Gobble Gobble!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Aside from the kids being sick, and consequently getting John and me sick, the day was great.

John put the turkey on the rotisserie and it turned out delicious!



William is just too cool to look at the camera these days. If he does happen to look, he usually has his tongue out.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Hide and Seek

Abby loves to play hide and seek. She's a pro at hiding, actually. For a 16 month old little she hides and stays amazingly quiet.

Here she is...all ready to play!

Can you find her? I know, I know...sometimes it is hard! She is ohsoverystill. And never makes a peep.

I think I'm getting warmer...


Big bro found her! He and Abby can play this game endlessly it seems. William counts to 5, then says, "Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie...whoever's not ready...here I come!" Too cute! It doesn't matter that Abby and I only have 5 short seconds to hide; we have to hide in the same spot every.single.time. or else he gets quite upset. Oh, and he has to tell us where that spot is.

Conversations

We were driving down the freeway this morning, on our way to church, when William spotted a small body of water.
"Look Mom! The ocean!"
"That's not the ocean. It's a lake."
"Why is it not the ocean?"
"Um....well...because...it's too small."
"It's not too small. It's big!"
This conversation continued on for quite some time, with William convinced I was wrong on the lake thing, and that it was indeed the Pacific.

A motorcycle soon roared by us.
"Where's that guy going?"
"I think he's probably rushing to church. He's probably late."
"No. He's going to get the bad guys."
Seriously? Bad guys? Where on EARTH has he heard that?

On Saturday I decided to order pizza. I thought I'd ask William for his input on toppings.
"What would you like on your pizza?"
"Blueberries."
"How about ham?"
"No, just blueberries."

Abby is starting to talk! Okay, a lot of it is just incoherent babbling, but she is sure trying! Some words she knows:
*Hi Puppy! (She waves to every dog in our neighborhood, and there are a LOT of them!)
*Shoes
*Mommy (this is clear as day!)
*Daddy
*Cheers! (She only says this when holding her bottle/cup in the air!)
*Nigh nigh!
*Bye bye
She can also sign "more" and "please". That's it for the signing. I haven't done the signing thing much with her...I'm all about going straight to words! Or maybe I got a little lazy....

Park and Potatoes

We spent the morning yesterday at the park. What a fun time we had! It was incredibly windy, but no one cared. They played hard, ate their picnic lunch, and played some more.



I made for the first time some baked sweet potato fries. They were delicious. However Abby was so tired by the time dinner rolled around that she didn't know what to do with herself. When she's tired she does this face rubbing thing where she takes her hands and puts them on her head and swipes them down her entire face. Well, she did that again, but this time they were full of sweet potato. Poor girl was covered in them.


William is getting a bit obsessed with Christmas and Santa. He desperately wants to get our tree up. (We have to buy one yet, and there are no lots open!)
This morning he said to me,
"Halloween is over?"
"Yes, it is."
Thinking for a moment....
"Christmas is here?"
"Not yet. After Thanksgiving"
"What's Thanksgiving?"
"It's when we thank God for all our many blessings."
More thinking....
"I don't want Thanksgiving. I want Christmas. Oma is going to have a Christmas tree for me!"

No pressure, Mom.

Lately

Days are quickly going by. I can't believe we are already 8 days into November. We have continued to work on our letters, but I've been behind on posting them.

"H" in Zoo Phonics is Honey Horse. Sometimes our LOTW pages matche with Zoo Phonics, sometimes it doesn't. We are still learning the motions to ZP and William is really loving them!


"I" is for Inny Inchworm was confusing, because he still thinks it is a caterpillar.

I remember having to buy these cubes in college. I was quite upset that I had to spend precious money that I didn't have on these silly things. Now I'm glad I have them!


Abby loves to read books. John was lying on the floor, resting from a busy day at work. But dear Abby Girl had other plans! She promptly got a book and backed her way into the perfect position for her Daddy to read to her.

New Food

I know, I know, I am behind in introducing carrots to Abby. However, Infantino gave me a Steam Release Micro Dish so I decided to try steamed carrots.

The dish was awesome. It cooked the carrots in very little water, in about a minute. Sometimes I feel that the vitamins are cooked away when I cook veggies on the stove, but with the cook time under a minute I like to think that the vitamins were still there by the time Abby got it.

Yes, the girl has never had cooked carrots before. She was quite confused, but, in true Abby style she ate them ALL.After the carrots I got a little creative - steamed apples! She's only had applesauce, but the steamed apples were a huge hit with her and William.

I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for Infantino and have received various Infantino products for my participation.

Today

Wow...I'm on a posting roll here! Lots of pictures to share and news to tell! I had to wait until it was announced on FB, as it wasn't really my news to tell, but...it's up and posted, so....I'm gaining a sister! My brother Terry and his girlfriend Melissa are engaged! I couldn't be more happy for them. A date hasn't been set yet, but they're thinking May, just before Terry graduates. Woo hoo!

I cleaned out the water table this morning and decided no more water for this year simply because it's too cold out. Of course today it happens to be 80 degrees, but in the morning it's freezing, and so is the water. We couldn't however, just put the table away. Oh no. William and I cleaned it out and together we thought of something to do with it. It's now a noddle table. There are dry mezzo penne in the table and they now use it to "cook nummies". They played for quite awhile with this setup. Such a versatile toy! Love it!

Carving

Halloween sneaked up on me. I knew it was coming (duh!) but the actual day just sort of arrived without much fanfare. The kids didn't get dressed up, and since it was on a Sunday we just went to church like any other Sunday. In the afternoon, however, we did carve William's little pumpkin. It was a family affair.

John cut the top off. With William's help. Just kidding.


William took the seeds and pulp out. He loved this part!

And I carved the actual cat.


Ta da!

In the afternoon we skyped with John's folks, and in the evening we skyped with my family. Man, oh man, do I have some exciting news coming! Stay tuned!!!!!!

Finished

The back patio is finished (for now). The tough parts are done, now John just has to actually assemble the covering and put it up.

Please ignore my weird jeans. Wish John had pointed them out to me BEFORE taking the picture! Grr...

I lovelovelove our back patio! With another 2 feet of additional space (I was wrong in a previous post when I said we were adding 18 inches) all around it seems perfect, without taking up too much of the actual yard.

The ledger board was quite a pain to put up. I say that loosely, since I didn't actually put it up, but the studs were hard to find and a lot of sawing and drilling into my lovely house was done. BUT...it's up and we're ready to move to the next step!