Surprise for me...

I walked into my bedroom to find "Puff" all blown out of proportion! She really surprised me. What a unique opportunity to share some of her wonderful personality with you. She seems to love the attention that this gets her. I had to run into the kitchen to get the camera so this is her already starting to deflate.
David says that she does this pretty much on a daily basis, but I've only seen her puff up on a few occasions.
Going down further still. The deflation takes about a minute.

She slowly "burps" out water until she is back to normal.

Happy girl!

Thanksgiving over, our day to day returns...

I took Jessica to the airport yesterday to head home only to discover that her flight had been cancelled. So United rebooked her on different flights which eliminated one flight and she arrived home an hour later than originally planned. We miss her already and wish she was closer to us.

Not my picture of Black Friday. This is one I found on the Internet.
For the first time in 31 years David and I went shopping on Thanksgiving evening and on Black Friday. To our amazement it really wasn't bad. Now for a person who doesn't like to shop, ME, thats quite a statement. The nightmare stories that we've heard we didn't experience at all. But! We weren't out there all day shopping either. We tend to shop with a stop watch. We get what we want and we get out. The end result was quite a bit of savings and we're just about done with the Christmas shopping. As usual our teenagers are the hardest.
Tomorrow we're supposed to be back to normal with school starting again. Now, we have made it through the holiday without anyone getting sick. Quite a rare occurance and one we're forever grateful for. Yesterday however, Olivia, Hunter, and Jolie all started in with a dry cough. I just cringed. Oh well, I can't wait to see how they are doing today.

The tree is decorated and just waiting for the presents to be put under it. Today will be the day for that.

Thanksgiving Day festivities...

The turkey done, it was admired by the youngest of our group. All voicing which piece would be the best and which each wanted. Everyone was assured that whichever piece held their attention that was the piece they would find on their plate.
Mom's sweet potato casserole with marshmellow topping was a requested item again this year and each was anxious to get their first serving.



Finally...... time to eat!

We're feeling the same way. All the time cooking this meal and we finally get to enjoy it. Yum!

Meal finished, dessert was a welcomed part of the eating experience. We don't often get desserts here and to have 2 pies was a real treat.

Of course both were the obligatory pumpkin and pecan pies. Can you have Thanksgiving without either?
Our usual Thanksgiving evening consists of decorating the Christmas tree. We all need a reason to get up and move around and decorating the tree is an experience that the kiddo's really enjoy and look forward to. Everyone gets to hang their own "Baby" ornament and then we move on to other speciality ornaments.





Olivia hanging her "baby" ornament.











Dad helping the boys...























The finished product and some very proud tree designers.









Our promised snow finally showed up after the decorating and a run to Michael's for a Thanksgiving evening sale. Jessica got her Christmas present of yarn for afghans and I even picked up some more yarn for socks for someone I know who stills owes me....... feet. ;-)

Wednesday ...

Here I am starting the cooking for the day at 10:01 a.m. 1.5 hours later I was done with all the side dishes.

The Christmas tree ready to be decorated tomorrow.

With Jessica's help we organized all the decorations...

Believe it or not this is not a tree, but garlands galore! I'm not doing garlands this year.

Kaitlyn! Proof that she still exsists.

Dinner tonight, Gumbo! Everyone loves Gumbo and cornbread, that Kristina made, for dinner and its so easy to put together.

Always a hit!

Learning.....

The boys have started their vacation with learning how to ride 2 wheelers. They are so proud!

Wednesday and lots of cooking to start on...

Turkey day is tomorrow and today I get to start on the side dishes for the meal. Can't wait to start smelling the delicious aromas that will be eminating from my kitchen shortly, yum...

Lots of pictures today. None of Kaitlyn. We've not seen her much and when we have its not a pretty site. [shivers] ;-) She is pretty much staying in bed, getting better daily and playing on her laptop. So maybe I'll be able to capture her image today or tomorrow.

Jolie, my baby girl, asleep. She just passed out on the couch after a day of sister getting into town, school and a good snack.

My boys watching a scary movie on the tv. Two blankets, grabbing onto each other, "Monkey" and "Lion" company seemed to intensify their feeling of safety. The scary movie that we'd let a 5 and 6 year old watch?
1965's - "Crack in the World" with Dana Andrews
Kristina with Jake supposedly asleep on her, notice the one eye stare, reading ANOTHER novel. My girl loves to read her books.
Jessica geared up and ready to go for her first ride on Mom's bike. She really wasn't to sure about all this, but survived intact and we really did end up doing quite a bit more riding than I had anticipated. The weather was a bit on the chilly side but we were on a hunt to get Kaitlyn a particular color yarn. We didn't find the yarn, but we had a nice chilly ride.
We finally pulled the kid cars down and moved our cars into the street for the kids to have a free for all in the front of the house. All of the kids had a great time!

Hunter.... giving me his best professional pose.


Parker... having tamed his inner clown a bit for me.


Jolie being cute as ever but informing me that she really needs a new bike!
Finally a decent picture of Jessica. I can't figure out why when I take a picture of her that she appears so white!
My latest projects. Fingerless gloves! OMGosh they are so comfortable and my bigger girls really like them. This pair is from Noro "Kureyon". 100% Wool. The entire hank was used for this pair of gloves. Not bad for one skein. I love the color variation in the skein.
This is another pair that I made using JoAnn's - Debbie Mumm's Traditions. One skein. The combination is 75% Acrylic, 23% wool, 2% other. This pair is so soft and pliable. Again very comfortable. I really like the yarn on this pair also, but I can see it stretching more than I would want when using them. They will be great for fashion usage. Again I love the color.

I'm so glad this week is almost over...

You can see by this picture just where I spent my morning!

Kaitlyn it turns out had some really bad back spasms. Of course this is after she let some guy pick her up and help her twist her shoulders to try to pop her back.

Imagine, if you can, getting a phone call from the school with a gal on the phone relaying, via walkie talkie, information to you about your child from the Vice Principal and hearing what you think is screaming in the back ground. I finally asked if what I was hearing was my daughter and she quickly told me that it was "passing period" outside the door. Good grief and Thank God. So Kaitlyn's back locked up and she had to be transported to the hospital via Ambulance. Our first concern was possible spinal meningitis after all the cases of Strep she has had this year. We were quickly told not to worry about that. Another, Thank God.
Also while we have your attention, Kaitlyn will be having her tonsils and adenoids removed on December 22 in the afternoon. She will be having a not so merry Christmas, but perhaps a healthier new year.

Results for Mr. Parker

Wonderful news! Parker passed the growth hormone test along with the cortisol test. So he is producing enough growth hormone, so that at this point they don't want to interfer. But Dr. Nadeau wants to see Parker again in 6 months to reaccess his situation. Dr. Nadeau is not for scheduling an MRI at this time.
I'm thrilled with this particular outcome and am more than ready to sit back and just enjoy our son and his BIG personality!

Monday and we're still moving... though stiffly and slowly!

What better work can you think of than one that also allows lots of play!
Since we only have one rake the kids gathered their snow shovels and used those to help build this pile of leaves. Amazingly there are still leaves in the yard for raking.

Re-arranged the furniture for the holidays. See the plastic storage containers all around the piano? I'm the lucky one who gets to go through all of them and organize everything. Yipee!
Yes, I know the tree is up. Just figured that if we were bringing all this stuff up, that we'd just go ahead and set it up. We always decorate the tree on Thanksgiving evening anyway. So at least that part of the holiday is ready and waiting.

Just took me 6 months to eliminate all the kids school work from the dining room. But I did get it done. I love this room and we're definitely using it for the holidays.

A little bit of re-arrangeing in the bedroom also. David left for Florida today and with this picture I can see that the windows just sparkle! He finished washing all the windows and screens in one day. Still have the rest of the blinds left to do. I promised him that I'd get the boys done while he was in Florida.

Sock #2 in process. I hope to have this completed before he gets home from his business trip. What a surprise he is going to get come Christmas morning! 2 socks!!!

Here's my group! Loving Monday morning and getting to go to school! David was kind enough to take Kristina and Josh to their bus stop for me this a.m. so I didn't have to get the kids in the car at 6 a.m. Tomorrow will find us all piling in at that time though.

Sunday and more cleaning to do...

Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning. You can see the dust, dirt and grime. Everywhere!


Kaitlyn cleaning the blinds in the utility room.



Hunter attacking our desk chair!


Jolie standing on the breakfast table cleaning our light!









All of the kids getting to clean the wall that our barstools scoot up to. The footprints on the wall were almost distinguishable. :-)

Kristina made us a wonderful cranberry walnut loaf as a reward for jobs well done. She missed most of the cleaning due to helping at "Care and Share". Last year her school (60 students) raised 51,000 lbs of food for the food pantry. The most of all the middle schools in the area. This year they are trying to break their record. Good Luck!

Today we'll finish the other 1/2 of the top floor of the house, though maybe not all the blinds. But we'll have it done by the middle of the week for sure. I'm going to concentrate on the bedrooms today and that should move fairly quickly. I'm so pumped for all this!

Two more posts below! Keep reading....