Happy Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving this year.  Scott was here, unlike last year.  We made a big dinner and has some friends over to share it with us.  Here are the kids making some fall tree crafts.

 Getting our dinner ready.  Anna and I made place cards for everyone.

 Some of our Thanksgiving art work

Scott making potatoes.  He also made cheesecake, baked beans and buttermilk rolls and helped with everything.

 We had tons of food!  But lots of people to eat it.  Our friends came over.

And pretty much everything turned out yummy!

 John really liked the sweet potatoes, stuffing and rolls.  Glad he's eating.

 Here are some of the kids starting on dessert.

We had pumpkin pie, dutch apple pie and cheesecake with blueberry topping

 The kids saying goodbye to each other

They always have so much fun playing together

Here are all the kids together - 4 of ours, 3 of theirs

It was a lot of fun!  Successful Thanksgiving!

A Stand Up Guy

John is hitting all those gross motor milestones...just a little later than usual.  This week he reached another one.  He can now pull himself up to standing on his own.  He's about 15 1/2 months old now and he still goes to physical therapy once a week to help him with his gross motor skills.  I'm glad he's making progress.

He likes being able to get himself up to a standing position 'cause now he can more easily grab things off the tables and couches.  A new skill.  Another step closer (no pun intended) to walking.

Hospitality by Anna

Anna REALLY loves her kindergarten teacher.  And that's a good thing.  Anna told her teacher about our upcoming Thanksgiving menu and came away from the conversation with the impression that her teacher would be coming over to our house for Thanksgiving.  From what I could piece together, I think the conversation went something like this:

Anna:  We're having cheesecake with berries for Thanksgiving!
Ms. Taylor:  I love cheesecake!
Anna:  You can come over to our house for Thanksgiving if you want.
Ms. Taylor:  It sounds like it will be fun at your house.

Anna thought it was a done deal and made a nice card for Ms. Taylor.  Here is her card, with translations:
"Happy Thanksgiving Ms. Taylor"
I love her picture of the two of them together.  Ms. Taylor, in real life, reminds me a little of Tina Fey (maybe with a little Rose Byrne thrown in).  And I always like Anna's pictures of her.

 "I hope you love the chicken" (She might have meant turkey?)

"I hope you love the cheesecake with blueberries"

"Take your family if you want but we will not have enough seats.  XOXOXO"

I couldn't help thinking her "famlee" might feel a little less than welcome by this card, but I still thought it was a nice card all in all.  I told Anna that Ms. Taylor and family were certainly welcome to come, but that I didn't think Ms. Taylor would really be coming over on Thanksgiving.   Anna was disappointed and then I felt bad about the whole thing.  We are having dinner guests that night though, so maybe she can focus on them.  Thanksgiving is going to be here soon! 

St. Louis Zoo

One great thing about St. Louis is that there are several fun things to do with kids that are free.  One is the zoo.  The kids had a day off school last week so we gave the zoo a try.  The weather was great, mid to high 60s and the zoo was not crowded at all.  Hooray!  Plus its free!!!  And the zoo was really nice and had lots of cool animals to see.  Here we are at the entrance.

 

 Going into the zoo.  We got a super close parking spot because it was so empty.

It's the little things.

I can't even remember what we were looking at here.  I think it was a rhino.  But I like how John was getting all excited about it.  If the animals are hard to see, sometimes its hard to get the little ones to see them.  Luckily most of them were front and center, including our rhino friend.  So John got to see lots of animals.

 There's our rhino

The kids looking at a model of a snakes nest.  This nest was part of a big log for kids to climb through and Anna kept insisting that I crawl through it too.  So I did.  It was not big person sized, but I didn't get stuck in there, so hooray for that.

 Grant and Matthew found a nook to sit in

 And a snake statue

 Elephant.  We got better views of the elephant, but not better pictures

A giant beetle.  Zoo statues are the best.  They also had a beetle quilt inside the bug exhibit. 

There was a butterfly dome too and the kids were brave and went in there with the butterflies.  Read about a bad butterfly encounter HERE.

 Ok, now its just starting to feel like we didn't see any actual animals at this zoo.  But we did.  And we got to see a lot of them close up too!  But here's another statue.  ;)

Giraffes.  We saw an ostrich chase some of the giraffes around. Bully.  There were also a lot of great fall colors to see there.  So we had a great time.  Grant really liked seeing the grizzly bear take a "bath" (he was sitting in a pool of water).  I liked seeing the big cats.  There were so many of them.  We saw lions, tigers, mountain lions, panthers, jaguars, a snow leopard and a cheetah.  I think there were even some other big cats, but I can't remember.  I also liked seeing the Okapi, which I have read about in a few books but never seen.
So, the St. Louis Zoo is a wonderful zoo.  And free.  We'll be back...we just need to find days, like this one, when its not too hot, cold or crowded.

Bounce Houses

I don't know why I would even bother posting about going to a bounce house place because all the pictures are of the kids tiny backs as they try to climb up big, colorful, inflatable things.  But here I am posting about it anyway.  This past weekend we took the kids to a local bounce house place...on a Saturday!!!  Yes, it was kind of crowded.  But the kids still had fun.  Here's John.  They had a little toddler place he could play but he wouldn't crawl in there when I gave him the opportunity.  He'll enjoy this more when he's a little older.

Matthew (yellow shirt) climbing something

Anna coming down a slide

The most popular inflatable was the giant slide.  Grant must have gone on it 30 times.

Here are Anna and Matthew going down the slide together (on the right)

Here is Grant (red shirt) climbing the ladder.  He got better at it the more practice he got.  The first time I think Matthew helped him a little by pushing him from behind, but after a few trips up, he got the hang of it and could do it himself.  Grant learned a lot about taking turns and how to wait in a line for your turn.  So that was good.  One time he was about to come down when the dressed up mascot of the bounce house, Monkey Joe, came and stood at the bottom of his slide.  He was afraid to go down, but went down anyway and then cried as he climbed off the slide trying to get away from Monkey Joe.  Poor Grant.  In spite of the terrifying run in with a giant monkey, he still had fun.  And he used up lots of energy climbing that ladder.  Everyone was extra tired that night.  Mission accomplished.

Pajama Story Night

We had a pajama story time at the base library last week.  It was after the kids had swimming and gymnastics classes at the YMCA, so everyone was pretty tired by then.  The kids all got to wear their pajamas and bring their favorite stuffed animal.  Here are Grant and I hanging out while we listen to stories.  Grant brought his stuffed moose.

 Can you spot Matthew and Anna?

 A bear showed up for some of the stories which made it extra fun.

Matthew and Anna with the bear.

Grant was too tired and unreasonable for a picture.  John was doing ok, but just stayed in his stroller.  Anna won a blanket in a drawing they had, so she was excited about that.  We all had fun and I'm glad the base library is back up and running post-gov't shutdown.

How to carve a Jack-o-Lantern

by Matthew

This was one of Matthew's homework papers the week of Halloween.  It made me smile, probably more because I'm his mom than anything else.  I liked how he drew how sweaty he got carving his pumpkin.  See!  It's not just me.  It's hard work!  

See our pumpkin carving this year and last year.  And last years pumpkin painting. (inspired by my dislike of speed carving four or more pumpkins by myself).  Glad the kids are old enough to do some carving of their own this year.

My Jack-o-lantern
by Matthew

1.  First, I carve the top off.  (notice the very large and scary knife/saw being used)
2.  Then, I take out the pulp.
3.  Next, I carve out the face. (notice the sweat drops coming off his head...lots of work)
4.  Last, I put a light in it. (phew!)

Happy Halloween

Here are some pictures from our Halloween adventures this year.  This is us making sugar cookies. I had some trouble with the dough on the first go round but chilled the dough more and added a little flour and all was well.  Grant and Anna helped too but they drifted in and out.  I think Matthew loved playing with the flour more than anything.

 

Successful sugar cookies.  Hooray!  Do you have a favorite or no fail sugar cookie recipe?  I used this one and it was pretty good.  But I'm always in search of a great sugar cookie recipe.

 John eating the sugar cookies

I don't know why Matthew thought it would be a good idea to bring some of the flour over and play with it on this bench.  ???  And this is my oldest, most mature child.  He did clean it up later.

Our Halloween breakfast of ghost pancakes.  They looked a lot more like ghosts when they were still white batter.  They were yummy though.

 Dinner was simple.  Jack-o-lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's...

...and mandarin oranges

 

Then time to trick or treat!

It poured buckets today but luckily we got a little break in the rain around trick or treat time.  Anna was Sofia the First, Matthew was Iron Man, I was Mary Poppins, John was Woody and Grant was Buzz Lightyear.

 Here's John - our little Woody

 Grant as Buzz Lightyear

Out trick or treating.  The kids were excited to go see so many of their school friends in the neighborhood.  Grant ran up to each house and announced that he was Buzz Lightyear.  He also said more appropriate things like Trick or Treat, Happy Halloween and Thank You!  Always shouting of course.

All dressed up and no where to go.  Our church Halloween party this year was a "no costume" affair.  And the kids school parties were no costume and no parents with younger siblings in tow.  So I didn't really have anywhere to wear my costume this year.  But I had sort of gotten it together already (anticipating wrongly that there would be some costume parties) and I thought the kids would get a kick out of it even if I just wore it for trick or treating.  And they did.  I love Mary Poppins, and as I like to remind the kids, I played Mary Poppins in my 6th grade school play.  My claim to fame.  I think I had a better carpet bag back then.  So anyway, maybe I'll save this costume for another year when it can get more wear.  Maybe I can get a better bag before then too. 

And after trick or treating.  I know, I'm biased, but Johnny, you are adorable!  We tried to get him to say "There's a snake in my boots!" or "howdy, howdy, howdy."  But all we could get out of him was "boo" or "mama."  Maybe next year.

Our slightly wet Buzz Lightyear (it rained at the end of trick or treating).  He had a BLAST running door to door and getting candy.  He was so excited and came to tell me each time he got some new candy in his bag.  Yes, Grant.  This is that one special day when people are just giving it away!!  For FREE!!

"I am Iron Man!"  Grant was afraid of Matthew in his full costume with the mask.  It didn't help that Matthew would chase him around.  Matthew has never seen the Iron Man movies or anything, but he knows Iron Man is a superhero and that's enough apparently.  His suit had a little light up feature on front which came in handy as it got darker.  And the battery inside lasted to and through Halloween.  I count that as a small victory.

 There, that's better.  Not so scary

And Sofia the First!  Anna likes the Sofia the First show on Disney channel so she wanted to be the little princess for Halloween.  It's always fun dressing up as a princess.  Long ago (in September) I had aspirations to make a princess dress for myself so we could both be princesses.  I even bought fabric and a pattern.  Then I looked at the pattern and simultaneously realized that 1) I was overly ambitious in choosing that particular pattern and 2) I still get super intimidated by those pattern directions.  They were not designed by an engineer brain, I don't think.  So maybe someday I'll be able to take the time to learn to sew more complicated things like princess dresses.  But today is not that day.  Anyway, Anna looked cute in her store bought dress and I didn't sew myself anything to wear.  My Mary Poppins costume was mostly put together with stuff I already had.  And it was all ok.
We had a great Halloween all in all.  Scott was here to go trick or treating with us...AND we did not get poured on.  Hooray!!