Thanksgiving 2011

This Thanksgiving we were so blessed to have my sister, Andrea, and her two kids, Will and Jaelyn, come and stay with us for the weekend. It was a lot of fun to have them here, in our house. We had a lot of fun cooking, eating, shopping, crafting, and laughing. We love you all so much.


Here's our dead bird before it went in the oven. I tried a new oven-bag method so it would be moist and golden brown. It just looked like a wounded bird at first, but it was delicious. And we still have quite a bit in the freezer to use later. :)

 

 

Here's our "little kids table." We could've put them at the "adult table" but thought it would work better this way. And it did. There were only a few spilled items and they were all by my kids. :)

Here's our buffet of way too much food. Please note the beautiful layered Jell-O in the right lower corner. It was as delicious as it was pretty. :)

Here are the older two playing country-line-dance-party Wii. It was fun to see them really work hard to get the moves right. :) It made us laugh!!

 Jonathan was a great husband and did crafts with the kids on Friday so Andrea and I could go scout out some deals. We went later in the morning because Andrea and Jonathan went out at midnight to get the best deals anyway. So in the afternoon Andrea and I had a leisurely time shopping and eating lunch. Jonathan did a great job with crafts and we are so thankful that they are old enough to do special things like this. :)

 

 

 

By Saturday at about 11a, we were all tired and before we got on each other's nerves Andrea and her family left for home. Don't worry, she planned on leaving on Saturday so they could get laundry caught up before the daily routine hit on Monday morning. :) It was a perfect amount of time. Our kids really enjoyed playing together and making memories. We look forward to having more family and friends visit since we have a little more space for that. :)

Ka-Pow!! Phin Turns FOUR!!

I can barely believe that our little Phin turned four on November 23! His birth story is pretty amazing and God was so gracious to let us have him without any complications, except that we were four hours away from home and he was four weeks early. :D 

 

 Sometimes I forget how little Asher was when Phin was born. :)

Phin requested a superhero birthday and I'm glad to say we pulled it off. :) We had a lot of fun finding frugal ways to decorate, treat our friends, and celebrate our little boy. Here are the highlights:

 Playing Legos in the secret lair.

It was another unbelievably nice day. The kids were playing outside without coats mid-November. 

We were thankful for that blessing. They all needed to burn off some of that sugar. :)

Here's Phin modeling one of his gifts. :) Thanks, Swartz's!!

Here's the loot from his party. Thank you to all our generous friends and family for spoiling him! :)

And here he is on his birthday with gifts from Dad and Mom: 

his very own sleeping bag, some cars, and a skyball. :)

He was a very happy and thankful little guy.

Happy birthday little Phinny Bear!! You are such a delight to our hearts. You have so much love and kindness for others that it astounds us daily. You have a sensitive heart and don't like to see others hurting. You love getting hugs and kisses (from adults) as you know kids are not as gentle but you'll take them any way. You are a dear soul and so full of spirit. We pray that you love God more and more every year and that His Spirit in you will help you to grow and make good decisions. We pray that Jesus continues to grow your sensitive heart to love others. We pray that you will grow to become a strong man of God and that you will fight for the Truth. We love you and are so proud of you!!

Love, Dad and Mom

Ketchup

And that's what we're doing here today, catching up. We've been busy livin' life and not taking near as many pictures as there are opportunities to do so, but I will attempt to bring you all up to speed.

Way back in September we celebrated the 4th birthday of a dear friend, Cole. We've known this family since we were just newly married couples. Now we're celebrating birthdays of our children together and it's such a blessing. Cole had a pirate-themed birthday and the weather was great so most of the party was outdoors. We enjoyed celebrating Cole's life and the blessing him and his family are to us. Wendi, Cole's mom, is a major party-planner so she went all out even though she was 9 months pregnant at the time. :)

Everyone got some pirate gear to put them in the mood.

 We had cannon-ball fights in the yard that only required 

some aluminum-foil balls and a good throwing arm.

Here's our other little swashbuckler.

Burying treasure on the "beach."

They found the booty!!

Happy birthday, Cole-Train!!

Here's something most of you only heard about on facebook. Back in October it was the battle of the century - Phin vs. Mac'n'Cheese. Sure, most kids like mac'n'cheese and even request it for meals as did this little boy on this day. But he refused to eat it exerting his independence and I was tired of bending to his seeming dictatorship. So, I put my foot down and refused to give him anything else unless he ate his mac'n'cheese. No snacks, no meals, nothing until he finished his bowl of cheesy goodness. Finally, 24 hours later, Phin finally gave in and bent to my authority. But not without some tears and some really sad faces.

We thank God for the gift of chocolate milk to help get this mac'n'cheese into Phin's little belly.

Legos are the main attraction at our house. You can find them everywhere: casually thrown in the closet, piled in tubs, stacked on tables, hidden in treasure boxes, jammed into schoolbags, hiding behind our television, laying on the floor in my bedroom just waiting to be stepped on in the dark, and a number of other places around our home, car, yard.... Asher's favorite, though, is the Lego men. He dismembers every one when he first gets it. Rearranges their body parts and turns them into little Frankenstein creatures, and then cries when he can't find all their pieces to restore them to their original glory. Here's a line-up we found of some of Asher's "guys."

These are some of Asher's favorite ships, planes, boats, trucks, cars....

Upward football finished up on October 23 and we were ready. It's really hard to be at church from 8:45a-12:30p and make it out to the Plex for a game at 1p with at least one little boy fed so he can run around for an hour. We are glad that Upward basketball is only on Friday nights (including practice). But it was a fun season and we had a great time. Here are a few highlights from our last game.

The last time they run onto the field as The Titans - kindergarten team.

 And not unlike his mother's gracefulness, Asher trips and falls while running to our field.

But he did great: he got right back up and didn't even cry. That's an accomplishment for our family. :)

Here's Asher with some buddies from church, Tobias and Lachlan. 

They were his opponents but they were still all friends. Just the way kindergarten should be.

Post-game huddle-up with stickers. :)

Asher's post-season photo shoot.

 

 

 

We are so proud of you, Asher. You learned more about the game of football but most of all, you persevered and learned how to work as a team. You learned that you didn't have to be the best but that you had to give your best. We love to watch you play and run and are delighted to call you our's. :)

We've been doing a lot of work to the basement. Nothing real special, just organizing, cleaning, rearranging, and making it comfortable. There won't be a major renovation of the basement space for a while but it's a great place for our boys to play, for me to fold laundry, and for visitors to spend the night. But before we got a lot of the junk out of there, I found Asher snug as a bug in a rug. A very gross rug. I don't know how he got in there and I don't know how he got out but he was laughing and having a good time in there. I wanted to put him in to a Purel bath after seeing him in that stained rug.

 

Phin is a little hotbox, especially in the evening when we rock. He's usually in short-sleeves because he's prone to overheating. Here's a cute picture of him snuggling with Jonathan. So toasty warm.

Our boys were little sharks for Halloween this year. I wanted to do something inexpensive but something fun we could do together. The boys were our sharks and Jonathan was going to be a bandaged surfer who was in a shark-attack. And I was going to stay home and hand out candy as a lifeguard. Not the Baywatch type of lifeguard. The fully clothed, zinc-on-the-nose lifeguard. But our plans were thwarted by a back injury by Mr. Surfer so I went out with the kids as mom. :) They had a great time and it was a fun way to meet some of our neighbors. We spent the whole evening walking around our block and had lots of laughs doing it. I think they were pretty cute little sharks but they insisted on looking vicious. Their costumes consisted of gray sweatpants and a gray hoody with felt eyes, felt teeth and felt fin (the stiffer kind of felt for the teeth and fins) sewn on. They wore their pajamas underneath to stay warm and so I could get them to bed quicker when we got home. :)

That's mostly it for catchin' up this time around. I'll do separate posts for Thanksgiving and our latest adventures. Hope you enjoyed all the pictures and please leave a comment so I know you visited. :)