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It was crazy cold today - so we weren't outside for too long (before Monkey lost a mitten and cried because his little fingers were too cold).
I put them to work early, yes? 19-months isn't too young to shovel, is it? But it's hard to pick up a shovel with a snowsuit and mittens on!
Princess came in and wrapped her fingers around a mug of our favorite "Mint Chocolate Truffle" hot chocolate. Yum.
I made some more tags. I used one page from one thrifted Christmas book, and was having fun for about 15 minutes - and then I realized I probably had plenty for this year. Bummer, as I love making these! I like making them too much, though, I couldn't use all the ones I'd like to make.
*sigh*
(p.s. - pictures of snowsuits tomorrow!)
Every year we get each of the kids an ornament. Aaron's parents did this with him, and when we got married they sent us all of his ornaments - very fun, esp. since we didn't have any then. Actually, they send one to each of our kids, too.
This year's ornaments from us:
Monkey:
($.75 on clearance last year)
Thomas:
($.50 colored wood shape from the craft store that I drilled a hole through - in the wrong place, obviously).
Princess:
I wanted to make her a St. Lucia ornament, and painting seemed like the way to go. My painting skills are very rusty (apparently she's walking on a hill...I was working fast - the kids were awake!) but it was fun to do and is much loved.
Of course, unpacking one of the Christmas boxes I found really cute ornaments that I got a couple years ago on clearance - (stupid!) - maybe I'll remember them next year. I try and write the kids' names and the year somewhere on the ornament so that we'll remember them. It's fun to pick up one of Aaron's and see 'A - 1989' or something written on it
Also, I've gotten some Happy Mail lately! First this swap with Christina. She sent me this amazing apron - with attached potholder. 
Seriously, how cool is that? Go see her photo of it - it's better than this picture of Princess modeling it for me.
And Dani sent me a beautiful pumpkin print - which I forgot to take a picture of before packing it up with my fall stuff - but she took one - except mine has red glitter on it and is even prettier. Can't wait to get it out next year!
Thank you ladies!
We're back! We spent the Thanksgiving holiday with Aaron's family, who live about 6 hours away. That's 12 hours of driving, folks! My kids get very carsick, so this is always an issue. But there was...... no vomiting this time! Woo hoo! Thank goodness for in-car dvd players, seriously. We must have watched the first 20 minutes of every dvd we own - plus some that we borrowed. If they lose interest and start looking around we just changed movies. 
The kids did well - there were some sleep and overstimulating issues for Thomas, but he handled things okay and we're back to routine today - just hope he does well in school this morning.
So, obviously, today is laundry day. It seems like it takes a week to get ready, and a week to recover from just a long-weekend trip. Which just seems wrong...
Our holiday was fun. The kids got to see their cousins. Princess got to peel potatoes (she wanted to, I swear!). 
I got to drool over my MIL's quilts.
And, I got my camera cord in the mail while we were gone! Hooray!
I was going to make a list of a few things I am thankful for - God, Family, Country, and Home would be at the top. Then things like: Paul Mitchell Conditioner, The Office (US), DVD players in the car, and spritz cookies. At book club tonight my friend gave us all a copy of this. (*pretty close anyway - I don't read this guy's site - but this is what came up when I googled the quote).
Celebrating the US Thanksgiving this week or not , it's good to count your blessings.
p.s. - I updated the turkey picture (borrowed a camera cord). And Aaron has challenged me to 'not feed your blogging habit' for the whole Thanksgiving break. Hmmmm..... I can do that, right? Right?
See you Monday!
Happy Thanksgiving.
I'm dying to show you:
Swap from Christina
Christmas tags
Fun marble magnets
Our Thankful Turkey
Ugh. Being w/o a working camera cord sucks.
Oh! Wait, I have the before picture of our Thankful Turkey. This idea was in FamilyFun Magazine. 
We made a turkey, and for our family night we all wrote things we are thankful for. Then we attached the feathers - and mailed more out to our family. This is the before shot. We have almost all of them now and our turkey overfloweth! :) Seriously, there are a lot of feathers! Cheesy - but cute, and the kids like it. The coolest thing is getting feathers in the mail, and seeing what everyone wrote. A great way for the kids to connect with the family - and get happy mail.
***updated - here's the 'after' shot! somehow the poor turkey is one-legged, now, don't know how that happened.
Some of my favorites:
Jenn (SIL) - Mint chocolate ice cream (she's got morning sickness)
Kris (my bro - jenn's hubby) drew a family tree, including their little embryo!
Kahea (friend of fam) - pizza and babes
Kari - colors, jokes
Kellie - the ability to read and write
Melissa (niece) - safeness
Here's Princess' feather:
(Jesus, Mom, Dad, My Brothers, Toys, Food, Water, Beds, Legos, Books)
I'm a little surprised that books was only number 10 - but I love those last three - especially bed... mmmmm..... bed - goodnight everyone!
p.s. What are YOU thankful for?
At my parents' house today to hang out - I deligated Princess' science work to my dad so I could go hit a thrift store (and try (unsuccessfully) to find a camera cord) with my sister. (hee hee!)
They made a scale diagram of the solar system in chalk on the driveway/sidewalk. Very nice work, Princess and Grandpa! (and Kari, for taking the pictures and putting them on flickr so I could steal them!)
Yes, we did include Pluto - and the '10th Planet' which has been renamed "Lover Mountain."
Gotta love that!
Wanna see some other cool pictures by my sister? Check these out. She is very cute.
My original idea for Christmas card photos this year had to do with 80's punk kids. Then, just rock in general - I ended up using neither idea, but did whip up this quick shirt for Princess when I thought I'd use it:
You can tell what it is, right?
Aaron said "It doesn't really look like headphones."
Hmph.
(the fabric is from a swap with Sarah!)
My little sister stencilled a shirt very similar to this one recently at college (how cool is it that she makes time to craft at college?) and that was the inspiration for this one.
So, after a quick photo shoot, I found a picture that worked. I'm very proud of myself for getting my Christmas cards ordered and another couple of presents checked off my list. Woo Hoo!
Now I have to think of something for neighbor gifts. We have an awesome neighborhood, and everyone on our street gives everyone else a little something. A treat, some bread, whatever. The last couple of years I've just ordered ornaments from Oriental Trading - nice, cute ones- as they come in 12-packs and they're pretty inexpensive. Repackage them in cute cellophane or something and voila! I've got 12 families on my street - plus other friends, Aaron's work, etc. I would love to do something handmade this year, but haven't had any brilliant ideas and don't know if that's just pushing it. This year, anyway.
I'm going to hit a thrift store this week to look for red sweaters for another project I wanted to do - maybe I could pick up some sweaters (to felt or not) to make little ornaments from?
Maybe I should just order...
Whew!
What a fun day! Thank you all for the kind birthday wishes for Thomas!
The party went great. Thomas had a really fun day. But let's start at the beginning... (warning - lots of photos today - you did want to see pictures, right?) Here he is this morning (6:02 am? :) in his jammies in his "Lighning Akeen" car. 
He went back 'on track' (year round school) today, too - HOORAY!!! That was a present to everyone! :) He
was very excited to go see 'Miss Sheri' and got a birthday crown to
wear.
Thomas helped make the cake yesterday. He loved it ("For my Happy Birthday!"). Aaron's mom sent him a set of cars from the Disney store (we don't have one here anymore) to put on the cake. He was VERY excited about that - esp. since we didn't use all of them and so he got some new cars to play with. He watched me frost his cake and oohed and aahhed the whole time - it was hilarious. I love to decorate cakes. I'm not amazing or anything, but it's fun and tastier than store-bought. I was a little worried, having to make a gluten-free/dairy-free cake - I used a mix and the results were better than expected, everyone agreed it tasted really good.
Eventually I decided on making a small cake for Thomas, and 'regular' cupcakes for everyone else. I made a few cupcakes for Thomas, too - in case that's what he preferred. A bonus of this plan was that I got to use my new cake stand and my new cupcake stand for the first time. Hooray!
The first picture cracks me up, because I put the backdrop from the cars package behind the cake. Ahh, nice scenery! :) Under the 4 is Thomas' real name. (And yes, the tractor got tipped at some point - like the movie! :)
The flag on the top cupcake is also to remind us that is the gluten-free one!
I decorated mostly last night, while watching 3 episodes of the best show ever. It looked nice. Until about 7 am, when some of the streamers were pulled down, and others were literally shredded. I know, I know, what did I expect, right? 
(after shot) (bad lighting! There are streamers you can't see -from the corners of the room to the ceiling fan, and the balloons are hanging from streamers from our ceiling fan)
Princess helped me make a butcher-paper race track around our table- which is oval, so it was perfect. I cut the yellow strips and she glued them on - she got out her ruler and measured 3" between each one - hey, math! Thomas loved that, too, and raced his cars on it a lot.
I used the extra Cars fabric on the table and the top of the buffet - not hemmed (or evenly trimmed) or anything.
I put the cake on the table way too early. Monkey really wanted it - I moved the cake (after the second time - stupid!):
We had pizza, chips, veggies, dip (my MIL's yummy recipe), oreos (tires!), and my mom brought a cheese ball.
For the kids we had Cars coloring pages, the bean bag toss, and we brought up the car rug (with roads) from the playroom. Plus, the Cars movie was playing, of course.
Thomas was awesome. I was a little worried about that, as he's been very French the past week. He waited and smiled huge while we sang to him - and tried and tried to blow out all the candles (he was blowing an F sound, so it wasn't entirely successful). He sat and colored with his friend (for a minute) and was excited to give him his goody bag (right when he arrived). He loved all of his presents - I love this next picture because it's like the ones I had growing up - my little brothers are always right next to me in all my birthday pictures! (They're looking at this big book of trains we got him).
He was excited to see everyone - how lucky my kids are to have local aunts & uncles who are willing to come to birthdays/dance recitals, etc. And this time to have grandparents and a friend there - that was great. He was, of course, completely wired by bed time - but it was wonderful.
The Best Racecar Happy Birthday in the Whole World!
