Other November Activities

We did a lot of other things this November as well.

We watched Bart play soccer.


Okay, so really, "watched" might be stretching it a bit.


I was mostly watching this little one and her sister to make sure they didn't eat any of the little balls in the turf.

Not gonna lie, going to Bart's soccer games was a lot easier before we had kids.

We also raked leaves. Actually Bart used his leaf blower, so maybe raked isn't the right word. We blowed leaves?


Whatever it was, we got leaves out of our back yard and into the garbage, along with some other rubbish that was lying around.


We played in the yard.


We went on rainy autumn drives.


Addison decided Angry Birds is pretty much the best game ever.


Addison went to go to a dance workshop at Bart's school...



and learned to dance to the beat of her own drum. :)


Overall, we had a great month. Now on to December. :)

Christmas Tree Hunting

The day after Thanksgiving every year, Bart's family heads off into Lisbon Valley to cut down a Christmas tree. So on Friday, we packed everyone into the cars and hit the road. When we found a spot we thought looked promising, we all got out of the cars and went hiking in search of the perfect tree.



The kids loved the hike, even Maya and Lilly enjoyed being out in the fresh air.


And Addison and her cousin were pretty much inseparable.



I must confess, I wasn't looking very hard for a tree...I was rather confident in the others' tree finding abilities. I did find some other cool things though. :)


In the end, and after much debate, we did find an awesome tree.

Next time I'll try to remember to take a picture of it in the shop. :)

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with Bart's family this year.  It was pretty much the opposite of our "just our little family" Thanksgiving last year.  We had something like 29 people total for Thanksgiving dinner.  I kid you not.  That's what you get when your family has 8 kids in it: Rapidly expanding numbers at holiday get togethers. :)  Bart's Grandma, and Aunt and Uncle's family were there as well.  It was awesome.

Again, I had visions of grandeur with respect to documenting the feast, but this is all I got.  And really, considering the twins had had their worst night sleep EVER the night before, I'm happy with what I got.  :)



Not even a single picture of people. Oh well, c'est la vie.

I made 6 Pies for the feats...yep, 6. Two pecan, two pumpkin, an apple, and a coconut cream. Unfortunately, I could only take a couple snapshots of them. I'm not a fan of the pictures, but I couldn't let 6 pies go undocumented!



It was a GREAT thanksgiving. The food was amazing, and the company was even better! I LOVE our family!

Maya & Lilly Turn 1!

As I mentioned in the last post, the one redeeming quality about the Holidays in 2010 was that two new babies were added to our family.  And on November 19th, those babies turned one!



We celebrated by giving the twins their presents (I know, VERY original and unique.  Feel free to take notes on all our celebratory ingenuity).

Maya caught on very quickly to the whole "opening presents" thing, and was very...shall we say...excited...about the whole process.



But no matter how fast a one year old opens presents, it's not quite fast enough.  So the older sisters decided to join in and give her a hand.  It was a sacrifice they were willing to make.



Lilly, on the other hand...well...let's just say it took her a little longer to catch on.

"Uhhh...what do you want me to do with this mom?"
 

"Yeah, I think I'm going to go see what Maya's doing."



(We picked her up and put her back in front of the present.)
"Okay, um...I think you want me to do something with this baggie thing."


(We clapped and said, "Yay Lilly! Open your presents.")
"You guys are so weird."


Then Maya came over to show her how it was done.


I can't believe my babies are already one!  Happy (late) birthday my little ladies.  I love you!

Thankful Jar

So last holiday season was...well...HORRIBLE.  Bart says it's really sad that I think that because we got two babies from last holiday season.   But seriously, that was the one redeeming quality of the end of last year.  True, it's a pretty big redeeming quality, but still!

My two older girls were in California.  We spent countless hours in the NICU riding an emotional roller coaster. And I was recovering from an emergency c-section and some serious blood loss.  Really, not fun. Someday I will blog about it....someday.

Anyway...this year I was determined to make up for last year's...lack of jolly-ness...and we started with the Thankful Jar. 

 For each day in November up to Thanksgiving, we picked a paper out of our Thankful Jar that listed something we were thankful for, and then did an activity that related to it.  I photographed that activity, and we wound up with an entire scrapbook full of perfect images depicting what we were thankful for and what we did every single day up to Thanksgiving that we will cherish forever.

Well...that's what was supposed to happen.  Then life happened.  We did pick a paper out of the jar every day.  But I have to admit, more than once we wound up not doing the activity.  Some required going to the store, or library, or somewhere, when it was closed, or Sunday, or just really inconvenient.  So, admittedly, some activities didn't get done.

There were also a lot of activities that we did do that I didn't photograph. But eh, we had fun.  The kids loved it, and it was awesome starting off the day highlighting something to be grateful for.

I've heard of keeping gratitude journals where at the end of the day you write what you were thankful for that day.  But after this, I think I like the idea of doing it the other way.  Pick something you're grateful for and then really work on appreciating it for the whole day.  :)

Anyway, here were some of the activities we did do that I actually photographed:

I am Thankful for my Teeth! 

Give Mom & Dad some Halloween Candy & Brush & Floss.  

(Bart & I liked this one...I may or may not have purposely put it at the top of the jar.)

 

I am Thankful for Grandparents!
Call and tell them "I love you.  I am grateful for you."
I really enjoyed listening to Hannah try and say, "I'm Grateful for you"  Grateful is apparently a rather complex word for a two year old.

I am Thankful for my Hands!

Art Project: Finger Painting, or Drawing.

 

I am Thankful for Turkeys!

Art Project: Make Paper Turkeys

And this one's kind of a combination of two:

I am Thankful for our Kitchen

Bake something fun together in the kitchen!

and 

I am Thankful for my Dad!

Do something nice for Dad.

(Bart had been asking me to make a pumpkin roll for ever.  So when we picked "I'm thankful for dad" the day after we didn't do the kitchen activity, it worked out perfectly.  :)

And...that's all I got.  I know, kind of pathetic.  I only photographed 5 (6 if you stretch it) of our 24 days of thankfulness.  But, eh.  Like I said,  we all enjoyed it and benefited, even if we don't have a scrapbook full of perfect pictures depicting our "Thankful" November.  :)

Oh, and, if you want to make a Thankful Jar for your family, but don't really have time to come up with a bunch of ideas for activities, Somewhat Simple has a whole list you can just print and cut out here.  At the very least, it's a great start and then you can supplement with things that are applicable to your family.  :)

P.S.  I DO know that thankful is spelled with one l.  When I tried to fit "thankful" on the side of the jar, it was too small, and Thank-ful just looked well, unbalanced.  So I like to think of it as, "We are full of thanks...we are thank-full." :)

Very Behind

Well, I'm unbelievably behind on holiday posting, but hopefully the next few weeks will remedy that...prepare yourselves for a ton of posts.

In the meantime I wanted to leave you with this lovely picture of my Lilly.


I literally burst out laughing when I saw this picture on the back of my camera.   My poor little snaggletooth had a run in with her cousin that left her with a cut lip the day before I took this picture.  Lest you think I'm a heartless mother, it looks a lot worse than it was.  About two seconds after she got it, she was up crawling around and playing.  One day we'll look back at this picture and laugh together.  Te he he.

I've decided to enter this picture in the I Heart Faces silly holiday photos contest.  To see funny holiday pictures others have submitted click on the button below and search for the contest.