November Recap

We broke in the new fire pit by roasting hot dogs and marshmallows on our patio one night.  (Oh, the patio.  We put so much into that thing that you'd better believe we're going to use it for as much of the year as we possibly can!)

Just a few weeks later, the first big snowstorm of the season rolled in.  The girls have reached another one of those milestones you never read about in parenting books:  the age at which they spend more time actually playing IN the snow than they do getting ready to play in the snow.  They must've stayed out in the snow for an hour on this particular day.

  

Our piece de resistance:  a snowman that we left on the front porch, a la "Snowmen at Night".  The girls tried hard to trick Jared into answering the door and discovering the surprise, by "doorbell ditching", but he just wouldn't fall for it.  

 

Our school held a special Veterans' Day assembly.  Pictured above are the military folks from my neighborhood.  The woman on the far left is one of the first people I got to know when we moved here, since we were pregnant together and just a few weeks apart--her little girl is in kindergarten with Anna now.  The short white-haired gentleman in the middle is a World War II veteran who sings "Unforgettable" to me every week at church choir practice.  

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, stomach flu hit our house.  Four days later, just as I was thinking we were in the clear, Jared left for a week-long business trip. . .and two hours later, I got sick.  Thankfully, with a little help from neighbors and family (thanks again for the dinner, Sarah Jo!), we muddled through.   

Jared came home the day before Thanksgiving, which we spent with the Olson clan.  The baby production has slowed somewhat in recent years, and as we sat down to our Thanksgiving dinner I realized anew that the swarm of toddlers that had kept us so frantically busy in the past has matured into a charming group of little people who are all old enough to a) feed themselves, and b) engage in conversations, both with each other and with the adults. 

 It was so fun to eavesdrop on the "kiddie table", and it was even more fun later in the evening to get a chance to chat one-on-one with some of the kids (especially Oliver and Lael, since we don't get to seem them very often. . .as well as Fiona, Bronwen, and Sinead, since we won't be seeing *them* very often for the next 3-5 years as their family is moving to England!  I'm beyond excited for their family--what an opportunity!)  

Anyway, we do still have enough of the small fry to keep us on our toes.  Anna is one of the in-betweeners--not quite big enough to run with the wolf pack, but too big to hang out with the babies.  She was quite happy at Thanksgiving, though;  she and Henry had a nice chat over dinner, and she relished all the food.  (She must be going through a growth spurt right now;  the kid is hungry every 20 minutes!)  

Thanks to a week of unseasonably warm and dry weather, cleaning up the yard for winter was a pleasure.  When it was time to rake up the leaves, we positioned the pile right at the base of the slide.  (Why, yes, we ARE the coolest parents ever.)

 Here's Elizabeth diving off the end of the slide and into the leaves.

 

Anna was delighted with the leaf pile--afterwards she went inside and wrote a note to Elizabeth:  "Dear Elizabeth, thac you for maceing a big lef pieol.  love Anna"

It took awhile before Ben was willing to jump in--instead, he sat on Jared's lap and egged on the girls with his shrieks of delight. 

On the home-improvement front, we're still waiting on the counter top for the new main bathroom.  No counter top means no sink and no mirror, which means we brush our teeth in the kitchen and do makeup and hair while looking into a hallway mirror that's roughly the size of a smartphone screen.  This has not been without consequences:  I think I even scared a door-to-door solicitor into a lifetime of bachelorhood.  I'd taken a bath (this was before we had the shower tiled), and was of course interrupted three minutes into it by a mischievous toddler, then hurriedly got dressed and blow-dried my hair, all without looking in a mirror. . .A few minutes later the doorbell rang.  I answered it to find a kid of maybe 21, selling home security systems or dishTV or some such thing.  He seemed a little startled and prefaced his spiel with an apology about "getting me at a bad time".  I went through my usual routine of smiling politely and then firmly but kindly declining his sales pitch and wishing him a good day.  After closing the door, I glanced in the hallway mirror and realized I had streaks of mascara running down my cheeks and hair sticking up liked a fright wig.  Poor guy.  

Anyway, here's what the bathroom looks like:
 

And that brings us to December, with all the joy and craziness and family time it brings. . .