A few More...

Joshua and Karis really like to "help" in the kitchen. I love to let them help - but Thanksgiving dinner, there really wasn't much that they could do. Here they are measuring out the ingredients for the stuffing.

The hungry subjects are waiting for their feast! These silly children waited at the table for quite some time!

Notice Joshua's plate. Full. It looked just like that when he was excused from the table too. He is so funny about trying different foods, and I think he is weird about his food touching too. So, for Thanksgiving, he ate 3 rolls and he tried one bite of turkey. He also had a shirt change in the middle of the meal too - spilled drink.

Karis loved the meal. She asked when we could eat more Thanksgiving dinner this morning at breakfast! She especially loved the cranberries, which I can remember not liking as a child. She ate her dinner, and then came up with the idea to make a Thanksgiving Sandwich with her left over turkey, roll and cranberries - and then ate some of it. Actually, the first roll she made was filled with little bits of all of the Thanksgiving foods. When she tried that, she didn't like it! I wouldn't either - turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli casserole, cranberries in a roll... yuck!

Then there is the goofball. After his feast of bread, he leaned back in his chair and sighed a contented sigh. Notice his full plate. This is after the meal!

A Few Thanksgiving Photos

During the day on Thanksgiving, between watching the Macy's Day Parade and a football game, the children made a few craft projects. We made a thankful tree, and wrote things that the children said they were thankful for on various leaves. Family Fun magazine is so full of great ideas for projects to do with your children - and that is another activity we got from Family Fun.

After the Thankful Tree activity, Karis wanted to make a crown. She usually does. This time Joshua made one too.

Our Thankful Tree.

Karis and Joshua decided to dance after making the crowns. Karis said she wanted to dance like the lady did during the parade and Joshua was her willing partner.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

Children's Museum

Recently we went to the Children's Discovery Museum in Chattanooga. What a fun, and tiring day we had. I don't think Joshua stopped running whenever he was out of the stroller! This is the reason we don't have any photos of him. Craig and I really enjoyed being together as a family outside of our normal activities.

Karis loved this bunny costume. In this photo she is making animal footprints in "snow". I still don't know what the snow substance really is, but it was fun to play with.

Karis loves craft projects. She sat for a long time and made this crown with scraps of paper and glue. While she was doing her craft project, Joshua and Craig were running through the musical instrument section. In this area, there were giant instruments with buttons on them that you pressed to make the various sounds that that particular instrument makes. Craig and Joshua made quite a symphony together!

Busy hands hard at work!

Forgot to add...

In uploading all of those photos to the blog, I forgot to mention that Joshua no longer takes his precious "fa-fa" which is his pacifier!!! While he was sick, he didn't want to suck on it because his mouth was too tender. So, three days went by when he didn't take it. In fact, when we would try to hand it to him, he would throw it down. So, I went through the house and found all of the pacifiers that I could and threw all of them out. On the fourth day, Joshua asked for one, and I told him they were all gone because they hurt his mouth. He seemed totally OK with that, and has only asked one other time for one.

I am so thankful to the mercy and kindness of God. That was a remarkably smooth transition. Why not do it when your child is up all night anyway for three nights? Might as well do it that way right?

So, for the time being, we are a paci free home! This is the first time in 4 1/2 years. But, I know that little baby Girl is coming in 4 months, and I am a sucker for pacifiers...no pun intended!

More Fall photos

To celebrate the Fall we made pumpkin shaped sugar cookies. Both children really enjoy helping to make things in the kitchen. In fact, I asked Karis a few days ago what she wanted to learn in kindergarten and she said she wanted to learn how to climb a tree by herself and she wanted to learn how to cook with Mommy and "chop, chop, chop!"

Tasting is all a part of cooking, right?

Several weeks ago, Joshua and Craig went to the Father-Son Campout with 150 other fathers and sons from Cornerstone. They didn't spend the night, but stayed long enough to roast marshmellows and enjoy the campfire. Joshua made it all the way home from Cades Cove awake! I carried him up to bed and asked him what his favorite part was. He told me it was the "hot, hot". So, I put him to bed smelling like wood smoke from the hot hot fire that he enjoyed.

While the guys were at the campout, Karis and I enjoyed a girly time out. We went to Barnes and Noble to read books and have hot chocolate and I took her to get her hair cut and have her nails painted at the Kidz Cuts. She still talks about sitting in their salon chair and having her hair cut.

On Halloween, we took the children to a few of our neighbors to visit and get candy. I love the costumes - it brings back memories of trick-or-treating when I was a child!

I wore this costume when I was a child. Karis wore it two years ago, and now Joshua!

Thanks Mom for making this probably 30 years ago!

A few weeks ago, we found out that we are having a baby girl in March. For the third time in our journey as parents, we went to Krispie Kreme before finding out the gender of our new baby. Our theory is that if I have a doughnut, the sugar rush will make the baby move around so that we can find out what it is!! The children enjoyed the chance to have a hot doughnut!


Our niece Madie turned 4 a few days ago. She had a cowgirl party. It was a great idea. Stuart and Jenny threw her a "Birthday Breakfast Round-up". It was fun to get ready early in the morning to celebrate with Madie over breakfast.

The children had a doughnut eating race. They were supposed to eat their doughnut while it dangled from a string... but they all needed help from their hands!

And finally, we roasted marshmellows in our backyard a few weeks ago with our good friends the Sanders. This was a hit with the children. Karis was crazy about roasting the gooey treats, but didn't want to eat any of them after they had been roasted. She hasn't developed the appreciation for the fine culinary experience of blowing out your marshmellow and smooshing it between two graham cracker pieces!

Jayson and Pierson Sanders

I don't think Joshua's stick ever made it into the fire. He too prefers raw - unroasted marshmellows!

Don't they look so much alike? No question who she belongs to!

Happy Fall

I have so many photos from the last few weeks to put on our blog! The fall is so full of fun activities!

We are rebounding from a fall fever virus, and so glad to play and get outside again. Joshua is full of energy after being the hardest hit with the virus. He didn't eat for nearly 4 days - but he is making up for it now. This morning he ate banana bread and three yogurts!!!

Last week we picked out pumpkins to put on our front porch

I thought the kids would pick pumpkins bigger then they are - but I was suprised, they picked appropriately fitting sizes.