Thanksgiving was great!

We returned safely from our Thanksgiving vacation. It was an 8 day caravan from DFW to Phoenix with Doug's half of the family. We stopped in Carlsbad, White Sands and Sedona too. With 2 days left to our trip, we drove from Phoenix to Taos, NM to visit my brother and left the extended family behind.

The weather in Phoenix was beautiful. Sunny and 75 all day. We couldn't have asked for better. But, even the cold weather in Taos appealed to me. The night before we left about 6 inches of snow accumulated on the ground. It made the drive home a little dicier, but even so, we made it safely.

I'm slowly uploading pictures from our trip between other tasks this week, so bear with me, but here are two of my favorites so far. There are plenty of great shots on our smugmug site.

Sedona AZ


The kids at White Sands, NM

If Autumn won't come to us...

...we'll just have to put the clothes on anyway and snap a picture.

I got tired of waiting for Mary to be able to wear her long sleeves and beautiful rich autumn colors, so we just did it anyway and she was a little toasty.

Here are our 3 beautiful children celebrating autumn.

My Wiggly Hair

I got my hair cut today. It was time and I wanted to lose several inches. I did it while the big kids were at school. When they saw me, William asked "why is your hair short like mine, Mom?" He had just gotten his hair cut. But since I was also experimenting with a new style, using my natural wave in my hair instead of spending seemingly endless hours straightening while drying it in the morning, Mary asked, "why is your hair wiggly, mom?"

Well, it wasn't too long after that that my natural wave fizzled and I decided to take Jennifer up on her offer to enhance my wave. So, after several hours at the salon, I emerged with the wiggliest hair I've ever had.

I'm not positive that I like it, so your honest opinion is helpful, but don't be too brutal because I'm stuck with it for at least a couple of weeks until her next available appointment. :-)

You'll have to forgive my crazy-eyes and odd angle. Self-photography (yes, that's my mirrored image) isn't easy.

Halloween

A few pictures from Halloween:

Mary's Mid-night Mischief

We stayed at Gramma's house on our birthday for Sunday morning convenience and while we were there Mary was sick. She woke up in the middle of the night and came down stairs to find me, but got distracted before she made it to me.

I woke up to find all the lights in the house were on, but it wasn't our house, so I couldn't be sure that Gramma hadn't turned them on herself. Then it was pointed out to me that Mary had raided my purse. Inside, she found a birthday check for Doug and me. Being ever so helpful, she decided to make the check out more clearly for the bank by filling in "Mommy" in her 3 year old hand writing in the Pay to the Order of line. She signed her name in various places and really did the check up right with the purple felt tip pen she found in my purse.

When she appeared on the landing of the stairs something looked a little funny, but I couldn't be sure from such a distance. It was pretty clear once she got close what had happened though. She'd also found my make-up bag and had adorned herself with Mascara. She's not an expert cosmetologist, so her efforts were concentrated on her eyebrows more than her eyelashes. Of course, when we brought it up, she was humiliated. If she hadn't been sick, we would have sent her to Sunday school looking like Groucho Marx. The embarrassment of it all would have been punishment enough. It will all make a rather funny scrapbook page.

It's our birthday!

It's been mentioned before in this blog, but Doug and I share a birthday. It was yesterday. We started out with 5 overlapping commitments this day, but we cancelled 2 and one was tentative and never came to fruition, so overall not a bad day. We are kind of mellow birthday celebration people, so we never plan anything too elaborate and this year was no different.

I did ask for and receive a new camcorder!! Woohoo! Once I figure it all out and teach the kids that they don't have to see themselves on the tiny screen to know that they are actually being taped, perhaps you'll see some video posted her from time to time. I'm particularly interested in capturing our everyday things. The things that we'll have otherwise forgotten 10 years from now: William's "big finish" when he sings a song, Mary's somersaults through the house, Robert's crawling and babbling.

Doug asked for and received a new Bass Guitar Pod. He'll have to talk it up on here for himself because it's one of those gadgets that I could never do justice. It's got pedals, and plugs and knobs and makes the bass sound different. A real "Doug" gift. The kids got Daddy the Optimus Prime transformer. Mommy may have helped them pick it out. :-)

Today after church, we had lunch with Doug's family (minus kids - thank you babysitters!!) and it was very enjoyable and delicious. A perfect free-day gorging.

Tomorrow it's back to more of the usual. It's been a good year!

It's been a while...

...almost a month! We've been swimming upstream this past month just trying to keep up, but all of it was a good kind of busy.

We've gone to the pumpkin patch, had a stamping weekend, baked fall themed cookies (twice!), celebrated a whole families worth of birthdays in one week, and added another family member that week too. My sister, Michelle had her baby girl, Virginia. She was a tad early, but came out great. They are both home doing well now, but isolated to protect Virginia's fragile immune system. It's been a good month overall.