An Email from a Friend this morning :-)

Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. I'm
telling you in advance, so don't act surprised. Since Ms. Stewart
won't be coming, I've made a few small changes: Our sidewalk will not
be lined with homemade, paper bag luminaries. After a trial run, it
was decided that no matter how cleverly done, rows of flaming lunch
sacks do not have the desired welcoming effect.

Once inside, our guests will note that the entry hall is not decorated
with the swags of Indian corn and fall foliage I had planned to make.
Instead, I've gotten the kids involved in the decorating by having
them track n colorful autumn leaves from the front yard. The mud was
their idea.

The dining table will not be covered with expensive linens, fancy
china, or crystal goblets. If possible, we will use dishes that match
and everyone will get a fork. Since this IS Thanksgiving, we will
refrain from using the plastic Peter Rabbit plate and the Santa
napkins from last Christmas.

Our centerpiece will not be the tower of fresh fruit and flowers that
I promised. Instead we will be displaying a hedgehog-like decoration
hand-crafted from the finest construction paper. The artist assures me
it is a turkey.

We will be dining fashionably late. The children will entertain you
while you wait. I'm sure they will be happy to share every nice
comment I have made regarding Thanksgiving, pilgrims and the turkey
hotline. Please remember that most of these comments were made by me
at 5:00 a.m. upon discovering that the turkey was still hard enough to
cut diamonds.

As accompaniment to the children's recital, I will play a recording of
tribal drumming. If the children should mention that I don't own a
recording of tribal drumming, or that tribal drumming sounds
suspiciously like a frozen turkey in a clothes dryer, ignore them.
They are lying.

We toyed with the idea of ringing a dainty silver bell to announce the
start of our feast. In the end, we chose to keep our traditional
method. We've also decided against a formal seating arrangement. When
the smoke alarm sounds, please gather around the table and sit where
you like. In the spirit of harmony, we will ask the children to sit at
a separate table. In a separate room.

Next door.

Now, I know you have all seen pictures of one person carving a turkey
in front of a crowd of appreciative onlookers. This will not be
happening at our dinner. For sanity safety reasons, the turkey will be
carved in a private ceremony. I stress "private", meaning: Do not,
under any circumstances, enter the kitchen to laugh at me. Do not send
small, unsuspecting children to check on my progress. I have an
electric knife. The turkey is unarmed. It stands to reason that I will
eventually win. When I do, we will eat.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind my young diners (and
any males present) that "passing the rolls" is not a football play.
Nor is it a request to bean your sister in the head with warm tasty
bread. Oh, and one reminder for the adults: For the duration of the
meal, and especially while in the presence of young diners, we will
refer to the giblet gravy by its lesser-known name: Cheese Sauce. If a
young diner questions you regarding the origins or type of Cheese
Sauce, plead ignorance.

Before I forget, there is one last change. Instead of offering a
choice between 12 different scrumptious homemade desserts, we will be
serving the traditional pumpkin pie, garnished with whipped cream,
small fingerprints, and broken crust. You will still have a choice;
you may take it or leave it.

Martha Stewart will not be dining with us this Thanksgiving. She
probably won't come next year either. I am thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving,
author unknown

There's a church that I pass on paper route every week that has a reader board by the side of the road. Most of the time I enjoy the little messages it puts up, my favorite one being "The key to heaven was hung on a nail." But occasionally their messages can be a bit harsh, like last year at Christmastime it read "Santa cannot save you from your punishment in hell." I remember thinking Whoa! when I saw that one. This morning I really think they were setting themselves up for some prankster when it said "Friends don't let friends go to hell," remove a few words and...

What are the odds!?

Weird. I was listening to my playlist and Blondie's "Heart of glass" came on, and I wasn't really in the mood for Blondie, so I pressed the forward button. It went to "Rapture" by Blondie, kinda weird. So I pressed forward again and it went to "Sunday Girl" by Blondie! Isn't that crazy!!?

A New Tool

This morning Colette woke up on the wrong side of the bed and nothing was going to make her happy. I remembered how I used to use the technique of thinking about what I'm thankful for to feel better in stressful situations. So I asked Colette what she's thankful for. This was in the middle of her crying and whining about not getting something. At first she wouldn't answer, so I told her something I was thankful for. Then I asked her what she liked about the house. She said "the lights"...so I went from there, and had her telling me more and more what she was thankful for. By the end of the conversation she was all smiles! So I'll definitely try that again.

I am finally tackling the job of going through all the clutter carried over from the trailer and organizing everything. One thing I've had trouble with is the girls artwork. They are constantly drawing and writing things and giving them to me. So much so that to keep everything they make would probably require a room by the time they move out. So, I combined two things I've seen other people do to come up with a system. A mother of six said that she keeps her kids artwork in plastic bins and every year they go through and decide what to keep and what to toss. So you can see below the bins that we got and decorated for the girls. They're the perfect size to hold 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper, and I figure anything bigger will have to be folded. So the second thing I've seen a mother of seven do is keep binders with plastic sheet protectors in them as super-easy scrapbooks. So at the end of the school year we'll go through these bins and keep only enough to fill the notebooks. Then we'll start over filling the bins for the next year and make another notebook for the next year. I'll show you the notebooks when we get those together, to illustrate what I'm talking about if you can't picture it.

Here's an example of the piles of their artwork that are contributing to all the mess around here.

Colette has been taking pictures constantly lately. I've probably got about 1000 pictures on my computer that she's taken in the last few week's and that's no exaggeration. I'll have to go back and pick out more of some of the cuter ones she's done. But here are some from the folder I went through today for this post. The main purpose of the post is farther down. She takes pictures of all the ordinary things she does throughout the day like watching her favorite show...

and eating breakfast...

Her favorite model (aside from herself) is Edward. I really enjoy these because when he looks at me he usually has a "feed me" expression on his face. So it's fun to see how he looks at everybody else.




So! The original purpose of starting this post was to show something fun we tried out here last night. I saw this on my friend Rachel's blog, who saw it on her friend's blog! I thought it looked fun, but I wasn't planning on trying it right away, but Colette saw the pictures of her cousin over my shoulder and wanted her hair to be like that! Her friend used toilet paper strips, and it looks like Rachel used strips of fabric. The fabric would have worked a lot better and if we ever do it again we'll use fabric. But the toilet paper was easy and a good way to try it out to see if we liked it. My mom used to put those pink curlers in my hair and I hated sleeping in them, but loved my hair curly. I thought maybe it would be more comfortable with just toilet paper in their hair and I never heard any complaints about how it felt.








It worked well on Colette's hair, but Adrienne's was really kinky and she had to go to school, so we improvised. It might be better to try out on a Friday night when there's nowhere to go the next day in case it looks bad. I'll do that next time until I figure out how to do it with less kinks.


I'll end this with a self-portrait by Colette who loved her curly hair! She is always asking me to curl her hair when I am putting curlers in my hair, but they're too big for her so this was great.


`

Edward's 1st Birthday!!

For some reason it's not letting me start my text above this picture, so I'll just have to explain it in a second. It's sort of sad that I'm getting Edward's birthday pictures up the day of, when Colette's birthday was a month ago and I still haven't gotten hers up! But the reason is because Mike wasn't here for his, and he was here for Colette's. So I want him to see pictures from today.

It's kind of funny the differences in effort I put into each child's first birthdays. For Adrienne we had TWO parties, with 4 cakes, 4 pizzas, veggie trays, streamers, balloons, etc.! I remember I took individual pictures of each present she got so we would remember! I don't even know where those pictures are now!! I think (see, I can't even remember!) for Colette we still had extended family come but had her party at Azteca so I wouldn't have to try and fit a bunch of people in our small trailer (and bonus--no clean up!). Poor Edward, the third child, got jipped! Since he's not going to remember this, and I couldn't handle the stress of even doing a small family party, we just combined a separate birthday tradition I have with the kids on their birthdays and we went to the Chipmunk Grill -- the restaurant at the hospital I had them at. So I know this may sound bad, but really, I don't feel guilty about this lack of effort at all. I am done feeling guilty about stuff. I suggest everyone else should do the same. Too much time is wasted feeling bad about ourselves, let's just focus on the good. Okay? Anyway...On to the pictures!

Driving to the restaurant, I reached back and (without looking!) tried to get a picture of Edward...I thought the above picture was cute :-)

There, a better one! (Still not looking!) He actually really looked older this morning!

Get me out already!

A little young for the manners conversation. Good thing there weren't many people there!
It was so dead, Saturday is the day to go! (it's busier during the week with people going to doctor's appointments at the clinic and imaging center and such)

Mommy with the birthday boy!

The fries were too hot at first, so I gave him my pickle.
He never wanted to trade it in for the fries though.

The girls enjoying their shared meal (that's water in their cups, not coffee!).
I had a yummy philly cheese sandwich, with (of course!) au jus!
It makes all the difference between a good and a stupendous philly cheese!

The birthday donut (closest thing they had to cake) :-)

After a little bite of the donut, Edward spit it out and went back for his pickle!

Ah, Washington weather! Actually, I've really been enjoying it. This yellow paint in our house really helps!
I think it's really pretty outside even when it's gloomy! Take note of that fountain on the right though.

Adrienne running back from making a wish at the fountain after getting a penny out of the van!

Same for Colette. She looks so cute in her dressy dress and rainboots!

All that fun must have tuckered him out :-)

This is is a little sad. I didn't even realize Colette was taking pictures. She's always taking pictures so I don't even notice anymore (another post to come about that!). This is Edward talking to his Daddy through Skype, so he could see him on his birthday! He always gets so excited when he hears the Skype ringtone on the speakers.

On the way home from the hospital we stopped at a Redbox and rented "Tinkerbell". We watched it together and then by the girls request, immediately started it again. I was so tired from a long day that I actually sat through it again! Sometimes I have a hard time stopping to watch movies at all, so that's a little unusual for me! It was pretty cute! Probably one to buy at some point.

P.S. Edward had another first recently, I think it was on the 4th -- He said his first word! My sister was waving goodbye to him and he waved and said very clearly "Bye!" It shocked me and her.

P.S.S. I didn't quite make my goal on the weight loss, but again...no guilt! I am just happy that I got 93% of the way there! How can I feel bad about that!?

I'm a little late, but Happy Halloween!

(I'll be trying to post more later today)