New slide!

Thanks to the wonderful generosity of a good friend, we acquired a Little Tikes play cube/slide. It was a bit of an adventure getting it in the van, in the house and in the basement without disassembling the whole thing, but Emily thought it was pretty fun--even though she's almost too big for it. Give Lincoln another year and it will be well used! ;o)

Another fashion statement

Emily made another fashion statement today. She completely dressed herself and even pushed me away when I tried to help straighten out her pants. If you can't tell by the picture, she's wearing khaki-colored socks that are inside-out and upside-down (skid words on top) with black dress shoes. There are sparkly silver stripes on the pants. This outfit was debuted at the U.S. Cellular store, the polling place at Redeemer Lutheran Church (mayoral run-off election) and the Waverly Recycling Center. I think she had her purple coat on the whole time. :o)

Sippy cup

I introduced a sippy cup to Lincoln today. He loves to gnaw on it, but is quite surprised when something actually comes out. He was more interested in playing with his cereal spoon. :o)

Quotes of the month by Emily

Instead of a developmental update, I bring you a sampling of Emily's quotes from the month of November...

"Would you like milk, iced tea, lemonade or kinds of pop?" --Emily asking herself what she'd like to drink by repeating what I always offer to guests

"How's it going for you, Daddy?"--a constant question asked while Austin is doing home improvement projects

"I think I'm getting old, Emily"--Austin after spending two days crawling around in the attic and tearing down wallpaper

"I know, Daddy."--Emily's response

"My froat is being difficult. I fink it's broken."--Emily's analysis when she woke up with a sore throat one morning

"I hafta change these pants. They're dangerous."--Emily's excuse when she doesn't want to wear a particular pair of pants anymore

"Lincoln is a Mister Drooly."--true statement, repeating what Aunt Courtney said

"I hafta hear the empty-all gone sound."--the sound made when her straw drink cup is empty, appropriately named by Grandma Boote

"My bottom is making a funny loud noise."--ah, yes, becoming more aware of bodily functions

"I'm not a 'he'--I'm a 'she'"--Emily's correct conclusion after spending a lot of time this month pondering gender differences in people and working on gender pronouns

"Yeah, since that milk thing didn't work out."--mimicking what I said after another milk spilling incident

"What's that supposed to be?"--in a sarcastic tone, often replacing "What's that?"

"I CAAAN'T"--Emily's whiny response to anything she doesn't want to do

The Winkflash pictures are updated and the November video player is below. Also, the "Growing" slideshows at the bottom have been updated. :o)

Weekend work projects

While Emily & I were busy decorating for Christmas, Austin was very busy completing some big home improvement projects. On Friday he installed a bath vent/fan in the upstairs "peach" bathroom. This required cutting holes in the ceiling and the side of the house and some creative wiring accomplished by crawling around in a very tight attic space and on the roof. After a long day's work we have a working vent fan with a timer switch, a real light switch for the vanity light and not one, but two GFCI outlets by the sink. Yay for handy husbands!

On Saturday Austin rented the wallpaper steamer again and finished taking the rest of the wallpaper down in the stairwell as well as the half bathroom on the main floor. Another messy job completed! Below are the before and after pictures plus a sample of the previous paper that was behind the panel in the stairwell.

Decorating for Christmas

I'm one of those "don't decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving" people. I look forward to the Friday after Thanksgiving not for the shopping, but for the decorating. It was a little different this year being in a new house where everything doesn't have an assigned place. Also, with an overly curious 3-year-old and a soon-to-be mobile 6-month-old there were several things that got left in the boxes, such as my Thomas Kinkade snow village and the ceramic nativity set I made in VBS when I was little. It was fun, though, because Emily was very excited and actually helpful when it came to decorating the tree. Of course, all the ornaments ended up on the bottom 3 feet of the tree. :o) I had my back turned when Emily found the stockings in the box.

But Emily's favorite "decoration" was the Fisher Price Little People nativity set she received as a gift two years ago. I highly recommend it for anyone with kids age 2+. She is already correctly recognizing some of the characters. (Last year she called the baby Jesus "Baby Moses".) She also loves pushing the button that plays "Away in the Manager". She sometimes sings along, except she's singing "Happy Birthday Baby Jesus". We'll have to work on that.

The tree is always the biggest decorating challenge, and in some ways the masterpiece. We have a 3-part skinny tree that I leave the lights on. Thankfully, all the strands still worked. I tried to replace one burned out bulb, but soon gave up on that. When we got married I bought all new decorations and prided myself on having a beautiful, color-coordinated tree. In the 5 Christmases since then the cheap Wal-mart decorations have gotten chipped, torn, broken and tattered. Last Christmas was especially brutal. (See posts here and here and here.) So this year I decided to reuse the lights, gold beads and bows and then dig through boxes for random, non-matching ornaments. It was a lot of fun going down memory lane. Here is a tour of our tree in pictures...

My parents gave my sisters & me an ornament every year when we were growing up. I left all the dated ball ornaments in the boxes, but got out the rest. The gold angel below is the ornament I received for my very first Christmas. We received the clear ornament the first Christmas we were married.

This is a stitched stocking from my 2nd Christmas, which was always one of my favorites, along with an angel bell from a childhood Sunday school teacher.

Here are some ornaments Emily has received.

These are ornaments I cross-stitched for a 4-H project when I was in 4th and 5th grade.

We even put up the random, somewhat gaudy, gift ornaments we have received, including the beaded candy cane and icicle from our paper carrier in Denver.

Of course, hanging a new collection of ornaments includes the requisite mess of tangled ornament hooks.

The finished product...not bad!

Thanksgiving Day

We spent Thanksgiving Day in Waukee with Austin's parents and brother. It was a relaxing day of food and family. Emily enjoyed playing with Aunt Brandi & Aunt Traci's old My Little Ponies in a big box of packing peanuts. Lincoln like looking at (i.e. eating) the sale ads from the paper.

We attempted a family picture, but Emily obviously wasn't in the mood...

Lincoln hardly napped all day, but he slept on the way home and then officially slept through the night from 10:00pm to 7:00am. :o) We have much to be thankful for this year--a new house, two healthy kids, great friends, supportive family and a great big God that always provides.

Turkey time

So I tackled an 18 lb. turkey today. After vowing for the last 3 years running that I would never make one again, I couldn't pass up the $.40/lb. Fastco turkeys at Fareway last week. I can't decide what the worst part is--trying to get it defrosted enough, extracting the innards and wrestling it into the oven, determining if it has baked long enough, or carving the thing up. I've had semi-disasters in all these categories in the past. However, this one, by far, turned out the best (although nothing like the picture on the left) and went the smoothest despite doing it during the day with the kids up and about. It helped that I defrosted it in the fridge for 6 days plus an extra 2 hours in cold water just to make sure; it had a pop-up indicator rather than trying to correctly place a meat thermometer; I think I've finally figured out how to detach the legs/wings/etc. It took 2 1/2 hours to carve it up with various interruptions, but I'm happy to have almost 20 cups of cubed meat in the freezer. I think I'm even willing to do it again next year--especially if Austin does all my dishes again. It will take about that long to forget about the mess it makes. ;o)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Uh-oh

Maybe I should start paying closer attention to the exact placement of the Exersaucer...

Cousins

This weekend we were blessed to have a full house of family guests. Both my sisters et al. were here for the High School state football championships. The BH-RV Nighthawks finished second. We had fun--and got a workout--taking lots of pictures of the three cousins: Emily (3 years) Lincoln (6 months) and Ryan (7 weeks) . Click on the collage to enlarge.