November

Hard to believe November is more than half-way over! (And this is my first post this month...) Thanksgiving is in less than a week and we fly out to CA for Christmas in less than a month!  Wow.

We haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary this month.  Jeremy's been busy with school, and the boys and I have been doing our thing.  It's been chilly most days, so we've been doing a lot of playing inside or running errands.  Nothing too eventful.

But the boys have been great lately.  They've been playing so well together and I love to hear them talking to each other.  Connor is talking up a storm and has become a little parrot, repeating everything we say.  It's so fun to hear his cute little voice, especially in contrast with Eli's low "manly" voice. :)  He's been picking up words so quickly, it's hard to believe.  He started out with the usual one syllable words, but he's now a master of many 2 syllable words (running, color, orange, etc.) and even a few small sentences.  My favorites are:

• I wunning! (I'm running)
• I'm fast! (while he runs)
• Weeed it! (Read it - about 50 times a day with a book in hand)
• I yike it (I like it)
• Y-okay? (Are you okay? - after anyone, including himself, coughs)

I need to sneak up on them to get a video sometime when they're playing because their little interactions are so cute.  Eli is such a talker and has a great imagination and they just go play in their room for long stretches of time now - mostly getting along - and it's amazing!  Eli has a million ideas of things to do and will ask Connor to do things ("Connor, can you do me a favor?") and Connor just happily responds "Okay!" or "Yeah!"  It's very sweet.  And it's so nice to be able to get something done for more than 2 minutes at a time!  There are still plenty of times when they don't get along - like when they're fighting over the same ball or the same hammer or the same tractor...you get the drift.  We're learning we need 2 of everything, but we're not quite there yet. :)

(Like our Thanksgiving decorations in the background? :)  The boys and I made hand turkeys one day and then we did the "thankful tree" for Family Night on Monday - each leaf is something we're thankful for.  I don't know what's gotten into me with the crafts! Also - their cute shirts are from the thrift store.  I've been "thrifting" lately and I'm totally hooked!  I've almost gotten all of their Christmas presents there - nice stuff - and I've spent very little.  Yessss!)

Anyway, I did manage to get a couple cute videos in the last few days but every time I try to load them, it doesn't work.  I seem to hear of a lot of people having trouble with videos on blogger these days.  Lame.  So I will try again some time (although I've been trying for 2 days already).  But here are some more pictures.  It always amazes me how something as simple as a big box can provide hours of entertainment.  Thank you Amazon Mom for sending that giant package of diapers! :)

And in case I don't blog again, I just have to say how excited I am for Thanksgiving!!!  I mentioned on my food blog that it's my favorite holiday.  It's true (Christmas is right up there too of course).  Good food, good friends or family, and no stressful gift-buying!  Heidi and her hubby Sam are coming Tuesday night and don't leave until Sunday and we're so so happy they're coming.  I'm planning a big feast even though we'll be a small group so it will be a great week of feasting and having fun!  I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!