Happy Turkey Day

My parents are here this week and they helped put on a wonderful dinner today! We actually ordered a turkey from New Seasons - it was fabulous! We made all the sides - oh, well actually - we also ordered corn bread stuffing (AWESOME) and turkey gravy. We had a very local Thanksgiving - turkey is from a local farm, we got the potatoes and cranberries from the farmers market, and the pie was made at New Seasons also - whipped cream made by ME! The green bean casserole was our only - not local or organic thing we ate - but it was worth it! I tried a new sweet potato recipe in the crock pot - Apple Buttered Sweet Potatoes - they were so yummy and so easy - definitely a tradition from now on!

This morning, I reminded Jakob that it was Thanksgiving and he said, "Oh, yeah we have turkey today, when do we get to chase the turkey?"
Me - "What?"
Jakob - "Don't we need to chase a turkey?"
Me - "Oh, No the farmers already did that for us."
Jakob - "Oh, ok but did it die already?"
Me - "Yes, it's sad, but we are thankful for the turkey."
Jakob - "Yeah, I thank you for the turkey."

Nana, mashing up the potatoes

Papa Don, carving the turkey

Nana and her Grand babies
Jakob escorting Sarah to dinner - really he discovered that he likes "walking her", as if she is dog or pet?
Our cozy little Thanksgiving! This is before Sarah started to throw food - yes it was on the wall behind her and all over the floor - she ate everything but was done sooner than we all were!


P.S. I am thankful for my family being here with us, our health, our kids, our jobs, our roof over our heads and all our far away family and friends that we miss so much!! (Some of these friends are drive able - you know who you are - we hope we can see you sometime soon!!)

Jakob has said a couple times this week that he is "Thankful for the worker guys who work hard to make our streets and build buildings for us...I'm also thankful for the garbage man and our garbage can." I have to second those thoughts!

Recent Sarah happenings

Sarah turned 10 months this week and is growing like a weed (wearing 18 month clothes now), but keeping a healthy amount of chub on her too! She can say "Uh Oh", "Mo" (More), "A da" (All Done), and her hair chunk is long enough now to put a barrette in! She is walking and starting to run a bit now - very unsteady - seriously looks like Frankenstein when she tries to run! She is climbing up on things as you will see in a picture below.

Ummm...notice the healthy amount of chub on the thighs.

A new barrette.

Starting to hurry along!

Trouble in the dishwasher! (I'm sure I have this same picture of Jakob at this age). Literally I turned my back for a second and she was in it!

Nana and Papa flew in last night, so we will be busy hanging with them this week! If we don't post before Thanksgiving, hope you all have a great Turkey day!! Wishing you all much love, good food and warmth!!

Just some cute pictures

Jakob jumping in my leaf pile. The city workers came today to pick up the leaves from the streets, I had raked them last week, but more fell since then, so this is what we had left - and it was dry outside, so Jakob took full advantage!

And, a cute picture of Sarah. Nana gave her this hat, and now that she fits in it, she won't keep it on!

The kids and their tough faces, (Sarah is really just makes this face a lot when she is blabbering, but she looks tough or like a sweet little bull dog!).


Ok, I had to post a cuter picture of Sarah - not a "bull dog" one!

Bath Fun

Sarah was cracking up at Jakob because he was putting bubbles on his face. I'm not sure why that is so hysterical but oh my gosh, she thought it was funny!

Oh My God!

This is all I had to say after this happened:
Sarah was fussy tonight at dinner, didn't eat much, but I thought she was just tired from being at Daycare today and not having had a good nap. Mark normally gets her in the tub after dinner - he is sick with a sinus infection - so he laid down after dinner. I brought Sarah to the bathroom and undressed her, she was still fussing - this isn't normal, she is usually excited to get into the tub. She crawled out of the bathroom naked - so I run to get the video camera, I am videotaping her crawling and walking naked everywhere, she was holding onto her crib and laughing - super cute - until she looks over at me, eyes starting to get a bit red and a second later - POOP launches out of her sweet, little, chunky, butt!! AAAH! "Oh my God...what the heck just happened!" Then she laughs and STEPS back into it - meanwhile Jakob yells "What happened, what is that, is that poop?" I think Jakob was totally traumatized! He kept asking "Why did she poop on the carpet?" I was dying laughingm literally doubled over laughing, I yelled to Mark to watch her as I put her right into the tub - and what do you know, she was her happy self again - minus the poop! Jakob wanted to help me clean it, mostly by telling me how to - "You get those things (paper towels) and you get something to scoop it up." Thanks son!
Mark wanted me to take a picture of it for those of you who think Sarah is soooooo cute or that parenthood is sooooo wonderful - but I didn't. I do however have this on video - I tried to rewatch it, but our tape is warped! Which means that a lot of our video - Sarah's first steps etc - is all warped. Oh well! We've got the memories and the few videos on the computer! I was so hoping to pay for Sarah's college with this video!!

Later in the evening, Mark took out the trash in the POURING rain and he informed me that he had an even grosser experience while picking up our pumpkins to put in the garbage - as he picked them up his fingers sunk into the bottoms of the rotting pumpkins and there were slugs all over the bottom!! OH My GOD!!!! I'll take the sweet little girl launching poop anytime!!

Oh parenthood, it is so glamorous!!!

Walking!

For the Grandparents - again

Sarah, wearing her new rain coat - I bought this when I was preggers with her, thinking she would wear it in the spring - as it is a 12-18 month coat! So much for that! She just wears a fleece coat underneath it, if it's really cold.

Jakob and Sarah in the stroller, ready for their after rain, afternoon walk to the park to feed the ducks that nobody has fed all day (because it's been raining, plus I use this as an excuse to get Jakob out of the house).

Happy Birthday Daddy!

It is Daddy's 32nd Birthday and we celebrated by not letting him sleep in much and not take a nap, due to us not taking good naps today! 

Really we (the adults) celebrated last night, with dinner out to our local Italian place - super yummy. Mark had 2 white russians at dinner and therefore, we didn't make it to the movie later that night! 

Tonight we had a nice dinner - Omaha T-bone steaks - sent by someone special - potatoes and asparagus. Followed by chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream!  All of Daddy's favorite foods.

We gave him a new snowboarding jacket - as he hasn't had a new one since 1997 or so! 

Happy Birthday to the best, most patient, most sarcastic but most loving and sentimental Daddy in the whole world!

Some of our favorite pics of Daddy!

Daddy, practicing his Kung- Fu skills at an early age!
Daddy breakin' - I would pay money to see him do this now!
Daddy, after one of his favorite trips - Vegas Baby!
Mommy and Daddy, dressed up as W.T. for Halloween! 

(Jakob saw this picture and said, "Mommy that looks like you, but different, Daddy why do you have the black thing on  your face?")
Daddy changing his first diaper!
Hiking at Lost Lake.

Daddy, showing the kids how to be a "Man"!
Daddy and his baby girl!
Jakob just said "I will love Daddy even when I am a Daddy and old like him too!"

Perfect!

Love you, and Happy Birthday!

Goof Balls

Jakob and Sarah, in his bed, she was really trying to sleep.

Sarah making a super tired and goofy face!
Sarah and Roxy or "da da"

This Day

Today started out as a normal day, actually pretty ok, because Sarah slept in until almost 7 am. That was the end of it starting out ok! Today was Sarah's first day of daycare at Jakob's preschool, so it was an exciting and stressful day from the get go. I was running late, as Mark and I are trying to figure out our roles in the morning as he will be taking both kids to daycare, anyhow I am running around the house, trying to get dressed without getting snot, food or breastmilk on my shirt, as I go to put my coat on I realize that Sarah has grabbed my coffee mug and managed to open the lid and is shaking and pouring the coffee onto the carpet (Huge Smile on her face - one of the women at work told me later that I should be proud of her fine motor skills)!!! Meanwhile, Mark is outside trying to install her new carseat (she has outgrown the infant seat and Mark decided to do it this a.m. as it wasn't raining), so he can't grab her. The coffee didn't burn her, but it was all over her, so I picked her up, sat her in the kitchen, grabbed some papertowels - which of course ran out - grabbed more from under the sink - grabbed Sarah again as she is crawling onto the carpe, swung her back into the kitchen - decided to undress her in the kitchen - then ran to the puddle of coffee in the carpet - soaked it up - yelled to Jakob to get more papertowels - he is whining b/c he stepped in it and his socks are wet!! OH MY GOD!! Anyhow, I soaked the coffee up as best as I could, left super late, got stuck in serious traffic on the way to work. I arrived a 1/2 hour late, missed a meeting and had a ton of work to do!

Then, when I get to work I realize that I enrolled my family in the wrong dental plan - that doesn't cover our regular dentist - and Jakob just happened to see her last week - so we will have to pay for that!! Awesome!

I made it thru the rest of the day with a lot of chocolate, caffeine and venting. 

Then finally, the end of the day comes, I get in my car, and it won't start! Yep, it's out of gas, the empty light didn't come on, we just put in a few gallons on Sunday, so that I could drive it to Costco (by my work - planned to do that today) where the gas is 20 cents cheaper - didn't make it there today! I had to call Mark to come get me, he had to pick the kids up first, when they arrive it's dark and raining outside, Sarah is crying and over tired, and ready to nurse, Jakob is whining that he is hungry!

Thank God for our friends the Brink's! They had a gas can full that Mark was able to pick up and they had us over for dinner and much needed playtime for the kids - as we sat in 30 minutes of traffic trying to get home! 

But, after all the horror that went on today - it was all erased at about 8:15pm! I got on the computer, checked Carla's (The Prock Life) blog and what do you know, it says that Obama won - I couldn't believe it, we were just at the Brink's and there were still so many states that weren't counted an hour before! I should have put this together, but as I was turning on the computer I heard some loud blasts, I looked out the window, thinking there was a car wreck - then I realized it was fireworks!  So, I turn on the TV and there is McCain giving his concession speech!! Holy Crap! More loud fireworks! I did a little dance, Jakob yelled "What, Obama won, are you dancing, why...but Jake voted for Charlie Brown!" The teachers at Jakob's preschool asked the kids who they would vote for and some of the answers were: Charlie Brown, My Mommy and Daddy, The Oregon Ducks (Ian) and the rest answered Barack Obama (including Jakob). Jakob knows both McCain and Obama, in fact when we watched the debates he said that McCain looked "nicer because he smiles more(when McCain would kind of smile/grimace in response to Obama's answers)" - but he knows more about Obama from us and from walking in our neighborhood - the Obama signs are everywhere, in fact he can spell Obama.

Anyhow, after watching McCain's speech, we waited patiently to see Barack Obama give the most amazing speech! I teared up and got butterflies in my stomach - for the first time in my life around anything political!  So unbelievable that we have an African American President, I hope that our kids understand what an amazing and historical day we just took part in!

This day started out as one that I wished I'd stayed in bed, but ended as one where I can't even think about going to bed - I'm so excited!

(I know this post has many run on sentences and mispellings, I'm sure, but I'm too lazy to re-read it now - must catch up on the rest of politics - like who will be the Senator for Oregon!)

We've Got a Walker!

Sarah took 10 steps on her own tonight! I'm desperately trying to get a little video of it, but every time I break out the camera, she stops! 

This was the best I could do tonight, here she is pulling herself up and walking with Jakob (as he walked backwards), she is trying to get his lollipop!