Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!! We had a great week. We got a lot of canning done. Brent worked on his class and we simply relaxed and spent time with the girls. On Friday we decorated the tree and Brent put some lights on the house.

Brent's turkey was beautiful and so very good. He also made the best apple pie he's ever made. And I made my first batch of dinner rolls. They were really dense, but not bad. The girls liked them at least. They would only eat the rolls, so I guess that's a good thing. I was also in charge of my Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes, which were awesome. Brent even liked them, and that's saying a lot.

Mariska was hilarious on Thanksgiving. As Brent was basting the turkey she says, "I think the turkey is saying (then her voice turns into a high pitched whine) "Why are you cooking me?!?" - It was so funny. Then as we were forcing her to try at least one bite of everything, we really worked on saying things nicer... when she ate the sweet potatoes she said, "Those were disgusting!" We talked about needing to say things in a more polite way, to not hurt people's feelings. She tried the green bean casserole and said, "I don't care about that." Meaning she doesn't care for it much because it's not very good. Then she tried the stuffing. The look on her face was priceless. You could tell she thought it was the most vile thing she's ever put into her mouth, but was really struggling to be nice about it. After about 20 seconds of her not swallowing, I told her she could go spit it into the garbage. But we at least got her to try everything, even if she just ended up filling up on bread and strawberry milk.

The next day we decorated the tree. Mariska loved opening each ornament and hearing the story of why we bought the ones we had. We have the family tradition of buying each other (and the girls) a new tree ornament every year. Brynley helped by showing us how high we needed to put them up onto the tree and putting play food into one bucket, dumping it out and moving it to another. She's a real help.

Now we're back to life. Brent is back to work, counting down the days to his Christmas break and being called totally inaccurate racial slurs by angry skinny little kids. (Really funny, long story - let's just say one student seems to be color blind) Brynley is starting to understand so much more and even saying 2 word sentences. She's also making sure our "snotty nose wiping" quota is met. I'm becoming obsessed with food storage and desperately trying to stay off desserts until Christmas break. And Mariska is almost jumping out of her skin with excitement over their birthday party coming up on Saturday. Speaking of which, I better get planning some games!!

Time has flown by since Halloween! I can't believe we're past the mid point of November already. Not too much has happened in the past couple weeks, but I wanted to blog some thoughts, since my blog is transferred to my journal.

I'm still just trying to keep the house in order. I have all of the Christmas shopping done, with exception of the Queen Anne's Chocolate Covered Cherries we get each year, but those will be bought at the last possible moment. I'm eager to get all of our family's gifts packed up and shipped off, but sending them too early would just be weird. Wow... I literally have nothing to write about for myself and it's really depressing. I can write, yet again, about my struggle with food and getting up early enough to get a really good work out, but I'm pretty sure we're all sick of that topic by now. I can write about how I take the girls to Story Time at the library twice a week. And I can write about how my big plans tomorrow are to go and stock up on food storage items, like flour and sugar. I know, I'll talk about my Christmas present to myself this year. Living room and kitchen curtains! I'm going to try and get some cheap fabric and make some cheap curtains. I may also splurge and get some new cookie sheets, a new mop and hair cut, but we'll see how I'm feeling when the time comes. I love being a stay at home mom. I wouldn't put my kids in daycare if someone paid me. But I really struggle with it sometimes. I'm excited for the days when I can have something to talk about.

So enough of my pity party... Brent has started a horrible class of Educational Law. He took the first test (one each week) last Saturday and we're still stressing out about what his score might be. He's now reading his chapters assigned for the week and a minute ago he turned to me and said, "So some of the questions on my test last week, are discussed in this week's chapters." That doesn't seem right to me, maybe he should read ahead a few chapters into next week's reading to make sure that doesn't happen again without being prepared for it. This is the 2nd week, so after this week he'll have 3 left, then he has about a month off of school before his next class starts! That is so exciting. He's also working extra hours two days a week in an after-school program. He holds a book club, along with the school librarian, and a chess club. He's been beaten by a few kids but still insists it was a "fluke". He's also still commuting to and from work on his bike at least once, sometimes twice a week. This is really good for him, particularly to help him relax after stressful days.

Mariska is getting to be such a big kid. I can't believe she'll be 5 in less than a month. She had a friend over the other day and their conversation made me realize just how old she is. I remember being 5 and playing with friends and I, of course, didn't think I was that little. She's up bright and early, by 7, everyday and is still obsessed with the Disney Princesses. She also is almost always pretending to be a puppy. She enjoys looking at books and always wants to help me clean. She loves her little preschool she goes to once a week and really stressed out the other night about "Miss Lauren" not being her teacher anymore once she starts kindergarten. She really stresses about things way ahead of time, I'm sure she got that from me. But she's almost desperate for kindergarten and I know she'll love it once she goes, in 9 months.

Brynley is growing so fast! She'll be 2 next month. She's really tall. Taller than most 2 1/2 year olds we know. I'm about to pull out the 3T clothes because the 2T are all a bit short. She's very long and skinny, so things tend to fall down. She's learning more and more words, although I think only I can understand most of them. But she's starting to react to more things we say, so her understanding is getting better. She loves to sing songs. She's always singing a song, usually ABCs, Wheels on the Bus or the song about monkeys getting eaten by an alligator out of a tree. She really loves the show "Super Why" and tells me that's what we're watching about 10 times an episode. She loves milk and is the pickiest eater I've ever seen. She'll eat fruit, PB&J sandwiches, toast, yogurt and occasionally eggs. That's about it, besides snacking on graham crackers, cheese-it's and pretzels.

That's about it for now. We're excited for Brent to have the entire week off work next week. We also have less than a week until we get to see Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. I can't describe how excited we are! I've just started to reread it, again... I'll probably blog about it after we get home!!

Here are some wholesome videos of kids getting hit in the head with a big pink ball. Enjoy.