Welcome December

It's been an eventful first week of December.
We kicked off our Christmas movie tradition with Holiday Inn on Monday and have since watched Polar Express and White Christmas. This is one of my favorite traditions for so many reasons.

The kids and I made Chocolate Crinkle cookies this past week. Even Meg got in on the action.

The temperature here has warmed up slightly with all the rain we've been getting which is nice, but the kids are really hoping for some snow soon. While a white Christmas is not unheard of in these parts, it is certainly not the norm.

Rhaevyn has been working at perfecting her eyes when it comes to her drawings.

Myles was practicing getting his airplane to land in the tree. He was so excited when he finally got it to land perfectly in the tree that he took a picture and sent it to Chris while he was at work.

Meg got into some chocolate treats. Can you tell how much she is enjoying the chocolate? I think she felt very proud that she had been so sneaky and had it half gobbled by the time we noticed. It reminded us of the time Myles ate almost an entire bag of Costco chocolate truffles, and the evidence of cocoa powder was all over the carpet. Fantastic memories to look back on and laugh at.
Meg also had a scoopful of butter this week. As I was putting stuff away from breakfast she reached up with three fingers and swiped a scoop of butter. She put it in her mouth and said "numnumnum!" It made me laugh as I thought of Rhaevyn when she was a bit younger than Meg. She had actually taken a whole cube of butter and ate half of it. She thought it was delicious!

 

 
 Last Sunday a little red hemangioma that she has on her forehead started to bleed. We had a heck of time keeping the bleeding stopped, and it would not stay stopped for very long unless I very tightly taped a cotton ball down to it. I took her in to the doctor on Monday. This was the scene just before I took her in. Of course it was fine once we got there and has been fine since, but various places in the house started too look like a crime scene. At one point I was covered in blood, Meg was covered in blood, part of the couch, and a pillow had blood all over them. We are glad it is now under control. Poor girl :(

And it's on to the second week of December..................

Wrapping Up November

 What???? It's almost December??

Time to relax and listen to Christmas music!

Whenever Meg hears a loud noise she usually makes her mouth into an "O" shape and then puts her hands up to her mouth or cheeks. It makes me smile.

I'm halfway done with this quilt top. I finally settled on how I wanted the pattern. I got started a bit on another top. I'm keeping my little sewing machine humming with four receiving blankets for a friend. She is going to donate them to the hospital, but has discovered that she has an allergy to the fuzz that comes off the flannel when she is sewing. So, I offered to finish them for her.

 

I bought some raspberries and blackberries at my favorite produce store. They were super cheap. Meg ended up eating all of the blackberries. They were huge! I assume they were good since she ate them so fast.

I got together with my best-friend two weeks ago. Football season is over at the high school, so her husband was home to watch the kids. We haven't gotten together in a while. It was so nice to catch up, and we had so much fun. We decided to go to the local mall because it was somewhere that we could be indoors to walk and do all our talking. We did stop and smell all the soap and candle scents at Bath and Body, and then we decided to pop into one store that we hadn't been in. She found a sweater she liked and had me be her model. I talked her into getting it, and then we decided just to have fun and try on a bunch of clothes. There was late 80's music playing which took us down memory lane. We started singing and dancing around in the dressing room. Oh my goodness, we laughed so hard!!! It was such a fun outing. Here is my favorite outfit that I tried on.

It's been pretty cold here. I turn the heater on for half an hour in the morning, and this is usually where I find at least one of the kids..............on the heater with a blanket.

This past Monday we decided to set the Christmas tree up. Normally we wait for Thanksgiving, but since we weren't going to be home for the holiday the kids wanted to do it beforehand. Myles has set up a train track around the tree which carries little wooden Christmas trees. I love, when it is dark in the morning and evening, having the tree lit up, the train going, and Christmas music playing.

We headed up to Ben and Stacey's for Thanksgiving this year. We had such a great time! It was so relaxing. Myles was super excited about the sunrise on Thanksgiving morning. With the frost, pink sky, and the full moon going down, it made for quite a beautiful sight.

 They have about six to seven dear that hang out on their property. You can get pretty close to them too. Chris and Ben went out to shoot and the noise didn't even seem to bother the dear.
 

 

Ben made the turkey breast. He and I worked on the potatoes together, and I lent moral support while  he made the cornbread stuffing and Stovetop  dressing for Chris.
 

 

 Thanksgiving pictures...........
 

 

 

 

 

 
Stacey and I had a fun girls afternoon on Friday. We went for pedicures and then out to dinner.
Afterwards we came home to make everyone special grilled cheese sandwiches.  Then Stacey and the kids played board games while the rest of us watched a Harry Potter movie.
 
 
Ben and Stacey were good to take some family photos for us while we were up at their place.
It was freezing out, and Myles was trying to warm up Aeva.

 

 

The night before we went home we all got to open ornaments. Ben and Stacey had picked out ones that were very unique to each of us, and we got to put them on Ben and Stacey's very first Christmas tree ever. That was a great memory made!

Myles thinks he got the coolest ornament. Stacey got a Lego Batcopter and put it together for his ornament.
And now that I have photos of the family I can do Christmas cards!