Happy, Merry Thanksgiving

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving in Minneapolis this weekend. Since I still don't have a camera, here are some of the highlights...

*We went to Macy's in downtown to go through this Christmas scene. Then we stood in line to see Santa. Jack got stage fright when he actually saw Santa and told him he'd send him a letter instead. (My company has breakfast with Santa next weekend, so we're going to craft the perfect letter this week to hand him personally. How convenient.)
*We went to our first movie as a family, along with Steve's dad and his family. We went to see Bolt, and it was super cute. Anna had a couple of moments, but she made it through. Yeah!
*Jack and Anna got lots of good play time in with Uncle Sam and Aunt Julia. We may not have a huge family, but this just means the kids get extra attention!
*We had Christmas with Steve's dad since we won't see them next month. Jack and Anna LOVED this. Jack got this United States game that Grandma Ginny played with him about 10 times. (What a great grandma!) And Anna got this baby doll and wooden cradle; she took care of it all weekend.
*I couldn't bear the thought of NOT shopping on Black Friday, so I went out to Target in the afternoon and got all my "Toys for Tots" presents taken care of.
*I got to sleep in three mornings in a row, though not because the kids slept late. I just have the most wonderful husband.
*Anna had about 7 pieces of bacon this morning for breakfast. (I figured I should throw that in there because I'm sure she would mention that as a highlight of the weekend.)
*Oh yeah, the actual Thanksgiving dinner! Steve's dad made a fabulous meal, and we'd pretty much cleaned it out by Sunday. Gotta love leftovers.

So yes, we had a great, Thanksgiving weekend. It's so much fun to see my kids growing up and being to play with each other and even unsupervised. We went to a movie, went out to dinner and stood in a looooong line to see Santa. These are all things that would have stressed us out 2 years ago. Now they are just fun. What a great family we have. I'm very thankful for that.

Thanksgiving Message from Jack

Jack learned a new turkey song at school. I couldn't post a direct audio file, so I had to upload it into a movie. I just put his song behind this recent photo I took. (He has this tie set, and he wanted to wear it so bad one day!)

In case you don't understand his words, he's saying...

Gobble Gobble said the turkey
Soon it will be Thanksgiving Day.
The way they treat me,
They're going to eat me,
So I better run away.

No More Babies

It's official. We no longer have babies in our house. Anna turned 3 on Friday. She's a big kid now...wearing underwear and everything.

We had a nice little party for her on Saturday. She got some great presents, including lots of horse-themed stuff and a cool set of princess shoes that she wears all the time. She loved everything, but her princess "bouncy ball" was among her favorite items. That little girl has mastered her bouncy technique with curls boppin' behind perfectly. For anyone looking for a good gift for a little kid, I would highly recommend the bouncy ball.

Here's a picture of her with her new horse, Sal, too. She can climb on him and sit on him. So cute. And her aunt Maggie sent her a cowgirl hat and outfit to complete her look when she rides Sal.

I took the day off on Friday, and we had a great girls' day. I can honestly say that I'm not sad to see my kids get bigger. Sure babies are cute and all, but I don't have that yearning to keep them young. I love watching them grow up and develop. Our weekends are quite pleasant, and the kids can even play unsupervised for short spurts (until someone cries out because the other hit, kicked or took something).

I feel very blessed to have such a great little family!

PS: These pictures are from my iphone. Word has it that I'm getting a new camera for Christmas, so hang in there!

Mosaics, Birthdays and Funny Stories

I haven't had a good regular post in a while. Well, following my great run last week, I haven't worked out a single day since then. Ha! A big reason is that I've had this nasty sore throat all last week that was brutal in the mornings. And then now I have this weird earache. But all excuses aside, hopefully I'll get back in the swing of things soon. I've built up my endurance, so I don't want to just lose it.

Today I did a lot of mosaics to finish up some Christmas presents I'm working on. They turned out cool. Jack and Anna even helped me do one of the pieces. That's the beauty of mosaics. It doesn't really matter where you put the pieces, as long as you're not doing a pattern. So they had a blast with that.

Anna's birthday is quickly approaching. I took the day off on Friday to hang out with her, and I think I might be looking forward to it more than her! That girl has been counting down the days to her birthday for a long time, so everyone is excited that it's almost here. (Especially Jack because he knows that it's one more step closer to his!)

Finally, here's my funny story of the week. We were in the drive-thru line at Walgreens, and there were some cars in front of us. We were just sitting there, hanging out. And Anna says, "Dammit cars!" Unfortunately, I have to take credit for that one. It doesn't make me proud, though.

I actually did it!

I really did it...I ran my 5k today. I've been working on it for a few weeks now, exercising and running outside weekly. Last weekend, I ran about 2.75 miles, and then today, I made it to the 3.1.

It was a cold and icky morning, though not as bad as it could have been. The kids went in the stroller on the walking portion with Steve and the grandparents. And my wonderful cross-country coach friend, Rachel, ran with me. She was such a good sport. She stayed with me the whole time, even though I know she could have gone faster. She even talked to me to keep my mind off the task at hand. What a great friend!

My time wasn't anything to brag about, but I finished the whole thing without stopping, which was my goal. I don't expect to be training for a full or half marathon anytime soon, so I might as well enjoy the moment while it lasts.

I celebrated my accomplishment by having a deep tissue massage.

Christmas Wishes

So it might be a little early for Christmas talk, but not in our house. Jack saw something with Santa on it, so he's already been talking about what he's going to ask Santa for.

Last month, he'd decided he wanted a Power Ranger brook and dustpan. (Don't ask me why. I have no idea.) But then now he's decided he wants a white Power Ranger, a gray Power Ranger and a Jack cup. Let me explain what Jack cup is. He had pictures taken at school, and they sent up a mock-up photo of his photo on a cup. Jack was amazed! Now he's sure that Santa will bring him a Jack cup. I'm sure Santa can definitely handle that. Good thing, too, since we'll in Oklahoma when Santa stops by.

Anna, on the other hand, just wants a princess dustpan and princess bucket. She's funny.

By the way, if you people haven't signed up for my giveaway on www.how-tostudio.com, you need to do it! If I'm doing the making, I'd rather do it for someone I know. Though I promise not to "fix" it. I truly draw names for the giveaways.

Costume Contest

I need some voting today. I'm going to enter Jack's Elvis costume (2 years ago; my mom made it) in a photo costume contest. Which of these photos do you like?

I was going to find an Elvis wig, but I figured there was no need to go overboard. The way the contest works is that if you make it through the first round, then it's up to the public's vote.

It really bugs me that some of the photos have random things in the background. D'oh! I should have picked up better before I took the pictures. Maybe Tina can photoshop it for me.

How-To Guru

Our how-to site is squeaking along slowly. We're not getting a TON of visitors, and I'm still trying to figure out how to promote it. We recently started offering weekly giveaways with our how-tos as incentive for people to visit our site. That seems to be helping, but I don't yet know how to get the big traffic. I think I'd need a major blogger or media site of some sort to do a story on us, and I don't know how to make that happen.

By the way, enter to win a tie dye sweatshirt this week, just by making a comment.

I figure this is a good learning process no matter what. I started out by doing a super simple blog, and now I can add html to make it three columns, change the background, etc., etc.

By the way, if you have any shopping on Amazon to do, please do it through our blog. We get a portion of sales if you enter through our site. Yes, yes, this is cool. But we haven't made any money yet.

Halloween Fun

I'd like to be posting a picture of Jack and Anna in their costumes right about now, but sadly, my camera is gone. Let me back up, though.

First things first...on Friday, I took off a 1/2 day to help out in Jack's classroom. They were having their party that day, and I helped clean out pumpkin goop and such. It was a lot of fun and not crazy at all. The kids were surprisingly well behaved. I NEVER would have paraded 21 kids around the school in and out of all the classrooms, but this teacher did and those kids stayed in line the whole time. Amazing!

Then today was our city's trick-or-treat day. The kids were SUPER excited to get going. And even though it was cold and windy, they barely noticed (until the light freezing rain started...then they noticed). I got some fabulous pictures, but my camera has mysteriously disappeared. Actually, it's not so mysterious. It was in the holder on the stroller, but we think it fell out when we folded down the stroller and loaded it in the van. Steve went right back to try and find it, but it wasn't there. I figure there's a 50/50 chance of whether some punk kid picked it up verses a family. And honestly, if you find a camera, how the heck are you supposed to find out who it belongs to?

Lesson learned: put your phone number on your camera. This is a basic lesson for taking it on vacation and such, but sadly, I never did it. Grrr.

Luckily, I had uploaded my pictures recently, so here's a lovely photo of the kids and Steve with our carved pumpkins.

Happy Birthday to Ash!

Today is my good friend, Ashley's, birthday. Ash is pretty awesome and a super talented news producer and cake maker extraordinaire. She was always the "best dressed" girl of our group in high school. (That "best dressed" award for senior year totally should have gone to you Ash. I think the ballots were fixed.)

It's weird to think about how long I've known her. One of my only memories of kindergarten is being scared on the first day. Then my mom told me that Ashley would be in my class, and that immediately made me happy. (I also have memories of mean Mrs. Cooper, but I won't go into those.)

I was almost always on the same t-ball or softball team with Ash. (Go Dolls!) We didn't hang out much in junior high, but then good old speech class brought us back together. I have many, many, many great memories with Ashley in them. The best thing about Ash is that she appears to be more conservative on the outside, but she's got some great funk hidden underneath. (Though she probably wouldn't choose the word "funk" for herself. Hehe.)

I guess my favorite moment with Ash would have to be performing our dramatic duet, Wings, in high school. (Dramatic duet was just a category for a theatre competition where you had two people perform a 5 to 10 minute routine.) Ash and I didn't like any of the usual dramatic duets out there, so we wrote our own and got it published under a pseudonym by some semi-shady Web site online. I sure wish I could find it now. We did pretty good that year with Wings.

Above all, I feel very lucky that Ash and I are still in touch, even though we went to different colleges and now live in different states. Thanks for keeping in touch, Ash.

And to show how super talented Ash is, here's a picture of one of her cool cakes she makes.

Headed to School

Jack's class is having their Halloween party tomorrow at school, and I volunteered to help. I'm taking off 1/2 a day of work to help parade the kids around the school in their costumes and carve pumpkins.

I think I'm more excited than Jack is. It's my first "help at school" day. We're supposed to bring the "healthy" treat for the party, so we put grapes it cute little ghosts bags.

Then Sunday is trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.

I'll try to remember to report on my morning with a bunch of 4-year-olds. Around 10 a.m., I might be thinking, "What have I got myself into?"

Darn that Gymboree

I wanted "puffer" vests for the kids to take their Christmas picture in. I found THE perfect ones on Gymboree, but to buy them, it would have been over $70! I know, insane. But then I was at the mall today and they were on sale. Plus, I just happened to have a 20% off Gymboree coupon in purse that I had pulled out of a magazine the day before. It was like destiny.

I blame Amber for getting me hooked on Gymboree. It's all her fault.

Take a look at Anna's vest in this link. (Jack's is cute, too, but doesn't have the adorable fur.)

By the way, Steve tells me that you're supposed to wear these vests OVER your coat in the really cold weather. I think he's crazy. He tells me I don't know what I'm talking about and didn't grow up in cold weather. But seriously? These vests are for looks, right? Who puts them on over a coat?!?

Gift Idea

Anna's birthday is a month away, but I'm a planner you know. I took the day off to spend with her, and I'm planning to take her to one of those dress up places that you see in the mall and such. We bought her this really cool horse that you can actually climb on from someone on craigslist, but I've been trying to think of one more gift kind of thing that she can open.

I was thinking of having someone on Etsy do a drawing of her (kind of like a caricature). She loves princesses and loves horses, so I was thinking it would be cute to have a picture of her riding a horse in some princess gear.

What does anyone think of this? I could see her totally coveting this picture because it's her. But maybe not. Thoughts?

My blog is a little light right now because of the How-To stuff. It's fun for now, but we'll see if I can keep it up.

Busy, busy, busy

Tina and I had so much fun working together on Mrs. Studevant's auction (we raised about $1,500) that we wanted to find another way to work together. So even though we are both way too busy with general life, we thought of a way.

We started the Web site, www.how-tostudio.com. (Sorry Amber, this tagline got a ton of votes.) We're still figuring it out and how to promote it, but we want it to be a fun, blog-style site that tells how people on Etsy make their cool items. This all started because we've been talking about making our own Christmas gifts ideas, and we started getting some good ideas on Etsy. We thought others would like to see step-by-step projects, too, so that's how How-To Studio started.

Who knows how long the site will last, but isn't it cool for now?!?

Tina is the business girl of the operation...she has an Etsy store started for us where we are actually "selling" our writing and photo services. Such a savvy gal. Then I'm mostly handling the how-to stuff. We have about 4 how-to projects right now...all have been done by Etsy people just helping us out. I hope we actually get others who want to be featured. Otherwise, the site will definitely fizzle. Stay tuned!

Oh, and go make a comment on there, if you don't mind. Then it'll look like we're actually getting activity.

Apples, apples and more apples

We are definitely an apple-loving family. One of our favorite fall activities is going to local apple orchards and picking our own. I've already been once a few weeks ago with just me and the kids. (I love the Honey Crisp apples and they are VERY popular, so you have to go right away when they are ripe.)

Then this weekend we went again because Steve's favorite apple, Galas, were ready. We tried a different apple orchard this time, and it was GREAT! The other apple orchard we usually go to is a little gimmicky. It's nice and cute and all, but they have this kid "play area" that they conveniently charge for. And while I don't mind that so much, you have to pay with tickets. So you have to estimate your ticket needs and such...too much work.

But this new place is great. You actually drive into the orchard, right up to the trees you want to pick from and then get out from there. It's a great family-run place that is truly out in the country.

So between the apples and the Brewers making the playoffs, it's been a good weekend for us. Here are a couple of pictures from our adventures.