Advent underway

First, off, to follow up on last week's post, Ezra got his stitches out on Saturday morning without any problem. If you didn't know he had them, you would never guess by looking at his eye they healed so well already. He was very nervous about getting them out, but instead of saying that he just cried and was ornery all morning before we left. I had to even pry his hands off of the railing in the entryway to get him out to the car. Of course, by the time that the nice nurse took the stitches out, he was fine and behaving like the cutest 3-year-old I've ever seen. We got donuts and juice and came home to tell Levi and Mommy all about it.

Now, onto Thanksgiving. Could you ask for better weather for driving up and back to North Dakota? No. It was great. It would have been nice if we could have bottled up some of the weather and used it to mitigate some of the yucky mid-winter storms that blow along the same route. You know, just average things out a little. It was dry the whole weekend - which made it for nice, safe driving. On the way out of town, we had to stop by the pediatrician's office - because Ivy got pink eye. It cleared up quickly.  It's annoying to have to put drops in kids' eyes, although much easier when they're babies I've found than 3 or 4.

So, we took grandpa and grandma's big conversion van - and Levi and Ezra loved it because they could watch videos easily on the DVD player. I liked it because it was easy to pack and had enough room for Christina to get out and about to help the babies and boys out when they were fussy.

In Grand Forks on Wednesday night we had the honor of participating in Roz's baptism. It was very special and she was a doll. Thursday was "F" day - football, family, fun and food. Friday was travel-back day _ I'd call it Black Friday, but then again isn't every Friday one of those for our family? Just like the day-after-tomorrow is Black Tuesday? We did virtually no shopping.

We did get our new cell phones though in the mail, and they will take a lot of work to get set up like our old ones. I'm certain we can do it - and I'm super excited about the new camera and video camera features built in. I'm not so sure I'll figure out how to use Siri.

Saturday was a fun party day here at our house. We had a ton of folks here - good food and home-made music and laughs. In the video above, Kari and Brian and Kermit did a nice version of Rainbow Connection on the banjo. (The laughing was genuine - I hadn't had one drop of wine before I made the video.)

My favorite dessert I think was the Wild Blueberry Pie from the "World Famous" Tobies Restaurant & Bakery in Hinkley. They have an online store. Wow. it is awesome. There is one slice left- just calling my name and I have no idea how come I haven't finished it off yet. Soon.

Sunday, we found out that Levi was asked to sing a solo in the Christmas pageant at church. It's 4 lines, so its not that small. He's excited and he's going to do great! Tonight Levi and Ezra and I hung the Christmas lights. I gave them a big box of tangled up lights and said to sort them; just like Christmas Vacation.

Speaking of Christmas, we lit our advent candle Sunday night. 1 down, 3 to go.

Ezra Gets Another First

Well, Ezra has won another first in the family - the first to get stitches. It happened Sunday night at about 2 am when he fell out of his bed and cut his eye on his bed side table. Sam took him to Children's and two hours later he came home with stitches. There was no waiting at the ER, which was astonishing compared to the other times we've been there. The nurse remembered Sam from when Roman was there the first week that he was born - when he was losing weight and had a cold. She was so glad to hear he is big, crawling and happy.

She also said Ezra was lucky where it hit, a few inches over and it wouldn't have been good. He's not too happy about the stitches, he wants them out. We'll have to take him to the Dr. on  Friday or Saturday to do so (after our trip up north for Thanksgiving)

This month has been a flurry of activity around here. Today I had the honor of attending Ezra's preschool Thanksgiving feast. He made place mats and a turkey decoration for it. He only ate the pretzels and m&m's (no soup, no cheese, no bread) but it was fun nonetheless. He is doing great at preschool. Often he doesn't want to go and has a hard time, but they always say he has such a great day. Today I observed him for a bit before he saw me and he was doing great - cleaning up and talking to others.

Levi was the star of the week last week in school. He got to lead the group during certain times and on Friday Sam got to visit and read the class a book (The Three Questions). His classmates all drew pictures for him to put in a keepsake book.
We had our first school conference at the beginning of the month. As expected, no problems and I guess he is talking to kids and making friends - maybe even a little too much as we found out that the teacher moved them around because there was a little too much noise one day. His teacher decided to have his reading accessed by the literacy coach. Turns out he's reading at level C (end of kindergarten, beginning of first grade). So, he gets to do some additional work (mainly crosswords) instead of coloring. That's good.

Roman and Ivy are all over the place. Ivy is close to pulling up and standing up and she has found the tea drawers. Roman has four teeth through and Ivy has three. They both are still waking up a ridiculous amount of times through the night, so they are often separated (one in the room and one upstairs in our closet in the pack and play).
Roman had physical therapy today. He is doing pretty well. We finally get to cut down to once a month. I think the crawling has helped.
Only ten weeks until they are 1. It was a year ago tomorrow that bed rest started for me. The time has flown.

We had a dusting of snow last Saturday so the boys went out and swept the lawn and rode their hot wheels around. They got to try on their new boots (that Grandma Black bought them last year) for the first time. They work great!

Other happenings: got our new pastor installed, kids started practicing for the Christmas program, attended PTO meeting, friend had her baby, children's ministry meeting at church, Tanglen Bingo night, tile and toilet in the small bathroom (sink and door left to go), master bathroom will start getting tile in about a week and a half, ordered the office door (not in yet), got the Schwan's project back last weekend, saw a mouse scurry across our garage (hope he's not living in there), got a new fridge, reluctantly got iphones, been swimming at the Williston center (but not enough), are starting to contemplate Christmas presents, a tree, decorations and a busy and fun season starting. Cheers.

Starting November Right

Levi and Ezra and I put off yard work to play Nov. baseball.

Roman found his way into this blue bin, I turned him upright for photo. If you click on the pic and enlarge it, and look closely in the background, you'll notice Ivy found and got into the puffed stars package that had been in the diaper bag. She's like a little Houdini - can figure out how to get into anything - and escape from the complex Ikea bibs too. 

This was at cousin madison's first communion

Funny grown-ups making kids smile on the couch.