Last catch-up post, hooray!
November always seems to be the month where the fun little extras fall through the cracks and trying to get everything together for the holidays just seems to take over. So instead of spending much time on the details of how much shopping and house-cleaning happened (a lot), I'm going to go back and catch a couple of the little things that happened in September and October, but which ended up getting neglected in November.
For one, Cookie Fridays have been a hit this year. At the ends of weeks when the kids have responsibly done their jobs and earned points (with good grades on school assignments, helping around the house, and not fighting), they have gotten to invite friends over after school on Fridays, and Sera and I like to make cookies as a snack for everyone. I think I have loved these afternoons as much as the kids have! It's been so fun to get to know my kids' friends better, especially the ones I don't know from church or anything. We've done all kinds of cookies: oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, pumkin, gingersnaps, gingerbread people, sugar cookies that the kids can decorate, peanut butter, and holiday M&M--a feast of yum, basically. On the last Friday in October (whoops, guess I should have included this in last month's post), we had a little Halloween party for Cookie Friday, and each of the kids got to invite 2 friends instead of 1. We decorated cupcakes, had a cake-walk, ate doughnuts off strings, had a treasure hunt, played kickball (Theo's request), and started a Harry Potter movie (but didn't get very far). Other than the party, these afternoons don't take much effort on my part aside from inviting the friends (a day or two in advance, which is where I sometimes fall off the wagon), and are often some of the quietest afternoons in our house as everyone plays happily with their own special friend. Going into the new year, I need to get back on the ball at a) checking off morning and afternoon jobs, b) giving out points, and c) actually making the play-dates, so these wonderful afternoons can continue!
Another favorite of mine has been some lunch dates with the big kids. It's funny how crazy everything is for so long with little kids underfoot all the time, and then how suddenly they're all gone for six hours a day and I feel like I don't have quite enough one-on-one time with my older kids anymore. Trying to sneak them each out for a lunch date once a month has filled a bit of that gap. They get SO excited choosing out a place to go (their choices are limited by the number of coupons I have, haha), and Sera likes getting to tag along, even though she usually just shares or gets a small side, while the child on the date can get something fancier than normal.
Back to actual November happenings, we really enjoyed a "Pie Night" activity at church. Even though Aaron thought I was crazy, I helped each of the kids make their very own pie to be judged in the competition. Sera made a "Pinkalicious" pie with cream cheese and raspberry jello in a graham cracker crust, Emerson made a cherry pie (using a pre-made crust and pie filling), Addy made a chocolate mint cream pie in a (pre-made) oreo crust, Theo made a coconut cream pie, and I made a sour cream apple pie. After all that pie making, none of us won prizes (I console myself that none of our pies were labeled properly, because really, if they had counted up the votes of the little girls, Sera would have taken home top honors), but we all had a lot of fun and we all ate a lot of pie!
On Thanksgiving, we had a wonderful feast with our new friends, the Andrews, who moved in over the summer. One of their daughters is in Theo's class at school, and their other son and daughter are each a grade off from Addy and Emerson in school, but are in their primary classes at church. Though the food was wonderful (it's always so much more wonderful when there's someone to share the cooking with!), the highlight of the evening was the Thanksgiving play that Theo and Ani co-directed all the younger children in. They had a script (from online) and everyone had lines to say, and it was so great to see it performed with such passion!
Immediately after Thanksgiving, we had a visit from Aaron's dad, our first since he stopped through Utah the year after we were married! Our kids went nuts with excitement showing off for him, and he took it all in stride, pulling them in to show them some of the artworks-in-progress he brought along to work on. One thing that was great about having him around was that he has really jumped on the health-train, and had tons of great tips to help us make healthier meals and add more movement into our days. He slipped out for a walk or run through our beautiful neighborhood at least once a day, a reminder to us to do the same more often, even after the weather gets cooler, and he had lots of great ideas for salads to keep in the refrigerator. Aaron had also gotten tickets for all of us to go see the Nutcracker in a nearby town (there's a production here in the city as well, but this was a chance to see something new), and we packed up and drove about an hour in our still-newish van, cranking up the family videos that we have decided will be our primary trip-media. It was so fun watching/listening to our Christmas preparations from three years ago as we prepared for this holiday season! The only sad part about his visit was that Aaron had to work quite a lot during it, but the payoff for that came when Grandpa Jerry got to come with us to see Aaron's holiday concert at IPFW, a really fun and entertaining concert that was broadcast live on our local PBS station.
The end of November involved lots of cybershopping by Aaron. More on that next month!
