A belated Happy Thanksgiving, a Happy Advent and an early Merry Christmas! We're enjoying the most wonderful time of the year here at our house.
In the daily grind, Ellie helps me stay on top of the laundry. She likes to move the wet clothes into the dryer.
The Cubs win the World Series!!! Very exciting here watching the games together!
Occasionally Ellie will find herself a bag of "trouble" like I like to say. She was quiet during school and had opened the hall closet where I store all the bathing suits. With Julia's help, she was able to deck herself out in swimming attire - goggles and all. Yes those are Jeff's swim trunks.
Xavier practicing his card tricks on us all. Ellie is beginning to grow tall enough to peek over the counter :).
One afternoon the three went golfing with Daddy. This picture was just too cute with their matching hats! But the real reason I took the picture was to capture the new shoes! Not a small detail here in life is finding the perfect shoe for backyard play for kids. It has to be easy to slip on and off but if it has holes (like Crocs) or too much of that mesh material for breathing, dirt will seep in and the kids come in with black feet. They'd grown tired of having to wash their feet each time they came in all summer so I finally found some great shoes on-line! And they were on clearance which made me love them even more!
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| They wore these shoes on this day to play golf. Two days later we left for Tennessee for Thanksgiving. There happened to be a pile of mud near the house due to some new construction and our kids (one of them mainly) could not resist climbing this mud "mountain". The shoes were never the same. Not only were they stained with red clay, I tried to clean them and ended up using bleach for the inside sole which then leaked to the outside. So now they look like camoflouge shoes. But, they are still functional!!! I wanted to remember this story in the category of "best laid plans" with children. New shoes are new for about two days. |
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| Waving goodbye to the children and Xavier sticks his new shoe out the window. Little did I know I was also waving goodbye to the new, clean shoe as well. |
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| Ellie loves playing with dishes at Oma and Papa's house. Isn't she thoughtful the way she sets the table? |
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| We all had colds the week of Thanksgiving. When Ellie gets sick, there is no "in between" with her. She's either herself and running around or she falls asleep. This is how she watched the Thanksgiving Day parade on t.v. |
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| Luckily by that night she perked up and was ready to have her turkey and mac-n-cheese!! |
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| Back home and feeling better, she empties our cabinets to take inventory for her next table setting. |
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| We like getting our decorations up soon after Thanksgiving so we can enjoy them longer. Ellie was the most cooperative and full of self-control we've ever seen her be with something like this! She has not tried once to remove any of the ornaments. Have we left that stage of life? The many years we've put trees up on boxes, shelves, etc. to protect little ones from pulling the entire thing on top of themselves! |
