thanksgiving

This picture pretty much sums up our Thanksgiving!

It was more about the fun than the food.

More about the kids than the adults.

And more about the love than the tradition!

Cousins Molly and Eli. Though they only see each other once a year, they were fast friends!

Wii bowling brings out the sheer craziness in our son!

Chad and BIL Chris being weird for the camera.

Molly showing off her new outfit....isn't she just adorable?!?!

Getting ready for bedtime!

A little note taking in bed about the fun day had by all!

bakers

We are teaching our boys how to be good bakers for their future wives! They will thank us later! :)

Eli: "This rolling is fun!"

Foster: "Mmmm, looks good enough to eat!"

Foster: "My turn to roll!"

Eli: "Aunt Angie, do I look silly in Uncle Clint's shirt?"

"More flour, more flour!!"

Perfection!

For pics of the aftermath, click here.

Thanks Aunt Angie for a fun morning! :)

early

I was elated to see snow on the ground this morning! I love when it snows! I was as surprised and excited as a schoolgirl on a snow day! So I bundled Eli up in his snow suit, which was a tad too small, and we went out into the white wilderness of our tiny backyard.
I brought our sled out, but Eli did not want to sit on it. He did not know what the make of the snow. He wanted to be held while we were outside most of the time.

I did manage to get this shot of us in the beginning, before he had a meltdown and wanted to go inside. We lasted about 5 minutes. Eli is very sensory sensitive. All tags need to be removed from his clothes. If he feels a certain food and it is soft or wet, he refuses to eat it. When he was younger, he would not step in grass in bare feet. I am hoping the more it snows, the more he will get used to it and let loose! We shall see.

Even though he didn't like the snow, he sure is cute isn't he?! :)

running

Can it be? Eli's last soccer class???? Well, it was. This coming Saturday he will be wondering why we aren't on our way to soccer and instead are in our PJ's, covered up on the couch watching Curious George. :) Here are some pictures of his last class.

Usually Eli does not like to partake in anything that requires him to stop kicking the soccer ball into the goal. However, as the classes came and went, he started to become interested and actually partake in the other fun activities, like the parachute!

My little cutie pie......it looks like I am forcibly restraining him to be in this picture with my kung foo grip, but I really was not. Not forcibly anyway. :)

Look at the skill of knocking down the cones with the soccer ball. He is an unstoppable rebel force!

Here he is doing some stretching.....apparently you have to stretch to prevent injury. Eli told me so.


Eli clearly running as fast as he can in a fierce game of Red Light Green Light!

Here is our attempt at a class picture: one child looking at the camera, one laying down in protest, one talking to another and Eli oblivious! :)

cold

So here we are on this gloomy, dreary, cold day.....

Watching television under a fleece blanket on the couch.......

Wishing we had a fireplace to cuddle up next to under a warm quilt.....

With the heat in the house up to 75 degrees.......

Wiping Eli's runny nose and watery eyes........

Still loving the days when we can cuddle together. :)

november?

How can this be November? The temperatures are so warm and nice! On Friday, Eli and I played at our park down the street. We were the only ones there which was a nice treat!

He likes to blow on these and watch the white softness bounce and float in the wind.

Look at that pose! It looks like a football player trading card photo, right? We found this football at the park so we played with it.

Look at that arm, that throw, that spiral, and the ball is coming right at the target.....ME!

All in all it was a great time because it was the first time Eli had been outside for any length of time since the Sickness of 2008 (double ear infections, sore throat and a runny nose that would not quit!). But I see this morning that the nice warm temperatures have left us and it is in the 30's this morning. At least that means the holidays are coming!!!!!!! :)

cravings

This pregnancy is drastically different than my last. One difference is food aversions. I never had aversions to food while pregnant with Eli. Now, I can't eat much chocolate or sweet things anymore. I used to live on fat free frozen yogurt, but not I cannot even look at it. But the biggest difference is cravings. I never had any cravings while I was pregnant with Eli. But this time around, cravings are all I am having!!!

It started with soups.....the first being:

I would eat this for lunch and sometimes dinner! And I don't add the water it specifies to add because I want all of the flavor!!!! So what if I have barely ANY broth! :)

Then, even though Campbell's soup was inexpensive, I found an even cheaper soup that had way less nutritional value (which apparently my baby is craving!) and way more sodium (another thing my baby is craving!):

This is terrible for you and the sheer amount of sodium can kill some elderly people, I am convinced of it. But oh was it oh so good!

After all of the fun baby was having with those foods, he/she decided that nutrition was of utmost importance. So, my next craving was:

I think it is the crunchy texture or maybe the sweet, watery taste that makes baby even still wants these all of the time! Who knows why baby LOVES them, but they have become a need, an addiction. So I always have some on tap.

And one other nutritional addiction:

Cucumbers are my best friend. I put them in salads and also slice them up and eat them with sprinkles of salt. MMMMMMM, good.

But my last and ever constant craving, from the beginning of my pregnancy has been the least nutritional, most fattening thing I can eat:

Isn't it terrible? I never ate hot dogs before being pregnant and if I did, it was fat free hot dogs, which taste terrible. But now, hot dogs are what satisfy me the most. Just watch, you will see me a few weeks from now and think that I am due within the hour because I will be SO FAT from eating these hot dogs!!! I am trying to have restraint, though.....I did buy reduced fat hot dogs, but baby did not like those at all! So back to the fatty, empty nutrition of the full fat hot dog for me. Yummy! Somebody help me.....an intervention is needed.....Denise, back away from the hot dog. :)

pain

Our poor little dude has been sick since Thursday night: runny nose, sore throat and double ear infections. Every 5 minutes I was wiping his nose, which had green stuff or clear stuff coming out at any given moment. The sheer extreme volume of goo coming out of his nose just astounded me. Where was it coming from? His nose is the size of my thumbnail! :)

Suffice it to say, we have been quarantined in the house since Friday. Yesterday we got out to see the doctor and then went to my Mom's briefly so that she could give us some leftovers of Sunday dinner that we missed. But other than that, we have had to keep ourselves busy at home.

-Play-doh molding
-Couch cushion jumping
-Coloring
-Painting pumpkins
-Chalk art
-Laundry basket shenanigans
-Kitchen sink splashing
-Baking with Mommy



Here are some pics of a few of the fun things we have done to keep ourselves busy.