The Tree

Since we are living back in the states this year and not in temporary lodging, we could get a real tree this year.  We ended up getting a "Noble Fir" (I was strongly rebuked for calling it the wrong kind of fir tree by my Oregonian husband!!) that was shipped in from Oregon.  The trees were all wrapped up when we bought it so we had to pick it out making our best guess.  When we got it home we took it inside before opening it and shaking it out so it dropped a lot of needles while it unfurled.  Here it is part way open after we removed the twine.  Eventually it opened up all the way (after drinking a lot of water) and we were ready to decorate.  Scott picked a very nice tree without even being able to see it opened up.  Amazing.  Are these the things you learn in elementary school in Oregon?

When we unboxed all our Christmas ornaments we found that they had really taken a beating.  A lot of stuff was broken or crushed.  It's as if our Christmas ornaments went to Japan and back...via boat...stacked under boxes of heavy furniture. :)  Most of our Christmas lights were non-functional.   We tried and tried to resuscitate them, but to no avail.  Sadly our Christmas tree decorating had to be put off until we went and bought new lights.  We decorated this little tree in the mean time.   This was one we had in our hotel room last year while we were moving.

Finally we got some lights and were ready to make another go at the tree.  Grant was eager to help...or at least investigate all the decorations.

Matthew and Anna were big helpers with all the ornaments.  Scott had to lift them up to help them place things just where they wanted.

A lot of the ornaments ended up on the lower end of the tree.  Scott had to reposition a lot of them to keep them out of Grant's reach.

 

And somehow we got the tree decorated.  Grant wasn't feeling too happy by the end of it all. A lot of our ornaments and decorations were broken (one of our Christmas boxes got very crushed in the move) so we bought a few new ones and some new lights and VOILA!!  It looks like Christmas in our house.  I think Scott is glad to have a real Christmas tree in our house for the first time in five years.  And an Oregon tree at that! 

And as an aside, here is our family Christmas tree history: 

2005 - (our first Christmas together) we had a real tree in Florida

 

2006 - we had a real tree in Monterey

2007 - we were moving (no tree, but here we are getting a tree with the family in Oregon)

2008 - Okinawa (tiny fake tree from 100 Yen store)

2009 - Okinawa (tiny fake 100 Yen tree)

2010 - moving, living in temp lodging in Colorado (tiny fake tree from Target - 100 Yen tree was in transit)

2011 - real tree in Colorado (see above)!!  Hooray!!

Thanksgiving

 

We had a great Thanksgiving this year and lots of Thanksgiving fun.  Here are the kids making turkeys out of hand and foot shapes.  I let them do the feathers anyway they want so they didn't look that turkey like.

 Our pilgrim hats.

The kids learned how to make handprint turkeys this year and made A LOT of them.

These ones have feathers!

I had these blocks out that have different holiday sayings in each of the six sides, but there was no Thanksgiving saying.  We threw this together.  We had no real V.  :)

We made pumpkin pie in a cup - crushed graham crackers (good job crushing Matthew), pumpkin spice flavored pudding (Jello makes it - available seasonally) and whipped cream on the top.  Yum!

 I liked the graham crackers.  Ginger snaps crushed would have also been good!

We had a family night lesson about gratitude for Thanksgiving week.  At the end we drew pictures of things we were thankful for.  Matthew drew his bike and Anna drew a motorcycle.  Those were their only offerings.  :)  I drew a few other things to fill in the empty space.

We made turkey cookies.

And I use the term "turkey" loosely here.

And then on to the big day!  The day before I did a lot of prep work.  It was hard getting anything done with three little ones, especially with Grant crawling now.  Amazingly I did get these two pies made from scratch, even with my issues making pie crust.  This year we made chocolate pecan and apple.

 Scott made his buttermilk rolls, with the help of Matthew...

 ...and Anna.  They are always happy to help with roll making.

We cooked a turkey breast this year instead of a whole turkey.  We did that last year to fit in our small Okinawa oven and it turned out pretty good.  This year we used Alton Brown's Good Eats turkey recipe.  The meat turned out so moist and delicious!

Our feast!  On the menu this year:  Our brined and roasted turkey breast, cranberry apple cornbread stuffing, cranberry compote, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole (made without cream of mushroom soup...hmmm), Scott's baked beans and buttermilk rolls and of course, pie!  We had a nice Thanksgiving week - Matthew was out of school and Scott was in town - it was great.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Grant Crawling

 

Grant started legitimately crawling today.  He's been wiggling around on his belly or scooting around for a while, but now he's up on his hands and knees and crawling!   He's doesn't go very fast or far yet - he's still figuring it out, but it's a big step forward, as it were.  :)   I am so not ready for this!  Anna has been running around the house the past few days telling me which things are "chokeable."  I gave the older kids an empty toilet paper roll and told them if the toy/item can fit in or through the toilet paper roll, it's chokeable and can't be on the floor or near Grant.  :)  They still dump their tiny toys out right next to him though!  Things we must immediately work on!

I tried to get some video of Grant's crawling progress, so here he is crawling a little bit.  Not the greatest video, but you get the idea.  Good job Grant. 

Leaves!

One exciting thing we did last weekend was buy a rake.  Our aspen trees (among others) lost their leaves and it was time to rake things up.  Matthew tries out the new rake.

After we got a nice little pile of leaves the kids decided to a take a running head start across the yard to jump in them.

 It wasn't a very big pile of leaves.  But they didn't seem to mind

 Matthew liked to re-rake them between jumps.

I think the pile got smaller and smaller each time.

 But a good time was had by all.

Our little responsible Matthew worked to get all the leaves cleaned up after the jumping and before Dad got home to see what they did to his nice leaf pile.  :)

Spider Girl

I got a few costumes on clearance after Halloween including this Spider Man costume.  Anna really likes wearing it.  She made me laugh.

 She practiced her spider climbing and spider web making.  :)

And it turns out Spider Man likes to play with princesses too.

A few days later we were having dinner and had this conversation.

Matthew:  Are pork chops good for you?

Me:  Well, pork chops have protein and protein helps our muscles grow...

Anna:  ...and that makes us Spider Man!!

Overheard

Here are some recent Matthew and Anna-isms that made me smile

Anna (singing):  Nobody knows the trouble I've seen...

After making Halloween cupcakes...
Matthew (to me):  When Daddy gets home will you tell him not to eat my cupcake with three candy corns, 'cause that's for Anna.
Anna:  I will scare him so he won't eat it...like this, "ROOOAAAR!!"
Matthew:  That won't work.  Daddy's not afraid of anything.  Well, maybe T-Rex.

Matthew:  When I grow up and get married I hope I marry an Air Force family! 

Matthew:  When I grow up I want to be an Air Force pilot and then an astronaut 'cause my book said a lot of astronauts used to be Air Force pilots.  (pause) ...and then I want to be a taxi driver after that.

Matthew:  Mom, when I am a pilot you can come visit me but you will have to call someone to find out where I am.  And I will bring dad and grandpa and let them be a co-pilot in my plane.  And Anna, you can come visit and ride in my plane.
Anna:  I want my own plane.

Anna (after coming back from Grant's check up):  I'm going to be a doctor to take care of babies.

Anna (to me):  What does "instinct" mean
Me:  It means when you feel like you need to do something
Anna:  Like go to the bathroom?!?
Me:  Uh, sure, ok.

Matthew (telling me about his Chick-Fil-A fundraiser):  Mom, we are having a "friendraiser" at school.  So we can raise friends.

Anna:  I want a candy from my Halloween bucket!
Me:  Have you been a good girl today?
Anna:  A little bit.

Matthew: MOM!!  You forgot to get me some milk!!
Me:  Is that a nice way to ask?
Matthew:  You forgot to get me some milk, PLEASE!!

Isn't Halloween Fun?

Halloween this year was busy but a lot of fun.  Scott was gone the week of Halloween and we really missed him.  We went to a church Halloween party that was so much fun.  We also carved our pumpkin patch pumpkins.  Pretty much I carved them all according to the kid's instructions.  The kept telling me my faces weren't scary enough.  :)  Sorry guys.  Not an art major.  Matthew compensated by making a scary face while I took the picture.

We sort of decorated our front porch.  We have a really big front porch, but we only used this small corner of it.  The kids really liked putting the spiders in the spider web.

On Halloween morning we had a lot of activities planned starting with a Halloween party for Anna's little preschool group.  We woke up Halloween morning and Anna told me she wanted to be Dorothy.  Of course, we don't have a Dorothy costume, so I tried to convince her that she should be Minnie or a mermaid (I thought we had settled this already).  She wouldn't hear of it.  I decided I wouldn't force her to wear a costume she didn't want (it's supposed to be fun after all) and we threw together the closest thing to Dorothy we could come up with from things we already had.

I was kind of embarrassed about her costume 'cause I did actually have a real costume for her prepared, but it seemed silly to make her wear something just so I wouldn't feel embarrassed.  This is an inner conflict I have often regarding Anna. 

 Impromptu Dorothy with Toto in a basket.

She even let me put her hair in pigtails 'cause I convinced her she would look more like Dorothy that way.  :)

 We had a lot of fun at her Halloween playgroup party.

They made marshmallow ghosts! 

Matthew also had a party at his preschool class.  It was an exciting day!

 Grant celebrated his first Halloween like a champ!

He went around to all the parties looking cute.

 Getting ready to trick-or-treat.

Anna wanted to wear a different blue dress to be Dorothy for trick-or-treating (I gave her a choice of two Dorothy-ish dress options)

 She looked cute and people actually guessed that she was Dorothy, even with her red coat on top!  And she had a great time.  I guess it was not as big a deal as I was making it out to be.

 

Before trick-or-treating we walked over to a friend's house who lives in the neighborhood.  She had made soup, salad and Halloween cookies and invited a bunch of us over for a pre-trick-or-treating meal.  It was so fun and then we all went trick-or-treating together.  That was nice since Scott was gone.  Here's Grant getting ready for our trip through the neighborhood.

 

The neighborhood was so busy!  I love our neighborhood!!  Some people were sitting out on the porches giving out candy.  Matthew and Anna were so excited to trick-or-treat.  This was our first time real trick-or-treating with the kids - house to house in a neighborhood.  Hooray for Halloween and friends to share it with.

After a couple blocks we headed home.  Anna was getting cold.  It was an unseasonably warm day (70s almost 80) but it got a little chilly after the sun went down.  That was fine 'cause the kids had plenty of goodies by then!

I let the kids stay up a little late to watch some Halloween movies and hand out candy.  We all had a fun day...but I was glad when it was all over.  I think I need a week to recover and clean everything up.  Happy Halloween
PS:  The day after Halloween I found a Dorothy dress in her size (and half off) at Target and bought it.  :)  Now she can dress up as Dorothy any time.