Oops, your flue is open!

So, we had a pretty good Thanksgiving. Here are some photos.
Bampa and the kids being musical:
Pete and I, pre-dinner:
Clara, enjoying her first Thanksgiving dinner. She had a little turkey and some potatoes.
Here are the pies. They tasted pretty good, but my next goal is to figure out how to get it so they don't cement themselves into the pans.
Liz and Van, checking the ads for doorbuster deals:
Yesterday Rob, Carrie and Eleanor came over for some quality time. I didn't manage to take any photos until after Clara had gone to bed and Carrie had taken Eleanor to her grandparents' house to sleep. But here are Rob and Henry playing a bit of Cariboo. Note Henry's self-applied band-aid. It came from the new doctor kit Rob and Carrie gave him for his birthday. Also, Rob and Henry checked out our chimney. Rob declares it clean, and says we don't need no stinkin' chimney cleaner. Also- our flue has apparently been open, for who knows how long....
Henry did a little more doctoring this morning. First he fixed up Dory and gave her a band-aid. Then he got to work on Elmo, who he diagnosed as having fallen off the couch and broken his neck.
Here's his prescription pad. He had already written prescriptions for me and Dory, he was working on Elmo's name.
And finally, here's Clara this morning. She is sporting her fancy new hat from Aunt Joyce. She had also just pulled the mirror down. Fortunately it got wedged in the doorway and didn't fall on her. When I saw what was happening, I first jumped to make sure she was okay, and then when I saw she was, I grabbed the camera- of course.
Okay....that's it for now. I really should be knitting or working on report cards.

Preparations

Today was chock full of Thanksgiving preparations. Clara stayed home with me- due to the pink eye from which she is still recovering- and we did a little shopping. We went to the book store to do an exchange, then I picked up a couple of pie-baking necessities at Crate and Barrel...and a couple of cute dishtowels which were on sale. Because lord knows I need more dish towels. After a crazy stop at the grocery store, we headed home.
I became a little confused when I pulled out my pie pans. The blue one in the back is gigantic, the two glass are small....I only seem to have one normal sized pan. But I made do...
When Henry got home he tried out the new little cookie shaper with some scraps of dough.
And then he helped me use up the extra dough on some pie crust cookies.
Clara took her usual afternoon nap, which allowed me to do a lot of prep, but once she woke up she just wanted attention, attention, attention....Babies! She wouldn't keep her toys on her tray.

I hope everyone has a lovely day and lots to be thankful for tomorrow.

Henry Language

anchor = tanker
Slinky = sprinky
funniest joke in the world = chicken butt

Best Laid Plans...

Well, we had a fun birthday dinner on Friday night...
Though Henry didn't eat much.
I thought he was just getting excited about the cake we had waiting at home.
He polished all of the frosting off, and ate most of the cake.
And opened another present. He was pretty excited about these "new" Tonka trucks, even though he had gotten a peek of them in the trunk a week or so ago.
Unfortunately, that's about where the good news ends. Yesterday was a bit of a rough day. Clara woke up with her eyes so gummed up she couldn't even open them, and they continued to look pink and raccoony throughout the day. Henry wouldn't eat any breakfast, then threw up anyway. Eventually he ate a tiny bit of oatmeal, and then went to try to take an early nap. Then he threw up in his bed. I had already done all the grocery shopping for the birthday party and the house was on its way to clean, but it just didn't feel right to keep the plans in place. Somehow I was able to use caller i.d. and switchboard.com to track down all of the guests who had said they would come. Here's how Henry looks right now.
He's keeping his food down so far today, and Clara's eyes seem mostly cleared up (of course!). I seem to have caught a little bit of the eye thing, though I think it's already going away. I kind of wish we had just kept the plans in place, as that would have been a whole lot easier. But this is probably best. Hopefully the kids can stay healthy until the rescheduled party is over.
Fingers crossed!!!!

Henry's Birthday, Thus Far

I was going to start by saying "I can't believe Henry is four years old". But then I thought "Yes, I totally can". That's just the kind of thing people say when they just want to talk. I've been calling him four for months now. He's a big-boy kid with big-boy thoughts and big-boy attitude. He's also a smart little stinker.
Last weekend Dad and Kathie came to visit. We went to see Madagascar 2 (while Pete and Clara shopped for an iphone case) and then went out for Mexican. Henry enjoyed the chips.
This morning Henry got to open his present from Aunt Joyce. First he gave it a good shake.
Then he got to enjoy some birthday pancakes, with a chocolate chip 4 on top.
We spent the morning at the Children's Museum and partook of more carbs in the pretzel cafe. We bought Henry a "make your own pretzel" session. Here he is about to taste the baked result.
The art activity right now is painting with corn, which you can probably figure out with much explanation. If not, maybe you've never been a kindergarten teacher. They also had a shelling station and the kids could play around with scooping and weighing the corn. Henry reported that his weighed 200 lbs. This activity may have felt familiar to some boys who spent their formative years on Dartmouth St.
Henry has also participated in angel-food cake baking today, and now he is going down for his nap. Still to come: a visit from Grandma and Bampa, pizza at Barnaby's and more presents!! His party is in a couple days....so I'll probably wait until Sunday afternoon to post again. Or, I may be sleeping or drinking several glasses of wine to calm my nerves. Maybe you'll be able to judge the success of the party by the typos in the next post.

Also...Honey? When you get home? Open the door carefully. The handle seems to have fallen off and we're sort of trapped inside.

Catch up

Here are a couple pictures from Henry's field trip a week ago...
Henry and his friend on the bus. Note the seat belts.
The beginning of the circus. Grammie had told Henry to watch for the elephants holding tails with their trunks, so he was excited about this part.
Does he look like he's having fun? And also- why can't these kids' parents RSVP for a birthday party!?!? How the heck am I supposed to know how many chicken nuggets to buy if I don't know how many kids are coming!?!?
We also went to visit "Grandma" Karin last week. It was her first time meeting Clara. We had a very nice visit.
And finally, Pete got a birthday hat from Aunt Joyce. It's very cute on Pete, but even cuter on Clara.

Pancakes for breakfast

Here are some images from Pete's birthday party. Thinking about it makes me want pancakes again...
Here you can see the set up....
The Kohler's were our first guests. When I asked what kind of pancakes he wanted, Jonah requested raisin. He ate the whole thing up, so maybe he knows something we don't know.
We finally got Shannon up to our house with her three little ones. They sat down and immediately put on the party hats. They were fabulous guests, and ate their pancakes with peanut butter.
Baby Kevin and Clara enjoyed some time together.
Jim got ahold of the camera for a while and took some detail party pictures. Here are the two griddles...I borrowed one from Pete's mom for the event and often had both full.
Here is the final hard boiled egg, which I had for breakfast this morning.
I like this picture of our recycling box.
Lena and Kevin look to be making mimosas and bloody mary's. Yum.
Pete didn't get a birthday cake, but he did get whipped cream, sprinkles and a candle. And we sang to him of course.

And here's how Clara looked at the end of the party. Poor little baby. She conked out without lunch OR nursing. But she had fun while the party lasted!
I think we'll have to have another pancake party some time this winter. It was lots of fun!! Thanks to everyone who came!

Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday to my sweet hubby! Here's just one picture from his birthday party this morning. He did get a birthday pancake, with whipped cream, sprinkles and a candle....but this shot is of me eating my pancake (chocolate chips and pecans). I figured out last night that since
his 21st was the first of Pete's birthdays that we celebrated together, that this is the 15th! Hooray!
The nice thing about having a pancake birthday party is that the day is only half over! Now it's time to nap, then we'll clean up and head out to dinner alone. I'll post more photos of the pancake party, as well as pictures from the circus yesterday.....later...

Some pictures of our day

Actually, this one was taken yesterday. I decided to try to save some of my geraniums this winter. We'll see how that goes. I'm supposed to prune them to 1/3 their size, but I'm having a little trouble with that step...
Franklin asked to make an appearance in the blog. He thought the sun was good light to show off his graying snout.
Today Henry and I went out to rake some leaves. Clara went out to try to eat some leaves. She was moderately successful.
Henry thought it was very funny how the leaves had landed in the crotch of the tree.
Despite appearances, he did not throw leaves all over his sister. Nor did he hit her with a rake.
I did get some pictures of him without the headband on, but I love his expression in this shot. He knew he was looking good.
And here's Princess Bubbles in her bath.

Still a little weepy...

I am so proud of our country and so excited for the years ahead. I kept wanting to wake the kids up last night to tell them how exciting this is for them. Hopefully they won't even have to know how revolutionary this day is- hopefully the transition is smooth and the momentum stays strong and things just keep going forward in a positive way. My dream for them is that what feels so amazing and exciting and hopeful to us becomes so real that to them it is just normal.
We all got up early to vote yesterday.
Clara wore her sticker proudly, until she pulled it off and tried to eat it.
Henry wore his sticker all day, despite claiming a preference for McCain now....because "he does potty talk". Oops....guess I shouldn't have let him watch that Saturday Night Live.
We went to Starbucks afterwards, because they were giving free coffee to voters, and I had to promise Henry a hot chocolate to get him out of bed so early.
Here's Henry looking presidential in his jammies. I brought this sticker home from school...we had given them to each of our students, along with "Future President" sparkly pencils.
Good stuff.