What's Nestled in Our Tree

Skier

Santa Yoda

Santa

"The guy cooking Christmas dinner"

Just Pictures

Let the indoctrination begin!

Lounging

His latest obsession

A Mistake I Hadn't Made Yet

Last night, during that crazy time after naps but before Jeff got home and before dinnertime, I needed to go to the bathroom.  And I wanted to go without somebody following me in there.  So, I went in and closed the door.  Benjamin tried to keep the door pushed open, but I closed it anyway.

Soon he started to cry.  He sounded devastated.  I thought he was just particularly mad that I would go to the bathroom without him.  While I quickly washed my hands, I heard Jonathan saying to him, "Are you hurt?  Are you hurt, bud?"  And Grace was saying, "He's just throwing a fit."  By the time I got out of the bathroom - and I was only in there for a short time! - Jonathan was trying to get a Band-Aid for Benjamin.

As you have probably already guessed, I had closed Benjamin's finger in the door.  He was crying inconsolably, and I put a Band-Aid on the injured pinky finger and tried to comfort him while I held him.  Jonathan and Grace both kept bringing him things to help him to feel better.  Of course, I felt horrible.  I had closed my baby's finger in the door.  Benjamin still doesn't say a whole lot, but he can say "on" and "off" clearly.  He wanted the bandage off!  I took it off and Jonathan asked me if his fingernail was gone.  We looked closely and realized that it was.  It had been hard to tell at first, but indeed, there was no nail.  Jonathan went over by the bathroom and fount the fingernail on the carpet, completely intact.  I guessed that when his finger got pinched in the door, he must have pulled it out but left the fingernail behind.

Then I really felt terrible.  Benjamin was still crying inconsolably.  I got another Band-Aid, put some Neosporin on it, and covered the place where his little baby nail used to be.  We were all trying to help him feel better.  I was holding him, the kids kept bringing things to him - especially Jonathan - and we couldn't figure out a way to help him stop crying.  Finally I put in the Praise Baby DVD that my dear friend, Kathy, gave to Jonathan when he was born.  The music is very soothing, and that helped Benjamin stop crying briefly.  I was shedding some tears of my own.  Benjamin kept holding up his hand and saying, "Off!"  He wanted me to fix his finger and I couldn't.

When Jeff got home, he held Benjamin for me (who was still crying quite a bit) so I could get dinner on the table.  He cried off and on throughout dinner.  His right pinky finger was the hurt one, and even though he's right-handed, he held that hand up and used his left hand to eat dinner.  He kept holding his hand up to me and crying, wanting me to fix his hurt finger.

I felt so horrible for hurting my baby.  The kids kept trying to understand why I was so sad, since I wasn't the one with the hurt finger.  I tried to explain how sad it makes me when any of my babies are hurting.  And I was thinking how, even though Benjamin is my third baby, I still made the new-to-me mistake of smashing his finger in the door.

Amazingly enough, I did have some baby Tylenol in the cabinet, and I decided to give him some before bed.  He had a hard time falling asleep.  I thought that he'd definitely wake up crying as soon as the medicine wore off, but he didn't.  I'm thankful he got some sleep and hope that his poor finger feels better soon.

Family Day

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was a free day for us.  We were all home, Jeff wasn't traveling, and we decided to go to one of our favorite places.  We hadn't been there since last January, and that was only a drive through, so we were long overdue!  We had a beautiful day together.

Jonathan at Bridalveil Fall.  (I always had it as Bridal Veil Falls in my mind, but I actually read the sign this time and corrected myself.)

These four had some fun scrambling on the rocks.  The fall is so much smaller in the late fall than in the spring, so you can get a lot closer to it.  The loud roar and huge mist at the base of the fall is gone, so the rocks are dry and perfect for little climbers.  I just enjoyed taking the pictures, though.  And, for the record, Benjamin spends most of his time in the backpack asking to get out.  He just has to be patient sometimes.

The next three pictures were taken at our lunchtime picnic spot.  Nothing fancy - just a log to sit on and eat our PB&J.  But, Jonathan stayed occupied looking for "crystal rocks" and the younger two just goofed around.

This was the best picture of Half Dome that I took all day.  Can you tell that I took it through the van's windshield?

There were a lot of deer!  This one was right next to the car.

We spend the end of our day throwing rocks into the river.  The kids could have stayed there all day.  I loved these pictures of my "boys."

On the way out of the park, we stopped and somebody took our picture with Half Dome in the distance.  The sun was so low, we could hardly look at the camera.

The moon was rising over Half Dome!

We realized we hadn't taken a picture in front of the sign since Jonathan was this size, so Jeff set the timer on the camera and we took this one.  Everyone was smiling and it was a great picture, so I was really sad when we got home and the whole thing was blurry.  I shed a few tears.  I guess that's just how I am.  But, that was really the only sad part of the day. 

 We truly enjoyed our day at a relaxed pace in one of our favorite places in the world.  I don't think we're ready to go back to the routine on Monday!

Thanksgiving

We had a very happy Thanksgiving yesterday, and we hope you did, too!  I loaded these pictures last night to share them right away, but life with my little helpers is still a bit of a tornado sometimes, so even my quickest post is happening 24 hours later.  :)

My mom and Don joined us for dinner, and so did Dave, Jen, Ella, and Delia.  We loved having them all here.  The food, conversation, and company were all great.  I had been trying to keep my mind - and the kids - on thanking God for a little bit of everything all month.  I never ran out of ideas or gratitude.  I don't know whether it helped the kids at all, but it helped me to focus on our countless blessings rather than things that are difficult.  I also added a couple of books on the first Thanksgiving to our library, and they provided some interesting reading.  I should say that I started our Thanksgiving library, because we didn't have any nonfiction books about Thanksgiving until this month!

Jeff scoured the Internet for the perfect turkey roasting method, and he found it.  It was an overnight method (but not the 24-hour disaster that I tried in my little apartment when we were dating) and was delicious.  This turkey was the Christmas gift from his work last year.  This year when they hand out turkeys, I think he'll lobby for a bird that weighs less than 27 lbs.  Getting it into and out of the oven was quite a feat.  I was glad I didn't have to do it.

It was...and is...delicious.  I don't have any pictures of the amazing spread, but we ate like kings and are still enjoying leftovers.  Mom brought her famous apple pie and green salad.  Jen brought the new-to-us cranberry salad and corn soufflé.  Yum!

Here's the grownups' table.  Somehow, I have no pictures of the grownups eating!  And no pictures of Mom and Don!  Rats.  I promise, they were here.

Here is the kids' table.  I had planned for the kids to use regular (plastic, just like the grownups') plates, but they wouldn't fit on the table, so we went with John Deere.

The kids.  Benjamin had a spot all to himself.

Jonathan, Ella, Grace, and Delia.  Grace thought she was big stuff, eating with the big kids.

We hadn't had any family pictures with Dave and Jen since this one in 2007, so it was time for a new one.  Grace was a real stinker and wouldn't cooperate.  We still love her.

We have an annual tradition of making cookies together to kick off the Christmas season, but this year we decided to make Christmas trees.  It was quicker and more rewarding, which was what we needed this year.  Grace even got to skip her nap to participate.

The kids watched Monsters, Inc., which my kids had never seen before, and then went to play outside. There aren't many pictures of what went on because we adults were playing a game inside, but here's a peek into the outside play.

The grownups played Wits and Wagers, a game that was new to us that Dave and Jen brought.  I think everybody gave it a "thumbs up."

All in all, it was a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We missed the loved ones who couldn't join us, but had a wonderful day with the ones who did.  Our kids enjoyed playtime with their grandparents and little buddies.  We extended our wonderful Thanksgiving by spending the day enjoying our family at home today.  I was so happy to have all five of us home at the same time.  We hope you had a special time with those you love, too.

How to Watch the Thanksgiving Parade

Brothers...and Sister.

 Not posed, just goofing around.

And, very posed.  :)

Three Little Turkeys

We snapped these pictures of the kids before church a couple of weeks ago.

 She really wants to be the BIG big sister.

 Benjamin can't keep his hands off of his belly button.

And Jonathan needs his zipper zipped ALL the way up on his sweater.

He rubs it when he sucks his favorite finger.  Love my silly kids!

The Spooky Bat

This is Grace's first drawing that shows what she intended it to be.  Jonathan got her on a little bit of a pumpkin and bat kick a few weeks ago, and she says this is a spooky bat.  (See the eyes?)  I'm looking forward to the day that she draws a person, but she assures me that she doesn't know how to draw a person.  Mostly she makes little marks all over papers and tells me she is writing a story, or making a birthday present for Daddy, or whatever.  She and Benjamin both love to color, though, which is a lot of fun for me.

Yes, Benjamin, That's You!

Foxes

Most weeks, Jonathan's spelling homework includes writing a certain number of sentences.  Some weeks, he takes it upon himself to use all his spelling words in as few sentences as possible.  This particular week (a few weeks ago,) he decided he needed to use them all in one sentence.  Here's the sentence.  Run-on sentence or not, I thought it was pretty great.

It says, "What if I was alone in the world in our country, America, on the north side of a line called the equator and I had a phone and I could only talk to the foxes and I learned their language and wrote it down in a notebook and closed the stove on it so that it got smoky and my plot was to burn it up because I didn't want to talk to the foxes?"

The original version ended with, "...because I wanted to kill their language?" but he told me he changed that because he knew that talking about killing was not appropriate for school.

Just a little insight into the mind of our seven-year-old.

Turkeys

Jonathan made these in Sunday school. They're cute, right? They're held together, and stay on the plate, because of chocolate frosting.

New Background

Jonathan informed me that we needed to change the blog background for the current season.  And then I let him choose the background.  Soooo...this is what you get when Jonathan chooses the background. :)

Unedited!

The boys' birthdays are just around the corner, and I need to get going on their party invitations.  We are doing our customary family party for Benjamin's second birthday.  (We invite extended family to first birthdays, and then have very small family parties for birthdays after that.)

I thought I'd take a picture of Benjamin wearing his "2" shirt, print it out, and stick it on a postcard, with date/time info on the back.  Not very fancy, but anyone who knows me knows that I have a hard time throwing parties and I don't get too fancy.

I had a spare ten minutes after lunch today, so I told Benjamin we'd go outside and take his picture with his truck.  I changed his shirt, too, him outside, and took a few snapshots.  I'm not sure which one I'll use for his invitation!  I can't believe he was so cooperative, and the pictures with my little camera turned out pretty cute, I think.  (Maybe someday I'll upgrade to a big "real" SLR?  But for now, I like being able to carry my camera in my jeans pocket.)

Here are the totally unedited pictures.  Usually I at least crop them before I share them here.  But, I'm just going to share them all now before I put it off and never get to it.  Enjoy!

Lounging.  Not exactly what I had in mind.

Very happy in this one! 

This one is more of his personality, though.

I could use this one if I crop Grace out.  His smile is a little crazy, though.  I decided I had enough to work with at this point, but kept taking pics of him in action.

Good thing I was done, because the leaves were very interesting. 

Time to drive! 

I'm thankful I had such a willing subject today!