A New Tradition

A few days before Thanksgiving, I was trying to figure out what we should eat for lunch so that we wouldn't be too full to eat an early Thanksgiving dinner when a song from the Charlie Brown Christmas Album came on.  I thought that it would be fun to have a meal like Snoopy and Charlie Brown served on the Thanksgiving movie.  So, for lunch, we had popcorn, buttered toast, pretzel sticks and jellybeans.  We even made boats out of the napkins. 

The boys wanted to make it more authentic and eat outside like they do in the movie, but I didn't want to set up a table in weather like this:

I think that we have started a new Taylor family tradition!

After our fun lunch, we put on a movie and played around for a while.  Daniel was sick and I was just getting over what I gave to him (and trying to end my short lived love affair with Afrin), so he spent most of the day in bed.  Our plan was to stay here for dinner and go to my sister's house for dessert.  Since Daniel was sick, I spent the afternoon in the kitchen alone making the dinner.  I made everything gluten-free and dairy-free except the rolls.  It was really relaxing to be in the kitchen.  Jane napped during the busy part of the preparation and then the boys played with her while I finished the meal.  Being alone in the kitchen wasn't what I had anticipated, but I enjoyed trying new things and listening to Christmas music.

The food was amazing!  I really enjoyed everything that I made.  The cornbread stuffing and sweet potato pie were by far my favorites, though!   I ate 3/4 of the sweet potato pie in three days!  Sweet potato is my favorite (I got the recipe from a family we knew in Georgia) and I haven't had it for two years.  I was excited to try the dairy and wheat substitutions and they worked out wonderfully!  Daniel sat down with a slice of both pies (one dairy-free and one with dairy)and couldn't tell a difference between them!  That is success!  This year I want to work on perfecting a dinner roll that I can make for everyone!

The boys have been having a lot of fun playing in the snow.  I love having a park with a hill just down the street for the boys to go sledding! 

I realized that I only have one day left to get my 24 days of December (our countdown to Christmas) ready.  I am going to be busy wrapping presents tomorrow.  (I really don't enjoy wrapping presents!)  I know that Wednesday is the first of December, so it shouldn't be a surprise, but since the boys are getting out of school for their off-track time on Friday, I mentally told myself that I had until Friday.  I have the whole month planned out, so I just need to get busy and put everything together!

This weekend I had a great time with the boys.  I am really trying to have a better relationship with them so that I can have a good relationship with them later.  It is hard sometimes to just let them be silly and for me to follow suit, but it has been a lot of fun and we have been able to share more with each other because we are spending time together.  I am anxious about this next month with the boys being out of school until January, but I am also excited!  We have a lot of fun things planned to do as a family.

Time

Last week I watched Klayre.  She is my sister's little girl.  I use to watch Klayre once a week while Denise was at work until I had to quit because of my headaches.  Klayre was 6 months old when I started watching her and I realized that Jane is now 6 months old.  It seems impossible that Jane is half way to her first birthday.

I miss not being able to see Klayre as often because now when I do see her she has changed a lot.  I was glad that I was able to watch her even though it was for a short amount of time. 

Here are a few pictures.  The first is of Seth and Klayre taken in December of 2007.  The second is of Jane and Klayre taken November 2010.

Happy Birthday Seth!

For Seth, this day has taken forever to get here.  He couldn't wait until he just had this left on his wall:

It is what is left of his "How-many-days-until-my-birthday-countdown-chain".  He was so anxious for his birthday that I decided to help him visualize how when it would be.  I cut the paper and he wrote the numbers on the strips.  All 57 of them!  We strung them on the wall with a very fancy tool.  (Painter tape is one of my favorite things lately!)  It started at the ceiling and hung down across his bed. 

The night before his birthday he came up to me and asked, "Mom, tomorrow, on my birthday, will you be nice to me?"  What?  I thought that I was being pretty nice already.  I doubled my being nice efforts on his birthday just to keep my word! 

The first 'nice' thing that I did for him was this:

 

His morning chore was to turn 6!  

He thought that it was great!  One of the easiest chores he has ever done!  (I will post later about the chore chart that we use)

After school he had a little birthday party with a few friends.  They ate lunch, played a few games and had a silly string fight outside.  Seth really wanted to have a water fight and was quite disappointed when I told him that it was too cold.  We decided that we could buy everyone a can of silly string and have a fun war with that.  It was a hit!  Everyone came up to me and wanted a refill for their can!  Daniel and I got in on the action, too!

Nathan, Jace, James, Cody, Seth

Seth calls this game "Pin the Donkey on the Tail"

The boys had a lot of fun playing with Jane!

Nathan and Seth  

Seth got a video game called Ty 3.  Look at his face- he was so excited (but not all that surprised) to get it!

 

 

We had a family party in the evening.  We told him that we could go anywhere he wanted to go for dinner.  He said that he wanted to eat dinner downstairs.  He wanted to eat macaroni and cheese, popcorn chicken and chocolate milk while watching a show called Kipper.  Mark and Paul talked him out of Kipper and we watched Speed Racer instead.  Daniel wanted to go out to eat and wasn't too thrilled about mac and cheese, so he asked Seth why he wanted that.  He answered, "Because I like it".  I guess that I'd rather make it at home than pay $5 for the same thing at a restaurant. 

He requested ice cream sandwiches for his cake and ice cream for the friend party and for the family party he wanted brownies and ice cream.  He was pretty easy to please!  We used the trick candles on his cake and he was so surprised to see the candles relight!  It was a lot of fun to watch!

When I held Seth for the first time, I said ,"Hello there little tiger".  I don't know why I said that, but I did. The name Tiger has stuck and I still call him that sometimes.  Seth loves stuffed animals and when I found this adorable tiger, I had to get it for him.  He has been carrying it around everywhere.  He can't decide if he wants to name it Tiger or Hobbes. 

Happy 6th birthday, little Tiger!

A Long Day

I have been sick for the last week or so with a head cold and junk.  Sometimes I really hate being a girl.  I especially hate being a girl when I'm sick to start out with.  My cycles have been a pain since Jane was born, I feel like I am 12 years old all over again when it comes to the cramping.   I'm starting to feel better, but I'm not completely better, so I feel anxious to do things, but lack the energy.  With the time changing, today has seemed so long.  We all woke up around 6 this morning.  This evening it started getting dark, so I started dinner.  I looked at the clock and realized that it was 5 and dinner was almost ready.  So, we had an early dinner and the boys are watching a movie before we do bedtime.  Seriously, gaining an hour is more trouble than it is worth.  Bleh. 


It is going to be a long winter with it being dark so long.  I really don't do well with the dark.  I could never handle Alaska during the winter, but I've told Daniel that I would love to live there during the summer.  I've got to figure out what to do to get me through the blahs of the dark winter.  Any suggestions?

Yesterday Jane was in a playful mood, so I took pictures of her.  Here are a few of my favorites.

 

Jane was playing with the blanket and stuffed it in her mouth.  What a silly girl!

I love her long eyelashes!

My Latest Project

What you wanna do?
I don't know.  What you wanna do?
I don't know.  What you wanna do?
Now don't start that again!

Madeleine and I have found a project that will keep us busy for the next two years!  We bought a wall quilt pattern kit that has a quilt for each month of the year.  We started out with October and we are currently working on December.  We have pulled our fabric together to share and it has been fun to see how differently the finished project is.  I am very happy with how they both turned out!

Here is Madeleine's October quilt

Here is my October quilt

(I chickened out and didn't make my pumpkin a jack-o-lantern)

Here they are side by side in the back of my van.  Yep, the back of the van.  That is why the lighting is so weird!  We got together for lunch and then pulled out our fabrics and sat in the van to show our finished quilt and plan our next one.