What we've been up to lately...

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was quietly pleasant. Daddyman and I had a nice little date on Wednesday night for our 14th anniversary . We went to dinner at Red Robin, since we both haven't had a good burger in a LONG time, then we went to see Four Christmases, which was decently amusing. I'd give it a good solid B. Round it all out with a trip to the bookstore and Target, and you can see we really painted the town red!

Grandmom and Grandad were out of town visiting the Oklahoma relatives on Turkey Day, but Grammy and Grampy came down from the farm for the day. No pictures, but we had a tasty dinner and some nice, relaxing fun. It's definitely my favorite meal to cook all year, so I wish the kids were enthusiastic about any of it besides the rolls! But the turkey came out very well, I thought (and the boys even ate some!). I made my squash rolls (which I posted about in December or January, I think), roasted potatoes instead of mashed (as a concession to my children's tastes), stuffing (which was just really almost too rich), butternut squash puree (with maple syrup and butter), cranberry sauce and a waldorf salad. Then we had pumpkin pie (made with fresh roasted pumpkin puree and freshly ground spices) and chocolate "heavenly pie", both from the 101 Cookbooks blog. I wimped out on the crusts and just did graham cracker crusts instead of flaky dough, but I'd recommend both pie recipes (the pumpkin one uses coconut milk instead of cream or other dairy products, and the heavenly pie replaces some of the cream cheese with tofu, and you would absolutely never know it).

Okay, enough food babble!

Today was our traditional Christmas tree trimming. I was a little stressed for awhile before I accepted the fact that Little Mister is going to be pulling things off the tree this year and stopped trying to be Martha Stewart...

Really, who am I kidding?

A cross between Santa and the King of Siam:

Yes, they are wearing the same costume! Miss G, I guess, is Big Guy's "bowl full of jelly"!

This nativity is one of Miss G's favorites, and it looks as though it will be one of Little Mister's favorites, too!

I've got the first of the homemade stockings done. It's a *little* bigger than the others...

This basket is our interactive "advent calendar": All of our Christmas themed books and videos are wrapped up, and the kids get to choose one out of the basket each day for us to read or watch between now and Christmas. Sadly, I can't remember the name of the blog from which I got the idea. While I write this, the kids are watching the first video, "A King is Born". Big Guy is very sweetly filling in the blanks for Miss G as they snuggle on the couch in front of the fire, watching it (which makes is a little hard to type, since it's pitch black in here, except for the screens, but I wouldn't have it any other way!)

Super Big Guy to the rescue!

Miss G is mildly obsessed with the lego chess computer game right now:

And she had "parent watch" day at ballet last week:

That's all for now!

What do you mean, Halloween wasn't just yesterday??

Party #1:

Party #2:

The parade & assembly:

Before:

During:
The really important thing NOT to notice here is that Little Mister got ahold of Daddy's razor (taken out of the shower and left lying on the counter by the workmen) and was trying to "shave" his upper lip. Wince. I'm happy to report no lasting scars. And that he didn't even notice that he'd cut himself.

More during, but almost done:

This one (above) is where most of the wall repair work still needs to be done (after they cut out the moldy drywall!)

Here are the color choices. We've decided on the blue/grey to pick up the bluish tones in the tile.

"After" is soon to be revealed. We still need to do some wall repair and repaint, but it is all fully functional again (after having to walk across the house to use the facilities, which Daddyman likened to living in a dorm again) and the tile work is done! Yippee!