Thanksgiving.

After my parents' house was flooded by a broken pipe on Wednesday, the Thanksgiving feast was moved to our house. It seemed like Thanksgiving disasters (bad roads, broken cars, no water, flu epidemic, the list goes on) were happening to everyone we knew so we were just so grateful to be able to carry on and have a warm cozy day with yummy food and our family!

Waiting for the company.

Jemma likes to sit here with a glass of wine and watch the cooking happen.

Making gravy!

Paula dishing up the "green salad" (marshmallows and whip cream!)

After lunch, the daddies watched some football while the Jack and Will snuggled in bed to watch some Star Wars (and then I caught them sleeping face to face), Ben and Jemma conked out, and the big girls found a quiet corner (and portable dvd player) and watched "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken" (if you graduated in the 90's, you know this movie!):

After snoozing, we took a walk in the snow:

I love Sara's tutu peeking out here!

Giggly girls!

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We have so much to be thankful for: four happy, healthy, sweet kids, living in our cozy little town where our kids are growing up with their cousins and both sets of grandparents who love them as much as we do, our cozy house (with a garage! my favorite part these days), Ed's job which he loves...while Thanksgiving is a fun yummy day, it's only a snapshot of all the days when I look around and think how full my cup is!

In fact, the best part of the day was when the dishes were washed, the furniture moved back, the leftovers put away, and we all snuggled on the couch by the fire...where, like always, someone says, "hey we're a family of six" and then someone else says, "3 boys and 3 girls" and then another one says, "who loves this family?" and everyone raises two hands and hollers, "ME!"
Amen.

my big baby and my little baby

It is COLD

We've had some seriously cold weather. And some pretty awesome snow. Ed took the bigs for a walk the other night and because I'm afraid Jack would try getting out there in just his unders, I made sure he had snowpants, coat, hat, and gloves, all he had to do was get his boots. But when they walked in the door and he burst into tears, I saw that he somehow got out in his holey rubber boots (with no socks!). Here is his trying to warm up his purple feet by the fire. Seriously, where are his parents??

Today

we are thankful to have our little man back to feeling like himself! Yesterday he had shots and he was miserable! He screamed for hours until he finally conked out and slept 12 hours last night. But today he is back to his sweet self and we are realizing how grateful we are that this is his normal! He's been sitting like this on the couch for over an hour, just hanging out watching the busy people here:

and then every once in awhile someone will stop to say hi

and he gets practically giddy!:

and then they go off and he zones out a bit till the next person talks to him:

Update on his visit: he is now in the 25th percentile for height and weight which is good considering he started at the bottom but he has a long way to go to catch up to the others who were all in the 95th percentile at this point!

Ava wrote a story

that was apparently pretty funny.

me again

About 30 seconds after my last post Ed and Jack showed up with this bad boy:

They were gone less than an hour...talk about a productive lunch break.

the real deal.

And still coming down like crazy!

The little boy is sound asleep, the big boy is turkey hunting with his daddy, and the girlies have a cup of cocoa and a bottle of pink polish and are waiting for me to do their toes.

Happy week off!

Thanks Sharah!

My cousin Sharah threw a little family party so all my CDA family could meet little Henry and Olivia (another cousin's baby...which makes her Henry's what? Kissing cousin? I can't remember!). My pictures are all blurry for some reason but we had such a good time catching up and passing babies. And we ate the best soup ever! I stole the recipe and made it this weekend and I've now had the leftovers two days in a row. I love it!

Baked Potato Soup (or the best soup ever)

4 large baked potatoes

2/3 cup flour

salt and pepper

4 green onions

2 c grated cheese

6 c milk

1 c sour cream

cooked, crumbled bacon

Melt butter and flour, add everything but the sour cream, bacon, and potatoes. Stir till thickened, add sour cream, bacon, and potatoes (chop up a bit).

I don't really measure stuff when I cook (except the milk) but I know I added double the onions, and I just grated cheese till I got tired of it (take that Martha) and don't skimp on the salt and pepper.

So so good.

Disney on Ice!

Ed's parents took us to Disney on Ice this weekend--Ava's been a couple times but this was a first for the other kids and they loved it!! I wasn't sure what Jemma would think but she was clapping and dancing away. Jack enjoyed the show but when Buzz finally came out, he sat straight up in total awe with a big grin on his face. Even Henry was good--the lights and music kept him entertained for a long time!

Ed and I went a little early and took the boys shopping. Then we met up with Ed and Diane and the girls at Red Robin, where the kids begged for a picture with the Red Robin and then Jack tried to play it cool:

My only picture from the show (I had my hands full of Henry):

Side note:

These two ladies behind us kept up a (loud) running commentary on me and my kids (not a word about Ed who was right there too!). They started with "whoa! she's got her hands full!" (in a sort of tsk tsk voice) then a few minutes later, "well they're all pretty cute" and then later, "look at those two holding hands" (Ava and Jack) then, "oh, that one's kissing the baby!" (Jem). After 20 minutes of this they finally said to me, "I hope you don't have to go to work and leave those cute babies!" And then at the end of the show, the older one said, "well she should just have 6 more..it looks like she knows what she's doing!" Although I gotta say Mr. Disney should get the credit for that--the show is like kid heaven...princesses, bad guys, fireworks! They loved it!

tea party.

Ava was super excited to be invited to her first American Girl tea party!

And she came home with these sweet treats for the other kiddies:

Henry (like my other kids) loves a good schedule and he's settle pretty nicely into a good routine. Our mornings have been crazy busy so he's taken most of his morning naps wherever he happens to be but the afternoon nap I never mess with at this house! So he sleeps in his crib from about 2:30-5:30, then he's up for dinner and he just hangs out till 9:00. He's been sleeping consistently till 5:00 am (he's just up to eat, then back to bed till 8:00 if I have to carpool, longer if I get to stay home!) for over a week so I'm about ready to start moving his bedtime up bit by bit till he's in bed at 7:30 like Jemma. I'm ready to have my evenings back!

But I've got to say he is actually really content in the evenings--none of the evening fussiness that just wears me out.

In fact, he spends a good two hours every night right here, looking at the fire:

Look how much he's grown! Two months ago, his feet were exactly the size of my thumb--they've gown almost an inch!

Just In Time For Thanksgiving

Two months old!

and last night he slept solid from 9:00pm till 7:30am
Thank you sweet baby.

It snowed!

Jack was super excited to get out there and shovel off the table....he's a helpful guy.

30 seconds in the life of Henry....

Jemma Jane

Since becoming a big sister, she has really started growing up. She has the sweetest little voice and says things like, "I yuv you!" all the time. The first thing she says in the morning is, "He-ry seeping?" and she's paranoid I'm going to leave him behind, "He-ry coming??" She loves when I fold laundry and stands there the whole time and comments on every single item I fold, "daddy's, Dack's, Demma's, Ee-va's" Jack loves to hug on her and she always has a big smile for him even as she says, "no Dack! no hugs"
She, like the kids before her, is going through her Rainman faze. She likes things in exactly the same order and she just repeats herself till it happens. Like in the bathroom, "flush, flush, flush" at naptime, "fan on, fan on, fan on" This would concern me if I hadn't already had two kids do the exact same thing!
She loves clothes and shoes and comments on everything she wears. And she loves to know who gave her what. Anytime she gets out a toy or clothes from her birthday, she'll say what it is, then thank you to who gave it to her--"coot shirt, dank you Paula"
She is still not a tv watcher and she can rarely sit through a whole book, but she sits still through church. She loves to eat and I love to watch her at dinner because her little head swivels back and forth while Jack and Ava jabber. She loves babysitters when the other kids are around but she hates to be left without Jack. Ava has waited years for her to be a good play buddy and now they can go in her room, shut the door and play without any complaining.
She's two and we're loving it!

Goobers.

and yes it's winter and they still don't wear pants.

(I'm already falling behind)

So the other day we were thankful to wake up and find that our house had not been smooshed by a giant tree! Which seems like an odd worry but let me tell you that we had a huge storm the night before...Ed was (of course) out of town (which I believe happened the last time we had a monster storm) and at about 1:00 am the power went out, everyone woke up and started crying, the house was pitch dark, the flashlight had one teeny little beam left (just enough to see the dog's eyeballs and freak me out even more), and my cell had a teeny bar left, which was just enough to call Ed and wake him from a nice cozy hotel sleep and have him (helpfully) suggest I don't panic and just plug in the phone. Which would have been helpful advice if we had electricty, in which case I would not have been calling in a panic! I finally remembered to light a candle (duh) and I sat on the couch while the house was shaking, the windows rattling, the fireplace howling, and the hail so loud I couldn't even hear the kids. Eventually we all fell asleep until everything suddenly turned back on and woke us up again!

So the next morning found us tired and grumpy and the best solution was to load 'em all up in their pjs, pick up a chai and breakfast cookies (breakfast cookies...such a good idea), and drive around town seeing who had it worse off then us:

look closely at this one, that tree is laying nicely right on top of that house.

Nothing like a little reality check to cheer us up.

Today

I'm thankful for kids with imaginations!

Ava wearing the apron she made out of napkins. Notice the cute little pockets with hearts on them and the sewing kit (out of yet another napkin) poking out of one of them!

Jack playing "catch" with a sippy cup. He just throws it up and catches it himself....super self-sufficient.

And Jemma Jane doing who knows what but jabbering away.

Thanksgiving

It's November. (How did I miss that??)

And I like to do a daily thankful post in November as we gear up for Thanksgiving and now we are halfway through without a single one. We might be busy but we're still thankful (in spite of or maybe because of?!) so let me start today with this:

I'm thankful for this funny girl in my sunny house.

And for these delicious legs:

Like father, like son

Ed on his blackberry, Jack on the itouch.

You locals can appreciate this...

I took Jack to the new Super Wal-Mart the other day and as we headed up the steep drive, he said, "ohhhh, is this an evil tower on a hill?"

Making friends

Hello there

Let me tell you something

So funny, huh?

Delicious!