Any Similar Revival

It’s been a big weekend around here, and I’m shattered. I can’t believe we still have days and days of celebrating left! Hoping for my second holiday wind around here!

First up, TUBAS! Although, Aiden insisted on calling them trumpets. I told him he was wrong. He said, “Well, I call them trumpets!” You’re still wrong, kid.

Getting seats for this event, especially for a big group with 7 (SEVEN!) kids, was rather harrowing.

Aiden sighed quite loudly right after a lovely carol and said, “This music is making my head ache!” Don’t you just love that Christmas magic?

We flew home and had half an hour to get ready for a quick visit from my Dad and Debbie. I am ashamed to say they caught me with my vacuum on. That never happens to me. I am now a humbled woman. We had pizza, which was the right choice for one of us, because it made this happen:

He lost his first tooth! I am not a tooth person. I think teeth are gross if they’re not where they’re supposed to be. Don’t show me that wiggly tooth. Don’t talk about it hanging there. Eww, eww, eww. That’s why this photo is black and white. So I don’t have to look at the dark red spot where that tooth was. Sorry, I’m moving on now. I did have to tell him, though, that because it’s Christmas, the tooth fairy is very busy helping Santa right now, and she might be a few days late. She’s also very tired. Very. very. Tired.

aorituaortuAOEirju

Then we opened presents. Someone has a hard time waiting patiently:

He gets a little silly.

Cuties

Grandpa was a big help with things like hats. And putting together our gift for Piper, a little Radio Flyer trike.

She can really ride that thing!

I have more photos. From today’s festivities. But they’re on my camera, and I’m too tired.

Selfies

After:

We had such a good time making these! We had two-three people per team, and I love how different the houses are! Everyone did a great job sharing and being cheery, and we were all deeply involved in our creative processes.  I ate too much candy. It was worth it.

My house smelled SO good this weekend. Wanna know why?

Gingerbread:

I made enough to build three houses using my super awesome and wonderful and fantastic silicone molds.  I love those things!

Then it was assembly time, and that means lots of fun and sticky messiness.

I used melted almond bark as the glue. Someone thought this looked like a good time and wanted a turn.

He was a much more careful and tidy builder than I was.

Before:

They are so cute!

To make it feel even more magical and Christmasy, this was happening outside the whole time:

And then, a little bit late because the roads were so bad, our guests arrived for the best part of all!

Yesterday was a perfect day. After the last few weeks, I was ready for one, let me tell you! This is why it was perfect.

1. Fire

2. Snow

3. Really good chapter books

4. Kitty

5. Happy boy

6. Christmas music playing all day long

7. This

“hey there.”

8. Firewood helper

Not sure that hoping for another one today is a reasonable wish, but that won’t stop me. I hope you all have days filled with loveliness!

You knew it was bound to happen. I was so HOPING it would happen. Praying and wishing and pestering everyone in sight to get one for me. “All I want for Christmas,” I would say, with a little sniff, “is a KITTEN.”

Or a Nikon D600. I still want that.

Chad kept saying no. No, no, no, no, no.

So last week, Kristen tells me that she needs me this Saturday for my Christmas surprise. I say ok, trying not to guess, hoping it might be a kitten, but not really sure about Chad. He was really good about making me think he was completely against it. This morning, she told me my surprise is a KITTEN!

“Does Chad know?” was my first question.

“Of course!” she laughed. Like she would do this without his consent. Well, she might. I know that girl.

So we went to the pet store for supplies and to check out their cats. They have kitties from different adopting agencies, and I thought we might as well start there.

She was the first one I saw. The only semi-longhaired kitten I’d seen anywhere recently. Black and white and fluffy and sleeping in a circle on her back with her chin in the air.

“This one,” I said. I am very good at knowing what I want when I see it. I always know.I also knew her name. Mona. I don’t know where it came from, but that’s the one. Chad was kind of a hard sell on the name, but he did say that it was my kitten, so I could name her whatever I wanted. Ramona, but Mona for short. She looks like a Mona.

She played like a crazy thing for the first few hours we had her home. She and Myles get along just fine. He is mildly interested, mildly jealous, but she is WILDLY interested in him and keeps doing that little cat head jerk at him to tell him she wants to play. He yawns. Such a disappointment for poor Mona.

Then she got tired and decided to snuggle.

“Is she licking your chin?”

“YES.”

“Is she BITING your chin?”

“YES!”

I am so happy.

I am so happy, I cried.

My brother and my husband share the same birthday. We had such fun at lunch!

They got free ice cream, since it was their birthday. The kids liked this part the best.

This kid is my Christmas nut. He wanders around the house singing, “Christmas time is my favorite time of year. . .” And then he puts every ornament in the box on the tree. I never do that. There is no such thing, in his philosophy, as too many ornaments.

(look who we found living in our tree!)

I love wooly bears!

I am SO OVER October and Halloween. I am looking ahead to November and Thanksgiving and snow, and all of that fun stuff. But I am lacking good blog-fodder, so I am going to back-track and post about Halloween.

Here is my boy all decked out, a few weeks earlier for trick-or-treating around the square:

I show you these, because all I got from actual trick-or-treating is his back side.

It was dark AND stormy AND very windy. My umbrella tried to carry me away a few times, like Mary Poppins. That’s why my photos are so eh. Also, I dropped my camera a few weeks back and snapped my favorite lens right off. We “fixed” it, but it has some issues with focal point and over exposure, and that’s my story.

I had planned on NOT going out on Halloween, because it was so wet and windy, but at the last minute, I told him to put on his costume. He was SO happy, and people were giving out handfuls of candy, since so few kids had ventured out. When we got home, Daddy was back, armed with candy and pizza. We love Daddy.

And then we carved the biggest pumpkin, the one the neighbor kid didn’t steal and try to carve.

See? Focal point issues. Anyway, Aiden drew the face himself and we carved it for him. Here is Mr. Grumpy Jack.

Yesterday, I got to see my sweet niece, Little Miss P, and hang out with her all afternoon.

She was a little shy at first, but then she warmed right up and decided that Auntie is fun, and should be followed around all the time. I thought this was a fine plan.

Nothing like having a little, fresh, flower-like face next to one’s own to realize how old one looks. And how big one’s face really is. But anyway, I love this girl. She is my favorite.

So. Hi.

I forgot to blog during October.

Really. It never even occurred to me.

Sorry.

Here are some pages, from June.

Yes, I know. You don’t want to see June, do you?

Too bad.

It was a week spent in Chincoteague with some of our favorite cousins! Oh, June in Chincoteague, you were WONDERFUL!

How’s that for a catchy title, eh?

When I am feeling anxious and aimless, and Aiden is fretful and relentlessly pushy, I know it’s time to get outside and run off some steam. Lately, we’ve been packing up and going to local parks, because he can run and we can both see some wildlife. And it takes us away from our circle of neighbor friends, who are GREAT, but Aiden tends to obsess about them and who is coming over and when and oh no, they are playing with each other down the street WITHOUT HIM. So leaving all that drama behind is a huge relief sometimes.

After climbing up this rock, which he has done before, he used the tree nearby as a sliding pole. Who is this child? The climbing isn’t new, but the confidence to slide down tree trunks is. I love it.

We spent at least 45 minutes sitting on this bridge, watching some very friendly painted turtles flirting with us. I think maybe they were expecting a snack or something, even though there were plenty of very stern signs about not feeding the fish or chucking food into the pond.

Kind of ghostly under the water.

There were at least three that we saw. I don’t know if they were always the same three, but it felt like a LOT, and Aiden was enthralled. I’m glad that he wants to sit there for hours and watch turtles.

At the end of our time, my dad, who was at a nearby mall, stopped by to give us back Aiden’s boots that had been left in his car from the fishing trip the day before.

Love these guys.

We love to go to this fun festival with Mike, Kristen, and the kids. This year it was COLD (or at least, chilly. I had to get a new wool wrap for my birthday just to stay warm. Poor me.) But it was also really fun, and ALL THE KIDS WERE IN A GOOD MOOD. Even mine! The grown ups were too. It was a good day.

Two kids looking for the troll, one kid pretending to be the troll.

I tried on these ear-muffs and Kristen told me I looked like a Who. I’m kind of sorry I didn’t get them.

My new woolie. I see myself wearing this in my cold house constantly this winter.

There is always one person in the group who, when you say make silly faces, stands there and smiles as though she were more normal than the others. Can you spot this person?

These bows and arrows were the hit of the day! We’d seen countless people walking around, bows slung over shoulders, colorful arrows peeking out of bags. We found them, at the end of a long line, near the end of our day. I bought them for the little boys in my life (sorry Luke and Willow. Merry Christmas boys!) and wished I had thought of it myself so I could be making money hand over fist.

In the butterfly pavilion. The kids love that thing.

We actually got a great start on our Christmas shopping, and I didn’t get super sick from all the wheat I cheated with.