2010 Thanksgiving

Terry's dad is one of 8 siblings. Therefore, they have very large Thanksgivings. Actually, I think we only had around 40 this year, where in the past it's been up to like 60. At any rate, we ate too much and my face and baby gained weight.

Here is Terry's grandfather Elmer and great aunt Lucille. I'm in the back visiting with Shari, Jesse and Brett.

Here is Terry's grandmother Dorothy and his cousin Travis.

Every Thanksgiving I've been to has been held at a senior citizen center. But we were banned after last year... So we congregated at a hotel convention center with a pool! Evie was a little shy of the water at first.

Terry was in the water for nearly two hours I think!

Our kids love their daddy

The pool wasn't that big but the kids all loved it. Everyone in the pool here is part of the family.

atta boy

Noah got his hair cut today by his professional mother. Not one whine or cry. He's a big boy now.

I need to further edify my son. Last night we had some friends over for dinner and we amused them with a story about a youth group student.

I came home from bible study several weeks ago to a most unusual comment from this student (Terry had them over for a bible study of their own). As I walked by the staircase to say hello, said student exclaims, "Wow Eva, you're getting fat!"

Gasp.

Terry and the rest of us instantly berated the student and they began to explain that they only meant that I was getting bigger b/c of the baby, not that I was actually fat. I thought it was quite hilarious and enjoyed telling the student's mother about it. HA!

So as we're re-telling this story last night, Noah is listening even though I didn't realize he was tuned in. After we got done laughing he broke in and said that No, mommy is not fat, she has a baby growing inside of her!

What a sweet boy I have =)

boring saturday

It's gotten cold here. And we don't have much to do it seems. So I busted out the Honey-Do list and Terry and I got to work.

Here are the dungeon shelves "before." I can't hardly believe that Shelli and Rick had them full. You could sleep on those shelves, they're so secure. But I didn't like having so many of them.

So we removed two shelves and spaced out the remaining four. No big deal I know, but as I said before, we were bored. And it's pretty pathetic how few books we have on the shelves... Oh well.

Terry did this one on his own - he installed an indoor clothesline for me! And he's a genius b/c it was his idea to put it in the storage room where it's already warm due to the furnace and that's a place that we obviously don't care what it looks like. Perfect! Noah is quite excited about it...

Showing off his dumbo ears amongst the towels and things

30 weeks

Here is us today at 30 weeks which is also known as 8 months! You might not know that pregnancy is actually closer to 9.5 or 10 months long. So we have about 2 more months to go - the end of January is the goal. Babycenter says the baby is about 15.7 inches long and weighs about 3 pounds, about the size of a head of cabbage or a squash.

The weight is still coming on, but I've never been more thankful. A friend's daughter went into premature labor and delivered her 28 week old daughter on Wednesday. They have a long road before them for sure and have been in our prayers constantly. So every time our little baby kicks, rolls, jabs, hiccups, causes heartburn, you name it - I'm thankful he/she is still in there. Babies are amazing. Just think, that kid is just chillin inside of me, but if it were to come out, it would take a whole team of smart medical people to keep it growing and thriving. Inside me, it happens so naturally, effortlessly.

So no complaints this week.

definition of a good dog

You might not be able to tell, but Snap is under that blanket. Noah covered him during lunch and was laughing so hard about it.

Then the kids walked away to get a couple popsicles and Snap just continued to stand there, alone, patiently waiting for who knows what. More punishment?

Snap is a very good dog. He puts up with a lot. But we don't ever have to worry about him hurting the kids, unless they really deserve it (a good nip is all). Sometimes, they really do deserve it! Perhaps his rabies shot from this morning deadened his demeanor or dejected him, but he's still a great dog for this family of wild kids.

Noah is learning

We are doing preschool at home with Noah and it's going pretty good. I wouldn't say I'm stressing about it by any means. Just really laid back. We work on the calendar, a memory verse, coloring, writing, reading and I read a few stories.

Here are a couple shots of his writing. I think Evie will have a much easier time with it, but like I said, I'm not stressed. We're just getting into the basics. He's learning. Usually we have a sheet of words or a sentence that we read first and then he writes over the words. Today we just did his name.

The first line is what the curriculum has me do with him - there are exercises to go along with these words as well. We've done his name for two days and have been working on the letter E.

He has been learning to read from these "Fun Tales" books that are very short with little words that build upon each other. At first he was very frustrated with it. So I backed off and just sounded out the words to him and gradually had him start sounding sounds out. I've been surprised at how well he remembers the sounds. I mean, of course he gets them a little messed up, but he's doing pretty well for it being so laid back. I think so anyway.

So here is a video of him reading his little book. I had Noah read it to Terry last night and daddy was way proud and took him out for ice cream today. It was the sixth day we've read it so I'm sure most of it is just memorized, but still, he's doing pretty good =) He's remembering to sound words out.

rakin leaves

Terry is gone all day today for his junior and senior high 30 Hour Famine and me and the kids were getting kinda bored! The leaves in the backyard have been really bugging me since we got back from SD so I thought I'd rake some of them into a pile for the kiddies to play in. We read a book last week about Clifford jumping into crunchy leaves so I thought the time was right.

She didn't mind the leaves in her hair, but if any went down her coat, she freaked. It was nap time after this.

Noah imitates his mommy

Monkey see, monkey do

These aren't that great of photos since they're off my cell phone, but you can see the size of the pile, which grew after the kids went inside... Plus, you may be able to see the line of leaves in the yard where I stopped raking.

The lines of leaves in the lawn irritated me so I raked up the rest of them and shoveled them into the big pile. Pretty impressive for an almost 8 month pregnant lady, right?

thanks steph

My sister is pretty cool. She got rid of a ton of clothes (like 7 garbage bags!) and let me have my choice of them. She recently lost a lot of weight and so had the surplus. This is to my advantage b/c I have recently gained a lot of weight. You know, pregnancy does that... So even though her clothes weren't maternity, a lot of them were long enough or stretchy enough to work. Plus, she has great taste!

You might not be able to tell, but there are two kids rolling around in this huge pile of clothes. It took two days to wash everything! I was joking with Steph that we'll have to have another baby to make more use of all these clothes!

Here is everything all organized, plus a Noah as a size reference. Haha =)

You can barely see him over the pile

Look at all those hangers!

And all those pants. Thank goodness for my belly band.

yogurt

We love yogurt around here - with fruit and homemade granola. But man, I do not like the price tag. So when I saw a facebook friend talking about making homemade yogurt, I was very interested. The recipe I found online was a little different from hers but it was easier.

Yesterday was the second time I made my own homemade yogurt in my crock pot! It's so easy and the results this time were even better.

Here is Noah sharing his milk duds with me...

So all you have to do is cook a half gallon of milk in a crock pot for 2.5 hours and then turn it off and let it sit for 3 hours. Then, add 1/2 cup yogurt with 2 cups of the warm milk, whisking to combine. Then wrap the crock pot in thick towels (so the milk stays the proper temperature for the bacteria to proliferate) for 8 hours or overnight. Then all you have to do is refrigerate to thicken, sweeten and enjoy.

My first time making the yogurt I added 1 cup sugar and 1 T vanilla and it was good, but a little too runny. Runny is normal, but I wanted to try to thicken it up without straining the fluid out (b/c I'm lazy - but you can do that with coffee filters and a sieve and the yogurt is supposed to get as thick as greek yogurt/sour cream). So I added a large package of vanilla pudding before I put it in the fridge. It turned out really really great! Still a little runny, but it tastes even better. Terry was like, Mmmmmm yogurt pudding, my favorite =) But You could add fruit or any kind of flavoring.

Oh, and I added red food coloring to one to satisfy Noah. He wouldn't even try it before b/c it wasn't pink. Hopefully now he will =)

fall retreat

The first weekend in November we headed home so Terry could speak at our old home church's junior and senior high fall retreat for 70-80 kids. He spoke four times on the topic of "Anchored" based out of Hebrews. He's been teaching Hebrews at youth group so that's where it came from, with all these rock climbing analogies thrown in.

He did great, of course! Several people have told him so and I agree b/c I was there on Friday night for the first session. Here he is:

The rest of these photos I borrowed from a facebook friend. So this is Saturday morning at Camp Judson. Terry is in the back on the right. Cool shirts right? (no, he didn't print them)

I liked this shot - she was filling out her booklet based on Terry's talk. Of course he's got to throw in words like "dominate"

Perhaps he's talking about "choss"...

Here Terry is participating in some kind of game. Way to go PT!

hills hike

We were home the first weekend in November so Terry could speak at a fall retreat for our old church. While Terry was up in the hills working hard, my parents, Steph, the kids and I went for a hike in the same place they had met 30 years before - Storm Mountain! So that was neat. It wasn't a long hike, but it was pretty and the weather was gorgeous. It was like 80 degrees.

Here is one of the many bridges that we had to pause at so the kids could throw rocks and sticks into the water.

See, proof my dad was there. Mom had already headed back up the trail.

I like this one. Two kids following Grampa...

I look alright in Steph's bug sunglasses =)

Cute boy

Haha! Oh, and no children fell into the water...

secret talent

Terry was teaching on spiritual gifts in Sunday school a couple weeks ago. He explained how to the students that spiritual gifts are different from natural talents, which are inherent in our DNA, or something like that. Spiritual gifts are just that: spiritual. So one high schooler quipped that Terry's secret talent was making cute kids. Not such a bad talent to have. Haha

My dad took these photos back in March '10 while Terry and I were on the ski trip. He had just got them developed (that's right - FILM!) and shared them with me. How adorable is this girl? Man, she is growing up way too fast.

I can't remember what the story was with the handkerchief...

1st trick or treat

Our kids' first Halloween experience was 2 years ago when we walked to downtown businesses to trick or treat, kind of. Last year we were at the church playing games for candy. This year was Noah and Evie's first time trick or treating! We took them around our neighborhood for about an hour. They had a blast!

Here are the kids in their costumes. Noah was a baseball player - including his jersey from this summer, a hat and a baseball. Evie was a ladybug! We borrowed the outfit from a student. She really loved it - was wearing it this afternoon too.

What cute wings!

Terry is instructing the kids on proper trick or treating etiquette - you must say "trick or treat" when the door is opened, you must not just grab candy out of the bowl and you must say thank you. Of course it was their first time - Noah would say "trick or treating," grab candy and usually say thank you. So, not bad - 2 out of 3 mostly right.

Here is our neighbor two doors up. This is another reason we decided to trick or treat - we wanted to meet our neighbors!

The older folks really enjoy the kids. They're so sweet.

The results: