of these kids.  Hooligans

Rachel is off with her pumpkin from the MOPS pumpkin patch trip.  They got to enjoy a hayride to the patch,  choose a pumpkin,  play on the tower of hay,  hay maze and farm animals. 

Ben's pick. 

Tom's pick.

The hayride with Daddy,  Rachel,  Thomas and BillyBob

This was Rachel's favorite thing in the animal barn.  Farm Animals, Bowling Alleys and County Fairs do not sit well with Rachel.  I guess she's our 5th Avenue Girl!

All dressed up for the local nursery pumpkin patch/photo shoot.  

Good Gourd,  this kid was grouchy there and hard to work with.  It's a shame as she's so photogenic!  I guess you don't have to be a teenager to know how to get under you're mother's skin! 

This was the best of the three of them. 

Ben was so excited to carve a pumpkin with Daddy. 

The boys preschool has a dress up day and they set up a place to take photos.

Trick or Treating in our neighborhood.  This year the boys picked their costumes.  Ben loved loved loved trick or treating.  When Tommy got tired I took him and Rachel home (after doing about 20 houses.  Ben and Daddy did one whole other street.  They came home when he couldn't carry his candy bucket!  Ben would also tell neighbors to "Give Racheee one!"  when they were doling out treats.  It was a fun night.  Lots of our neighbors were home and the weather was good. 

All the Creatures That Live Here; the young, the old, the ones we like and the ones we tolerate.

Most blog posts are devoted to what the humans that live around here are doing.  This household is nine members strong.  Only five human members and four that belong to the animal kingdom.  This is post is about them.....


This is Iris, otherwise known as Kitty.  She's been with us the longest.  She's made two major moves with us and has even gotten to fly on an airplane.  Aaron and I adopted her from a shelter when we still lived in Texas.  She's pretty low maintenance and boring.  She doesn't go outside often,  she doesn't come around guests and she won't acknowledge that our offspring are here to stay.  She's stated her position on small children and dogs quite clearly... they're all afraid of her.  With the boys she's hissed when cornered and has growled a few times.  Now when we send the kids to another room for something and they see her at the end of the hall or sitting on some furniture they'll refuse to go any further.  "Kitty's in there!"  It's a similar reaction that one would have to a ghost.  We recently got a dog (see below) and when the dog was sniffing innocently around our upstairs loft the cat came tearing out from behind the couch and chased him downstairs.  The dog and the cat have an understanding now.

"Watch you're step tow head." 

Last year I thought it would be fun for the kids to have some fish.  So now I have some gold fish to feed and change the water for.  If I tell them to they're happy to feed the fish and Ben has found a new job in catching them in the net for a water change.  Here we have Bert and Ernie II.  The first Ernie lived a long time for a goldfish but unfortunately never had his life documented.  He rests in the potted dogwood tree in the backyard....

And our final animal,  and the most popular for reason that should be obvious is our new addition,  Opie.  Opie is an English Springer Spaniel that's been with us for three weeks now.  We were going to Spokane for the day to pick up a beef order.  I thought it would be a good idea to check out in person the dog breeder that I've been getting updates from and if we liked the looks of the place and still felt like a springer would be a good fit for us we'd get a puppy NEXT YEAR.  I still stand by the opinion that I am not a sucker for a cute face,  Aaron not withstanding.  The short of it is that when we went to visit Opie had recently been returned from a couple that could no longer keep him and he seemed like a wonderful dog for us.  He's six months,  crate trained, housebroken and has been to obedience school.  Outside of being a high energy and young he's a great dog.

Stretching out the Summer, Northwest Style.

We took a last minute late summer trip this month.  We took the kids to the Oregon coast for a long weekend and in true Oregon style it rained.  We didn't mind since we live in the desert.  Took me back to my college days and nothing would inhibit the kids fun in the sand.....  nothing.  We rented a little house that was just adorable and one street away from the beach.  Aaron should go into the trip planning business because he's so good and finding great places to stay.  The house had bunk beds for the boys, a garage full of sand toys (it was vacation rental by owner so there were lots of personal touches), movies, books,  puzzles and a backyard to play in.  There was even a coffee shop at the end of the street!  The boys were so excited to go,  Ben thought there would be toys there.  I told him there could be some games there but we'd have to take our own toys.  When it was time to pack suitcases he told me there would be clothes there too!  Now that would be a great place to stay!  Just show up.  Pack nothing... 
I only took some pictures during the trip.  Here they are.  My first picture should be the local Wal Mart because that was our first stop.  The car DVD player died.  It had been threatening to do so for sometime now but I didn't want to believe it would let me down.  Luckily the store had one left that was similar, a double screen, like the one we had.  Good thing since I said I wasn't leaving the county without one.  So off we went,  Aaron, Janet, Tommy, Ben, Rachel, Dora, Diego, Elmo and Caillou on the five hour drive to the coast.   

Ben had the best quote of the trip.  Our first outing after we got there was to go out to eat. "I don't think they have restaurants here,  you go catch fish." 

Beach Daddy

A very small aquarium that had sea lions that you could feed.  None of our kids wanted anything to do with them until Daddy tried this method.

The Tillamook Factory.  It's impossible to pass one of these cut out things and not take a picture.

Mmm  cheese

Rachel getting a lesson on the dairy cows diet.

Post ice cream good mood.