Deck the Halls...

...well, the tree anyway.

I wanted to get the tree decorated early this year so that I would be able to take the girls' annual Christmas picture. I never get it done in time so I am rushing to get them printed and stuff. It didn't quite work out.

The kids were off of school for almost a week and a half. It wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be. Christian helped me by taking one of the girls with him to work on a couple of the days for a few hours. They are always begging to go in with him. On one of the days we met up with them at the Botanic Gardens for a picnic and then took both the girls home. They even napped several of the days. When Christian was home, he worked to patch the huge gaping holes left from the plumbing fiasco when we moved in. It's pretty complicated and has taken some time. We hope to get it done by the end of the year.

We spent Thanksgiving with my family this year. Nothing really big. We had lunch because my sister had other engagements with her in-laws that evening. The girls had a lot of fun playing with their cousins though.

Anyway, on Sunday, we finally dragged out the fake tree and our old ornaments and got to work. I used to really enjoy decorating the tree but I remember that last year was a bit of a nightmare because the girls were so excited to help decorated that they nearly trampled all the ornaments into the ground trying to get their sticky little fingers on all of them. It went a bit better this year though. The girls are learning a bit of self control.

We have our work cut out for us but they are learning.

We also decided to decorate a bit on the outside of the house this year. We never did it at the old house because there are no outdoor outlets there. Well, we still don't exactly have outdoor outlets here either but it's on the list! But we managed to work something out. Unfortunately, our longest string of lights was a bit temperamental. It worked and once it was all hung up, it stopped working. We took it down to check it and it started working again. Needless to say, I chucked it into the garbage after messing with it for some time. The rest of the lights can not be attached end to end so I had to go out and get new lighting. So, right now, we only have one little strip of light over the garage. It looks super pathetic...especially since our direct neighbor is one of those people that goes crazy with the Christmas decorations every year. His mother happens to live directly across from us and he did their house too!

Holidays

The holidays are fast approaching and I always like to try to finish my Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. I can't enjoy the holidays if I have to go out in the pre-Christmas and post-Thanksgiving shopping melee. This year, I am happy and relieved to say that I am done with my Christmas shopping with one day to spare...whoo hoo!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Anniversary

This past weekend was the 12th anniversary of the day we got married. What's more, tomorrow marks twenty years that we've been together. It sounds weird. We shouldn't be that old yet..and yet we are. And I guess physically I feel it...but mentally, I can't wrap my head around it. It seems like only a few years ago that we were still a couple of carefree college students. But in actuality, a few years ago, we already had two kids!

What did we do to mark this momentous occasion you ask? Um...well, not that much. Christian's Dad and his wife came up for lunch on Saturday because they could not make it before for Christian's birthday. So we had a nice visit with them. They brought up a couple of the girls' younger cousins and they had a blast playing in the treehouse together.

When they left, the neighbor kids saw the opportunity to come over and play but we told the girls that they had to clean up some of the mess they made with toys and stuff all over the yard. The girls are so stubborn and lazy that they just wanted to play and not do what we asked. Caitlyn was the only one that put in half an effort to begin cleaning and since the neighbor kids sensed that we would most likely send them away and force the girls to clean up, they rallied our girls and helped clean up some of the mess that they didn't even make! In the end, they got it to a more reasonable mess and we let the kids play for a little while while we finished up with other stuff.

We exchanged a couple of token gifts and had left overs for dinner! We couldn't spend any more money for anything else as we unexpected got new dining furniture for our family for our anniversary (and it will have to do for Christmas too). But we happened upon it and we could not pass up the seriously good deal we would be able to get on it. We ended up getting in for over 50% off! We love it...except now we aren't able to do anything except um, enjoy it! But it works out pretty good, since we love to cook (and unfortunately, we love to eat even more). Now we don't have to worry about the kids leaning on the old table or guests leaning back in the old chairs and having the whole thing fall apart.

We got it as an "antique" and it seemed sturdy enough for our needs but then we had kids (enough said). We considered refinishing the old furniture but we found that the veneer was awefully thin already and the stain on the furniture ended up to be just a paint "stain" and was starting to come off and then we put some deep dents and scratches in it. The kids ground in playdough and other muck into the seat covers then a couple of guests broke a piece here and there on the chairs and it didn't seem like it would be worth while to put any work into trying to restore it.

Then we found this and had to have it. It was solid and kid friendly and versatile enough for our needs...plus it carried the right price.

After the kids went to bed, we did, however, get to build our first fire of the season in our fireplace. It was finally cold enough...well, okay, we opened some of the windows and stuff to make sure it was cold enough. Marian had gotten us this awesome fire screen for a house warming gift. And Christian's dad got him this really nice grate to go in the fireplace for his birthday.

And so, we sat and reminisced of all the by gone years. Here is a picture of us on our honeymoon, twelve years ago, up in our cabin in June Lake.

What a difference twelve years, two kids and I won't mention how many pounds later makes.

On Sunday, we had church and the responsibility of our callings. We are usually exhausted with a long Saturday and we try to take a nap Sunday afternoons after we get back from church. And with that, the end of another day disappears. We set the kids up at least to watch a movie and we manage to steal a few hours alone together preparing a nice meal. Exciting, huh?

These are the days we really wished we had family a little closer that could give us a bit of a break. But now we are back to our schedule of the kids being in and out of school all day. We manage to steal some time together now and then over late night movies and lazy mornings pittering around the house and working in the garden after the kids have gone to school. Tomorrow is the last day of school for the month. They will only be attending school about half of November because of Veteran's day, parent teacher conferences and a whole week off for Thanksgiving. Wish me luck.

Veteran's Day

We celebrated Veteran's Day, yesterday, with a trip to the March Air Field Museum. Every time we've passed it, we'd been meaning to go and take the kids but never made the time for it. Emily had gotten a coupon to go from her summer reading program at the public library and really wanted to go. So we decided that since Christian and the girls had the day off, what better day to go than Veteran's Day?It was still a little warm out but overall a pretty nice day when the cloud cover was thick enough. We got to see somebody in a C-17 cargo plane practicing taking off and landing a few times at March Air Force Reserve Base next door.The kids were pretty excited. They always loved running outside to see the planes at the local air show from our old house. This was a little closer than they've had opportunity to see so far. I think they are definitely ready to go see an airshow. We took Emily to the air show at March when she was really young but I don't think she really remembers it. We managed to get to the airshow at Edwards once but we left the kids with grandma. It was a bit disappointing anyway. They supposedly kept setting these records but you didn't really notice anything.

Here are a few more of the shots we took yesterday.Oh, and leave it up to Emily to find an airplane named "Princess."

Our favorite part though was when an F-16 started flying next door. They made a few passes around us before landing. It was pretty awesome. I wished that I had brought my longer zoom lens. Caitlyn thought it was a little loud at first but really got into it after. They also got to see several propeller planes. We think that they must have done a fly by over the cemetery.
And since Christian was home, he wanted to at least get some work done around the house so we managed to get our hot water heater flushed. It's fairly new and we want to keep it nice. We live in fear of getting sediment buildup in it like in the other house. Every time the water heat up, it was like popcorn popping in a tin can. It was awful!

Christian's Birthday

We celebrated Christian's birthday on Saturday when Marian and Christian's brother Mark and his wife, Danielle came up for a bbq. Christian wanted his favorite dessert, a tarte tatin. Unfortunately, I overcooked the caramel a bit and it came out a bit bitter.

I got him a nice reading light that he has been wanting for a while now.

But since yesterday was his actual birthday, we had a little dinner with just our family and I made him a little carrot cake since he didn't have a proper birthday cake on Saturday.

Blurb Book

My Blurb book has arrived! I was a little worried about it because the package looked so very thin for an 80 page book. I was kicking myself a little for not paying the extra $3 for getting it with the premium paper which is a bit heavier and supposedly better quality.

But I am totally satisfied with it. Especially for the price I paid. I wouldn't use Blurb instead of Shutterfly for my Photo books and stuff, but for just a journal it came out pretty darn nice.

p.s. If any of you have started your blurb books or plan to do one. The deal I got is still good:

Take 20% off the books you make, and get free shipping on your order up to five books, through November 24. Just enter BLURBTREAT at checkout and you're good to go.

Get working...normally shipping is $7.99 (which is a rip off).

Halloween

We planted pumpkins this year for the girls. The only problem was that we started about a month late. We kind of tossed the idea around for a bit and missed our chance to get some already started seedlings then decided that we would go ahead after all and went out and got seeds. By the way, what a complete rip off that business is. We paid $2.50 and got exactly 8 seeds. Do you know how many pumpkin seeds you can get from one pumpkin?! Never again.

So we had to let the pumpkins ripen on the vine as long as possible so that we can be sure to get some developed seeds to use for next year.

In fact, we waited until Halloween morning. Incidentally, do you know how different it is to cut up a fresh pumpkin? First it smells, great! The walls of the pumpkin are a lot thicker too which made it a little harder to carve. But it's not slimy inside at all. It is thick, soft and fleshy. We come to find out that the reason that it is usually slimy when you clean out a store bought pumpkin is because it is already starting to rot from the inside out! Gross, huh? That's why they mold so fast after carving it up. I think our pumpkins only lasted a couple of days last year before beginning to mold.Caitlyn got to do some real pumpkin carving this year. She's been too young before to do too much. But we ended up having to finish their pumpkins for them because they spent all day cleaning up 10 minutes worth of toys in the backyard so that we would have room to work.

There were a lot of underdeveloped seeds in the pumpkin still but there is still enough good ones to work with and enough for a small batch of roasted pumpkin seeds to boot!

We had the kids take a little nap before the festivities because we knew it would be a long night.

First we went to the Dean's party where we got to catch up with a few old friends.

I was a bit upset though because I took a bunch more pictures especially as some of the other kids arrived but I had forgotten to change the mode on my camera and most of these shots came out somewhat blurry!

I wish we had been able to just end the night here but alas, the girls would have had a fit if we didn't score them some candy on Halloween of all nights. We left here and Christian dropped us off to the Halloween party at church. I always like this better than going door to door if I can help it because I don't have to worry about what the kids are getting. I was a little late dropping off some treats I had brought to the party but apparently they would not have missed it since there was a whole room with the floor almost completely filled with other treats.

We didn't miss any of the trick or treating yet though because there was a chili cook off as well and people were still eating. Caitlyn and I ate at the previous party so I had to get Emily to eat some stuff before the sugar fest started.

Christian went back to the house to prepare for trick or treaters that we thought might be going into our neighborhood. He hastily decorated the front and put up some red lights in the front and it came out amazing. Too bad he ended up wasting most of his time and we are stuck with even more treats as only a few people came by. I think we got more trick or treaters in our old neighborhood.

At church they had a bunch of games and decorated some of the smaller classrooms to trick or treat in. The girls had a blast but it was crowded and crazy.

I was exhausted before we left and felt like another wave of sickness was starting to take hold. It nearly put me over when Caitlyn fell down and I had to carry her halfway home from church. But she calmed down and we still went trick or treating at a couple of our immediate neighbors houses for good measure! They wanted to do more, but I just didn't have it in me plus it was starting to get late.

The girls got to choose a piece of candy from their stash to eat and they spread them out on the floor to survey. This is only part of their stuff as their pumpkin buckets was nearly full. Don't let the pictures fool you. They just spread them out too much to fit in the picture. Plus Emily had more that she didn't even get a chance to sort.By the time I got the girls washed up and ready for bed, I had about had it, the virus or whatever I was fighting was starting to really kick my butt.

It didn't help that we didn't know about the time change and ended up dragging our butts to church an hour early the next day despite feeling sick and having to come back home again only to do it again an hour later when we realized what had happened. But we survived long enough to teach our classes and drag our butts home for a nap afterwards. We are still working on recovering.