And the rest of November...

I'll get back into the blogging groove, but for now, here is a quick recap of the rest of our month, mostly through pictures.  I posted twice today, so keep scrolling for the other.

We toured Bob's Red Mill with some friends (and got to meet Bob! He's in the red vest)

 Made a fire in our fireplace!

And roasted a couple marshmallows:

 Bathtime is super fun, especially in the sink!

 Eli is getting quite good and his reading!

And a little taste of our Christmas set-up!

Happy Christmas, er, I mean, Thanksgiving everyone!

Cousin Fun

We got to spend the day with Jeremy's little brother Jonathan and his beautiful family on Saturday.  It was so much fun!  We usually only see them when we're with the whole Nowland clan, so it was nice to have some time with just them.  Their kids are the cutest and it was fun to play with them.  Boston just turned two and Kamryn is just 12 days younger than Anna!

They helped us finish up a project we were working on and other than that we did a lot of playing and eating.  Good times. :)

And sorry the pictures aren't the greatest.  It's really hard to capture decent photos of 5 busy kids ages 4 and under.

 These two played with this thing most of the day.

 Meet Kamryn - cutest giant dimples just like her Mama and tons of hair!

 Meet Boston - aka Uncle Jonathan's mini-me:

 Cute! Connor was really looking forward to Uncle Jon coming and doing his "soccer tricks" like he always does.  "Uncle Jonafan can kick a soccer ball wif his head!  And on his back!"  Very exciting stuff. :)

 Hugs before they left:

Thanks for coming to see us, guys!

Life

Hello.

I don't have anything terrible exciting to share, but it's been awhile, so here are some random thoughts.

• Jeremy was out of town most of last week and it was rough.  The kids and I did a lot (probably too much) and had some fun, but it was hard.  I thought about my sisters whose husbands travel a lot and other wives whose husbands are in the military, but that didn't really make it any easier - it just made me feel bad about feeling like it was hard. Haha. Anyone have any tips for getting through?  He has another trip coming up...

• Speaking of making it through things, I feel like the work week should be 4 days. :)  It gets to be Thursday night and I am ready to pop some popcorn, turn on a movie and veg out (who's with me?).  Obviously I need to toughen up here, people.

• Funny quote from today - Eli: "Mommy, Anna's trying to get in the toilet!" (he was trying to go the bathroom); I come in and she's sitting on the floor: "Did she get up? Did she put her hands in the toilet?" Eli: "No....I handled it....bravely."  Haha, you should have seen the look on his face too.  So proud.

• So I decided to break all my normal rules about not putting Christmas stuff up until after Thanksgiving and the boys and I pulled out the decorations yesterday and turned on the Christmas music. :)  Thanksgiving is really late this year, okay? AND we're going to be in Idaho next week and then we decided to go down to California earlier and be there for Christmas, so we would have only had 3 short weeks to enjoy it all, so I decided November 20th was late enough.  It's not all up, but it's getting there.

• Connor threw his pacifiers in the trash on Saturday and there has been much drama since.  We've been telling him for months he'd have to get rid of them eventually, and I mentioned it again randomly, so he went and threw them away on his own.  Oh boy.  Every nap and night there have been tears mourning the loss of his beloved pacifiers, but it's about time they are gone (he'll be 3 in 4 months!).  Tonight, however, was the first time he hasn't mentioned them.  Hopefully we're turning a corner.

• Christmas gets more and more special each year with the kids getting older.  We don't have a big tree yet, but we set up our little 4 ft one and turned off all the lights in the house tonight and watched the lit-up tree and sang a couple Christmas songs (Away in a Manger & Silent Night).  Eli was really happy and said he felt good and we talked about the special spirit we feel at Christmas time.  It was tender.

So...life is good and life is hard.  Three kids feels like I'm drowning some of the time, but it's good to record these sweet and funny moments so I can re-read them and focus on the good that is happening.  So thank you, blog, and thank you, family and friends, for the outlet.  You're all wonderful!

And now I'm going to go eat some popcorn...

October Wrap-Up

I'm going to lump the rest of the month into this post, so here we go!

First off, I know everyone with kids despises Daylight Savings Time changes, and I get that - my boys woke up at 5 am this morning - but the stars aligned with Anna and she slept 10 hours!!  And I slept 7!!!  That hasn't happened in at least 8 months, but more like 1.5 years.  It was amazing.  I've been letting her cry it out this week because she finally got the last of 4 teeth that were all coming in at the same time on the top and she has been sleeping terribly, so I knew it was time.  And it worked!  I hope it sticks.

But boy, she is sure adorable. :)  She is now 8 months old and she has 8 teeth.  She is definitely an over-achiever.

 We find her in all sorts of placed these days, happy as a clam.

 Another one of our ginormous apples next to a normal-sized one.

 Here are a few pictures from a few weeks ago at our neighborhood park.  I love this place!  Jeremy and I were doing really good for a little while and we were taking turns running/walking in the evenings.  We were both so out of shape, but I finally was able to run 1.4 miles (big accomplishment for me, probably seems really small to some of you!) and Jeremy did 2.  We've been bad this week though because it's been really cold, and now with it getting dark earlier, we're pretty much done.  I'm not dedicated enough to go when it's cold and dark!  Hopefully we can start up again in the Spring.  The loop here at the park is exactly a mile, so we would come here to do it.

 There were a few river otters in the lake!

 These boys have been a little wild lately. They are often wrestling and occasionally I catch them giggling on one of their beds together. :)

 Anna is always happy to get up!

 Connor is getting pretty good at drawing faces!  I always know which ones are his because of the long nose.

 And Anna discovered the piano this week!  She's so cute. And yes, that is Connor running around in his underwear in the background.  It's a party around here, I tell you.  The boys like to pretend they're Mowgli (from Jungle Book) and they run around in their underwear.

And that's a wrap!  I can't believe it's November already.  I'm excited though.  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and we're looking forward to starting some of our own traditions this holiday season since the kids are getting a little older and we'll be home for Christmas for the first time.  We feel very blessed these days.  It's a good life!