Monthly Archives: December 2012

Nine Months Ago…

Posted on by
Reply

Nine months ago we got our seventh little gift!  Malachi is growing stronger and has more personality every single day.  I can’t believe how much he has grown in changed in the past few months.  I know everyone says that but it’s true.

I think he’s outgrowing the basket!

Here’s what he’s up to:

Waves hi (mainly flails his arm around) and says, “Hi!” on occasion.
Up off his belly more when crawling.
Pulling up on everything, including pants legs and furntiure and brothers and sisters.
Cruising around furniture.
Laughing and smiling and generally loving his brothers and sisters and mom and dad.
Totally picky about who he will go to (besides immediate family) and very rarely will stay with them long…but bonus is if you are wearing a lot of clunky jewelry.
Eating table foods mushed up or blended.  Refuses baby foods.
Eating finger foods.
Drinking from a sippy cup.
Wanting “Beary the Bear”” always and chewing on his ears and tail.

Doctor stats:
19 lbs 3 oz (56%)-That makes him the biggest at this age.  Mainly he wins the title because Josiah went on a nursing strike at seven months as he cut four teeth at once and had a virus so he lost a few ounces.  I think he also wins the title because when he started baby food I put avocado in everything. Bananas and avocado, Squash and avocado, sweet potatoes and avocado.  Nothing like fattening a baby up with some good ol’ super foods.
28 1/2 inches long (58%)
18 3/4 inches head (96%)…Big heads…ah yes.

“Um, I love smiling for you mom, but why am I in here?”
It’s pretty safe to say that we are all as smitten with him now as we were nine months ago.  We are all totally in love with this little man!

Facebooktwittermail

Thanksgiving 2012: There’s a story here…

Posted on by
Reply

Since this was the first Thanksgiving in the new home, we opted to stay at our house and host Thanksgiving.  Our first choice was to have soldiers from the local fort over but that never got fully coordinated so we opted to have our soldier friends over.  The F family moved here this summer and began attending our church.  They planned to stay here for Thanksgiving rather than visit family.  So L and I struck a deal.  I would cook the meal, she would bring the pies.  The pies were awesome and we all enjoyed our traditional Southern Thanksgiving!

All was bright and cheerful until C suggested that I toast the marshamllows on top of the sweet potato casserole not just melt them.  I cranked the oven up to broil and continued chatting with L right beside the stove.  About 5 minutes later I yelled, “The CASSEROLE!”

Flames!  Ya’ll.  There were flames coming from my new oven.

Luckily they were just the marshmallows on fire. I flew open the oven and started searching for my phone to get a picture.  Mark sprinkled water on it and promptly closed the oven door and shut the oven off.  Party pooper.  I was willing to sacrifice a kitchen fire to give ya’ll a good picture.  Oh well.

I snagged this picture after the fire was extinguished.

Then Mark scraped the marshmallows off and we tried again.  I plopped myself in front of the oven this time.

Ta da!  Beautifully toasted marshmallows atop yummy homemade sweet potato casserole.

Then after we stuffed ourselves full of turkey and all the fixings we Farkled.

No really.  We did.

Farkle is just a great game to play with friends when you want to sit around and chat.  It’s even better when you win.  No, I mean STOMP the competition.  But, I’m not going to brag or anything.

Shortly after the Farkle we ate again.  This time pies.  Pecan, pumpkin (without sugar…oops) and a not-so-normal-which-means-amazingly-delicious fruitcake.  Then food comas began and pictures were not taken.

Facebooktwittermail

A Bunch of Characters vs. Chattanooga

Posted on by
Reply

Believe it or not, Chattanooga survived us!  We met up with Mark’s family in Chattanooga and toured and visited and laughed and giggled for a few days.

How fifteen children in one house can get along so well is nothing short of amazing!  They continue to grow close and it just blesses this mama and aunt’s socks clean off (How’s that for a Southern colloquialism?  Oh, and ya’ll will be happy to know that I didn’t need a spell check on “colloquialism.”)

 How’s that for posing!  We rocked the quick pictures before we left.
 Grandmere and a helper getting ready for supper!  Just so ya know.  When we’re all together we typically rotate who is in charge of supper and go light on lunches and then rotate breakfasts.  And yes, we plan out each meal ahead of time.  It’s really a necessity with our large crew.

 My nephew T.  Ceili Rain was in Baby Heaven.

 Chattanooga has the Tennessee Aquarium.  Everyone enjoyed acting trapped in the piranha tank.

Group photo…at least we got them all in the pick.

 And a train ride for my train lover.  I was informed by him that the train ride was boring but he loved the tour of the machine shops and watching the train on the round about.  He’s an engineer to be!

 All smiles after seeing the trains in the trainyard and listening to the tour guide talk about restoring trains.

 Visiting Civil War Battelfields.  The lives lost were tragic and the courage of the men on both sides was amazing.

 The matriarch and patriarch of the family!  I think Ace took this picture.

 I walked outside to get a picture of the beautiful scenery and hear, “Aunt Abbie!” above my heads.  My nephews were having some quiet play time on the deck.

 A beautiful view!

Facebooktwittermail

Tour Da House…Entryway

Posted on by
Reply

I’m back…Lest you think I have done nothing in my blogging absence, here’s my “to do” list at the beginning of the month:

I added blogging to the end.  While we’re not quite completely done with it, we are very close.

Since we’re almost through with Autumn, I thought I would show our front door decor.

 For my birthday, my parents brought me two gorgeous rustic bird houses.  I may move one to the back at some point but for now they are on the stoop.  The bench is an old piano bench that I painted cream color and I made up the pillows really quickly.

 This was pinterest inspired: 

I was too impatient to find a basket holder or figure out how to do a wooden letter, so a metal flower holder and vinyl letter were my compromise.  I love it because I can change out the flowers with each season like this:

I think it’s simply beautiful!  I’ll take the peppermints and presents off after Chirstmas for my winter decor.

Here’s the stoop all decorated for Christmas!

Sadly, the plants in the tricycle are dead.  Raise your hand if you’re surprised.  Anyone?  Yeah, me neither.

Facebooktwittermail

We’ll be back

Posted on by
Reply

Ah, Christmas season is upon us and while our calendar looks decent there are still so many things that need to get done so my blogging is sporadic right now.

Here’s two funnies to tide you over (well, only if you’re not on facebook…hi mom).

***
Before breakfast I told Ceili Rain that she must go get dressed.  She walked off to her room saying, “If you say so.”

I said, “I say so.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.”

This went on until I ended with a stellar rendition of “Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So.”  She was not really impressed.

***

At supper, the kids decided to name all of the
people in the Nativity (which is in our dining room). 

Obviously,
Joseph, Mary and Jesus were named first. 

Then the rest of the Nativity
visitors had to be named. 

The wise men include Frank,
Murray and Goldberg. Their camels were George, Bob and Roger. The
donkey’s name is Don Quixote (get it. Donkey-Don Quixote). 

The
Shepherds were Tim, Ben, and the boy
shepherd was Jotham (a character in the Advent story we’re reading).
The sheep include Joshua (from Lucado’s The Crippled Lamb), and all the
rest are Barbara (at which point Mark and I launched in to Barbara
Manatee). The one cow we have is Bessie. Josiah wanted to name one of
the sheep Cold Cuts though.  He came up with that on his own.

Facebooktwittermail