The Shedding Is How You Know It's Real!

Typically, for Christmas we get one of those fur trees (I think that's what they're called) because they lose their needles at a much slower rate than the "classic" Christmas trees, the only downside is that I think they look a little fake. So we went to a tree farm to cut our own tree so we could have a cute, classic Christmas tree.

This is the result of my great idea:

It doesn't even look like a real tree and we filled that trash can to the brim with pine needles. And this was after the tree had been placed in one of those tree shaker thingies.*

*Pretty certain that's what they're called.

The House That Sugar Built

I have always wanted to make a gingerbread house. It's a house made out of baked goods and covered in candy, what's not to love? Unfortunately, I never seemed to get around to making one but last month Jason stumbled upon a cute and easy kit that we decided to bring with us on our visit to Tennessee. I was going to finally see what making a gingerbread house was all about and the kids could have fun decorating it. Well, apparently it's all about careful assembly and allowing the frosting to set overnight. Since our visit was so short this year, we weren't able to get to the decorating part so we had to take it back home with us. I hate that Aubrie and Jacob had to miss out on the decorating, but Maya still managed to have a great time. I'm pretty sure that for every piece of candy she placed on the house, at least two went in her mouth.

Looking Forward to Christmas

The Pajamas Are What Makes It Work

We made an abbreviated visit to Tennessee for Thanksgiving this year, so we had to cram as much fun as possible into just a few days. Luckily, Maya was up for the challenge.

We also celebrated Christmas with Jason's family since we won't see them in December. Thanks to this trip, Maya is now armed with everything she needs to be a ballerina princess.

Perseverance

Remember the ducklings from this summer? Well, one made it!

Improvements

Getting better at the whole "family picture" thing. I like how we all seem to have the same level of zombie smile going.

Trick or Treat

Little girl in search of goodies for sick Granny. Doctor believes candy (especially Snickers and Reece's Peanut Butter Cups), cookies, and cakes will cure what ails her poor Granny. If you choose to help, just leave the goodies by your door.

Wolves need not respond.

Fall Fun

Pumpkin Patch

Last week, Maya went on her first school field trip. I thought the highlight of her trip would be riding a school bus, or at the very least, honorable mention. She loves spotting school buses and talks about when she will finally be able to ride in one. It's such a big kid thing to do! So after picking her up, I asked her about the school bus. But she informed me that it wasn't a school bus. It was a bus, because it's white. Details.

The field trip took the kids to a local pumpkin patch where they each picked out a pumpkin of their very own. They also learned how you make pumpkin pie, which resulted in Maya shoving her pumpkin in my face and demanding I turn it into pie about every five minutes.

Granny and Papaw sent these pumpkin inserts last year for Halloween, and Maya had fun putting them to good use. An ideal gift for the carving-challenged.

Cat:
Pig:

All by Myself

Maya's favorite phrase for the past several months has been, "I can do it all by myself." Whether it's washing her hands, pouring the milk, or driving the car, Maya insists that she can do it "all by myself." It would be nice if instead of calling me into her room in the middle of the night because she no longer wants her blanket on her, she could just decide that she can do it all by herself. Or maybe learn to stop whining all by herself, or go to bed all by herself, or how about eat her vegetables all by herself? If only she was taking suggestions.

It's Flat Aubrie!

We were lucky to have another visit from Flat Aubrie this year. Maya's cousin, Aubrie, sent a flat version of herself for us to photograph and send back to her school. This time we made sure to take her around town, including the zoo. I really wanted to get a picture of her next to a gorilla, but when we checked out the exhibit, the gorillas were out of sight. We decided to check back later and I'm glad we did because one eventually came around and hung out for a while. The zoo was surprisingly busy for a Friday morning and all of the parents were scrambling to get their kids into position for a picture next to the gorilla. They were fast, but I was faster:

I was impressed with how everyone waited patiently as I took several pictures of the gorilla with Flat Aubrie. Not a single weird look or comment.

Search And Rescue

I don't know how it happened, but we had a pretty healthy summer. I didn't realize this until a few days before Maya was to go back to the cootie fest also known as school. Sure, you know everyone is going to eventually come down with whatever bug is going around, but still, you don't want it. It only took a week for Maya to come down with croup, that made for several worrisome nights. A couple of weeks later, she brought home a cold. At first you find yourself mad at whoever dared to allow their infected kid to go to school, but after a couple of days of whining that makes a Banshee's scream seem like a heavenly chorus, you toss them out at drop off with a smile and a wave and gun it.

So we've been congested. For a while.

The other day I was asking Maya to kindly remove her arm from the inside of her nose and she told me that "It's OK because I'm just getting my raisin."
"You put a raisin up your nose?"
"Uh huh."
This was a first, so I decided to turn her upside down to see if I could spot the raisin; I was armed with q-tips and a tweezer. Don't judge me. What would you have done? I determined that she was clear and we went about our day. It wasn't until two days later while Jason was playing with Maya that a raisin appeared on the floor. Maya was very excited. "Hey, there's my raisin! Look Daddy, my raisin came back!"

Sad Little Garden

Our apartment has a nice balcony where I decided to have a small container garden this year. This past spring I did a little research and bought everything I would need to grow tomatoes, green and red peppers, jalapeno peppers, cayenne peppers, and cherry tomatoes. Being the responsible adult that I am, I decided I would have an organic garden, it's so much better for your body and the environment! And so easy! You just water the plants and if you see any bugs you yell at them and if things start to die inexplicably you just yell harder.

My garden did not do well.

How Do I Look

I present to you a video of Maya singing a weird song that's dedicated to the fast food industry. It is basically a list of all the fast food restaurants accompanied with little hand gestures. For instance, the first place she mentions is Dairy Queen and she's pretending to milk a cow.

Last spring, the three year olds sang this song at the spring program. It didn't exactly go with the theme of the other songs, since they were either about God or having fun outdoors. I was going to reflect on all of that but instead I'm more interested in what she's doing with her hair:

I took this video several times but she always became preoccupied with her hair when she would come to the part about Burger King (seriously, this song is just odd). When asked why she wouldn't stop playing with her hair, she said, "I was just making it all pretty."

I had to show Jason this video as soon as he came home to verify that I do not do whatever it is that Maya is doing with her hair. I just wanted to be clear that it didn't come from me. However, I will be more aware of the faces I make whenever I look into the mirror seeing as how this would not be the first time I have been mocked by my toddler.

Birthday Boy

I found that I have no desire to make fun of my brother for getting older, like I do with so many others. It's different when the person is younger than you; you can't help but think, if he's already this old, then I'm. . . eek. It just doesn't end well.

But all of that doesn't mean I can't pull out old pictures to make fun of him for other reasons. Sure, he's a tall, hairy, twenty something that knocks people over whenever he pats them on the back, but for some reason I have him stuck in my head as an 8 year old. He may forever be that obnoxious little brother that always put the cats' lives in danger and wouldn't stop getting into trouble. However, there was much to learn from it.

There was that time he threw the kitten in the well and dad was all "Hmm, yeah, it's not going to make it. Did your mother make dinner?" It taught us that we must always go to mom if we want help fishing kittens out of wells. How else would we have learned that? Also, I never would have known that you could twirl a cat through the air like a lasso by holding onto its tail. Silly me, I always thought cats were for petting.



Dad would teach us that if you mess with the farm equipment you won't live to tell about it; but with a little brother you learn that you can flip a three wheeler, run a semi into a grain bin, and drive a truck into a barn (that's housing your dad's beloved sports car) and live to tell about it. Of course, you may not be able to talk about it while sitting, but you'll be able to talk about it.




It didn't take him long to teach us that, in his mind, pants are optional. Also, see all that grass? It doubles as a bathroom.

These are life lessons, people.

Happy Birthday Morgan