Blessed Beyond Belief

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are very thankful to have Jacob, Jenny, Jaxon and Emma here to celebrate with us!!

So - it's getting colder

and my darling husband has morphed into a scary masked man fit for crimes that would end in a prison stay. Actually, this is just the lastest item added to the collection of 'I live in antartica' clothing line. This is some type of high tech mask that won't make his glasses or safety goggles fog up while still keeping the snotsicles from forming. I am so relieved that my darling will stay warm while working in the yard. He says that next week the high will be 45.

Looking back a year ago the posts are very similar.

The cold weather was starting and the kids were bundling up. Will's asthma was still new to us. It must be the weather or time of year because he is needing a lot of breathing treatments again. We start with the inhaler and if that doesn't help much then we go onto the nebulizer. Still after that he continues to breath heavy and loud and sound like each breath is work. Tim and I both had the thought that he may need to go back on prednisone for a bit.

Last year we were hoping for snow by thanksgiving since Mike, Jayne, Kim and Jordan were visiting that weekend. The first snow came the day after they left. :( I'm still holding out hope for snow this thanksgiving since Jacob and Jenny and kids will be here. I know Jaxon would love to have some snowballs to throw around....

I've been inspired

by this book. Deceptively Delicious. Today I steamed, baked and pureed carrots, cauliflower, yellow squash, and pumpkin. I already had in my freezer broccoli, spinach, and butternut squash. In the past few weeks I've made brownies with spinach and yams, blueberry oatmeal bars with spinach, mac and cheese with cauliflower, scrambled eggs with cauliflower, chicken nuggets with broccoli and there are still more to try out! I don't know how long I will do this, but for now it's fun to 'hide' such things in food. Love it when everyone is drooling over brownies and bars with spinach puree in it. And no, you cannot taste it one bit.

Tomorrow I am attempting to make a valance for my laundry room out of some totally cute fabric I picked up today. We'll see how that goes. Fun fabric, huh?

In the past couple of days...

Will lost a tooth! He had already lost a couple about 6 or more months ago, but he swallowed both of those. I didn't even know this one was loose and I checked a couple of days before! Anyhow, in anger he was biting one of his blankets and out came the tooth. He was quite freaked out. He wanted to put it back, know when he was going to grow another and really mourned the loss of his tooth. Poor guy. Then I had to go and tell him about the tooth fairy and that freaked him out even more. He wanted to know if she was mean. So I had to tell him that it was just a fun pretend story. Didn't help. He had a pretty tearful evening till he fell asleep.

I painted the laundry room a soft light yellow. This is the before. Our machines have been going out for awhile. These are the ones that we bought with our first married tax return when we lived in the apartment. They had done their duty with all the gross laundry that we've had (and still have, though not as much). Today our shiney new RED ones were delivered. I'm still putting it all back together and will post a pic when it's done.

This week Will has spent most of his free time as an African safari man. His outfit consisted of boots, pants and shirt with a camo vest and a black cowboy hat. Oh, and he empties out his Cars school backpack and fills it with any pretend weapon he can find. Yes, I have become soft in my 'old age' and have allowed such contraband as a fake knife, pop gun, and a bow and arrow. STILL not allowed to point it at anyone nor become too agressive with them. That is cause for removal. So, these are the objects he has been hunting:

As of yesterday afternoon he has gone on to become a 'DUDE', (his words). He got a book at the school book fair that came with an toy ipod which is actually called a MYPOD. It plays some music and you should see him dance! White boy needs some lessons! :) With his mypod attached to his ears and then to his pocket, he puts on his and hat glasses and calls himself a dude.

Autumn finally got to work putting her clean clothes away. I mean, they've only been sitting on her floor for several days. It did help motivate her when one of the cats did something not so nice on an article of clothing.

Please don't feel bad for him. This cat has caused us to yell more unspeakables than we should in the past 36 hours. There is a reason he needed this (and a couple more) baths, but I'll spare you the details.

10/26 Autumn's Party

This was actually really fun! The boys left and 6 girls and I had a party. Everyone got along well and we played everything from telephone to tag and facials, nails, made pizzas, watched a movie and blasted music.

THIS was my 10th birthday. Complete with ET shirt and pacman cake. Cool, huh?? Oh, and that's Erin standing in the middle. We weren't really friends then, but her mother made her come anyway. She showed her displeasure by telling me that my party was stupid. LOL! In the line of sleeping bags I am near the far side holding marshall on my lap and jacob is at the other end in his sleeping bag. How cute that my brothers wanted to join in my slumber party!!

10/29

Autumn has progressed in her riding lessons. The last couple of lessons have been bare back, now onto loping. It's kind of like galloping? Anyhow, she really had to hold on! The horse she rides is pretty mellow and slow so they strapped some spurs on her boots to get her going. Autumn LOVES the lessons.

Halloween

Sorry I'm so behind on sharing! Halloween was fun, everyone did well. Although by the time we hit the end of our street Will was saying it was time to go home. Autumn was a cowgirl (thanks to grandma jayne who sent the perfect shirt for the occasion!). Will was Tuck the turtle from the Wonder Pets show. And this was officially the first year that Russell did not dress up. Unless you would call backwards man a costume (see below). We thought it would be fun if he still had long hair next year to do the half man / half woman thing that Tim did. I'll be saving all my old bras for next year.

Russell's dream has come true - he's now the tallest member of our family... yeah right.