Week before Thanksgiving 2013

Well, well, well.  Looky here.  I'm blogging tonight.  Aaron and I had a deal that if he started working on printing out our dear old blog into books, then I needed to start doing more blog posts. DEAL. 

In the past few months, I've really wanted to start bloggin' again, but knowing I'm a full year behind and 6.9 billion photos have been taken (or there-abouts), you can imagine how overwhelming that sounded.  

So, I'm taking it week by week. Starting NOW.  And, when I can/feel like it I'll blog some more. Deal? Deal.  (Sheesh, I'm all about making deals right now!)

Let's talk about last week, shall we?  

Benson.

He is 14 months now, and he looks 5 years old. Okay, well, maybe not 5, but at least 3 to me. I think the baseball hat really tipped the scales for me. This kid became a TRUE walker this past month (Til and Cal started walking at 13 months, so we weren't concerned.)  This boy does things on his own terms. The stinker has been able to balance, stand on his own, and walk a few steps whenever he felt like it for the past few months---but the second we tried to coerce him into walking, he'd go limp and throw his head back or "go BONELESS" as one of our new books coined it.  

So, with his new mobility, we like to strap him into a stroller when we go out and about.  I don't know know what we'd do with out a stroller these days! 

Becca came up to town for the weekend, so we decided to try out the new Emporium Pies that just opened (check out their website. Their branding is off the hook!). Their other location in Dallas is phenomenal, and Becca has been a huge fan, so obviously we had to go do some taste testing.  Cal's stance?  Priceless.

Check out that packaging! Too fun, right? We ordered their Cloud Nine slice and thought we were getting their banana cream, but ended up getting their Smooth Operator.  No worries.  It was all delicious.  Check out the descriptions on their website.  We were big fans.

From there, we ran up to Aaron's office so we could trade cars/kids because Tillie was invited by some of her school friends to go to one of those paint-your-own-pottery places.  She'd been living for this day, so we wanted to make sure we were on time (and obviously, didn't want to bring the baby, b/c he'd have a field day in that place!).  Luckily, Becca was still around b/c Aaron was running late with a patient, so she watched the boys in his office waiting room and we zipped downtown for the fun. THANK YOU, BECCA!! (turns out she was waiting for him for 45 minutes!?!)
We got there and the girls had already picked their gifts for the teacher (that's the whole reason we went, so they could make a Christmas craft for their kindergarten teacher, fyi!)---luckily, they chose an ornament to paint.  The price tag on the ornaments were MUCH better than a huge vase or platter!  :)
Tillie quickly got to work when she started complaining about her tummy "not feeling so good." Uh oh.  Luckily, they had a little tiny bathroom there, so I told her to take her time.  Poor baby, her tummy was so rumbly and she felt horrible and kept saying, "Oh, mom, I don't know what to do! I just don't feel so good."  Next thing I know she's throwing up everywhere.  :(  It was so sad.  She threw up a few times while we were in that tiny bathroom, and when she felt like we could leave, we quickly left the bathroom, paid for the ornament, wrote her name on the ornament, and grabbed a quick picture with the girls.  Look at this poor pale and fake smile face below!

Poor girl felt miserable.  We told the girls we need to do another playdate soon to make up for our quick departure!

On the way home, she threw up a few more times (amazingly enough, she was able to throw up in a fast food cup! GLORY! GLORY! that girl has skills!). Throwing up became the theme for the day. She couldn't keep anything down for almost 24 hours.  I gave her a bath and she her little teeth kept chattering, so I grabbed this towel to help keep her warm.  My sister made the comment that I must have really felt bad for her, otherwise I wouldn't have used our "decorative" towel for her.  Stinker.  But, she totally called me on it.  I did feel SO bad that she was sick!

Is that a miserable face or what?!

Because it was such a sad weekend, we decided to do something to lift our spirits!  There's no way better way to cheer someone up than Christmas cheer!  :)  I was super excited to pull out our BRAND NEW TREE that we bought the day after Christmas last year!  As we pulled it out to start decorating, we discovered that our colored lights had died, so we started putting on white lights (my fave!) to decorate the tree.  Year after year, I've told Aaron I wanted our tree to be decorated with white lights b/c it looks so darn classy.  But, he LOVES the colored lights, so year after year, I go along with it. (I'm a super nice wife like that. So charitable and loving.)  So, I was secretly thrilled that those colored ones bit the dust!

BUT! we got one strand of the white lights on the tree and I wasn't digging it! It looked too commercial to me!  WHAT!?  I found myself wishing for the colored ones b/c it just seemed so much more... inviting and warm.  haha!  Talk about a 180 degree mind shift! 

So, obviously, Aaron capitalized on that and ran to the store to grab some new lights. Here is Jake (and the Neverland Pirates), I mean, Calvin testing out the lights for his dad.  He took his job very seriously.

Don't mind that random "W"---the mantle is not "Christmas ready" quite yet!

Fast forward to the next day::: Because Tillie was a mess, we decided that Aaron would stay home from church with her (I was on organ duty that Sunday, blast!). And, it just made sense for him to keep the boys home too.  Here they were reading a book while Tillie slept.  I love this picture.

Turns out, church was like a vacation for me because I wasn't chasing after/entertaining the kids---especially a certain crazy 14 month old (whom I love dearly!).  Lo and behold, I actually got to take notes/draw!  A novelty at this stage of my life!

Tillie was doing much better, but still wasn't 100%, so we kept her home on Monday.  We LOVE having her home! And, since we had so many bananas around, we decided to make some banana-blueberry muffins. We love that recipe around here.

Jake Calvin approves.  Here's the proof.  He ate 4 in this sitting.  Crazy boy.

And here's my little sleeping beauty.  I love when she can take a real true nap.

Lucky for me, we still have our old Christmas tree that is about 5' tall, so I put the white lights on it and decorated it for our front room.  Look at that beaut!

Here's the view from outside!  So magical! I've always wanted a tree in a front room!

And, since we had all the lights out, I decided to do a little decorating with our huge "W" I found at a flea market (wow, why does it seem like I have a billion "W" letters around here? I don't! I only have two!).  Anything with twinkly lights? I'm a fan.  It's staying!  I love this whole Christmas decorating game!

A few other noteworthy events... in our church, my calling is the Relief Society activity coordinator. We put together a really great night.  Here's the flyer I made---I omitted a few specifics, but here's the gist:

I love the description the best. We really thought hard about what our goals were for the night---Using your Patriarchal Blessing, Rediscovering your temple worship, and personalizing your prayers.  Great stuff.  It was a good night and even Becca made a surprise visit that night!  

And, honestly, I can do a huge sigh of relief now that it's over and we pulled it off!

::: Here's Tillie in front of her darling pilgrim in the kindergarten hallway.  I die when she draws those little eyelashes! haha!

::: Calvin (as Jake---can you tell he's a fan?!) playing trains while Benny boy naps and Tillie is at school.  We've become quite good friends now that we have so much time to spend together.  It's one of those "silver linings" that my mom talked about with Tillie going to kindergarten.  She was right.  It's been really great for us both!

So, there you have it. The week before Thanksgiving 2013. Blogging is fun! Let's try this again soon!