Thanksgiving - Part 2

My aunt has this dog - an American bulldog. He is a year old, still a puppy really. Analese had a great time playing with Hank the dog. Hank got to come inside the house briefly and he was delighted with Analese and she was delighted with him! Here is a pic of Analese with Hank and my Aunt Judy. My cousin Griffin is also in this pic:



It was very amusing that Hank was scared to death of Mariele! He must weigh at least 80 pounds and he was terrified by the smallest person in the room. If Mariele started to crawl toward him, he would cower to the other side of the room. We all laughed at one point because he jumped up on the back of the sofa because he thought Mariele was going to get him!



We did another Thanksgiving on Black Friday with Lee's family:



Lee's mom makes the best yankee dressing, and even though I was born and raised in the south, I am still partial to yankee dressing.

On Saturday we walked The Big Dam Bridge in Little Rock:



We walked back and forth across the bridge twice (and my legs were feeling it today). Analese had a great time running and playing.





Thanksgiving week was fun. It went by way too fast. Now we can't wait until Christmas when we go back to Arkansas.

Thanksgiving - Part 1

We traveled to Arkansas for Thanksgiving this year. We all were a little sick with colds, but we had a blast anyway. On Thursday, we visited my aunt and uncle down in my hometown of Monticello. They just purchased a 105 year old house that used to sit on a big cotton plantation. They have a really pretty yard, and we took some pics of the girls out in their yard. The tree is huge and very climbable. And the front porch swing was certainly a nice touch:










I will post Part 2 of Thanksgiving later.

Mariele's new skill!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Mariele is 10 months old today!

Phone Photo Friday - Vegetarian Thanksgiving!

Wordless Wednesday

Random Tuesday

* Decided to maybe do this random post thing on Tuesday. I must be too sleep deprived for creativity, because I have not come up with a better name for "Random Tuesday." I will keep thinking about it.

* Happy blogiversary to ME! It came and went two days ago on November 15th. I just randomly thought to myself, "I must have been doing this a year now." And sho nuff! May have to bake myself a belated blogiversary cake!

* Finding less and less time to blog lately. It is good and bad. Good that I seem to be efficiently getting things done. Bad that I don't have a little time to myself to sit down and blog.

* Analese and I are going to see The Nutcracker on Dec. 12th!

* Analese "bought" her Cinderella dress at JC Penney. She wore it three days in a row. I finally got her out of it yesterday, and I washed it and hung it in her closet. She can't wait to wear it to The Nutcracker. I will take pictures!

* Analese's preferred style of clothing lately is long dresses. She thinks she is a Duggar child (for those familiar with 18 Kids and Counting). Yesterday she wanted to wear her yellow sundress. I got it out of her closet for her and she put it on and told me it was Mariele's dress, not hers, because it did not go "way down." She actually just forgot that the yellow sundress is NOT a floor length gown. I showed her Mariele's yellow sundress to prove to her that the one she was wearing did, indeed, belong to her. She was a bit disappointed to wear a shorter dress after wearing the Cinderella dress three days in a row!

* Analese's non-napping combined with Mariele's teething is KILLING me! Sighhh......

* One week til our big Arkansas road trip adventure!

* Ever since I discovered Boca Burgers at Red Robin, my life has been so very happy! And Freeb!rd World Burrito is on an even plane with Chipotle - maybe even a touch better, depending on my mood.

* That is all for now. I promise to try to remember the random interesting things to blog about.

Phone Photo Friday

They are all of Mariele this week. Here she is at Red Robin chowing down on a french fry. Kinda. She likes to hold things in her mouth. She doesn't really care if it is a french fry or a toy.



We had this baby backpack in Colorado for hiking. Analese rode many a time in the baby backpack, and she always loved it. We don't have quite the great hiking opportunities here in Texas, but Lee decided to give Mariele a ride in the backpack while we "hiked" over to the playground. Here she is at the beginning of our "hike."



She loved it just as much as Analese always did. Babies love to be up high where they can see everything.

Here she is when we got back home.



Fast asleep!

And just for fun, I will pull a couple of similar photos of Analese.




And yes, those are two different backpacks. The first was a borrowed one from our neighbor. And we liked it so well that we bought our own, which you see in the second photo.

Crazy Relations!

Here is my conversation with Analese this morning:

A: Stop talking to me!

Me: I can talk to you anytime I want to. You are my daughter!

A: I'm not your daughter. I'm your husband!

Wordless Wednesday - Busy Busy!

Of passport photos...

Yesterday we had Mariele's passport photos made. They really turned out great! She was nothing but entirely happy as we sat her in front of the background. I was able to stand behind the photographer and make her smile! Here they are:



These are in stark contrast to the ones of Analese when she was 13 months old. She was NOT happy to be there having her photo taken by a complete stranger. He took several sets, and gave them all to us. One very similar to the set on the far right ultimately ended up on her passport.



I was thinking about the differences in their personalities. I think Analese is turning into a drama queen. She feels her emotions very passionately. Mariele is an eternal optimist, forever cheerful and very even-tempered. I am hoping that Mariele will help to keep Analese on an even keel through the years.

The Money Store?

Analese has the answer to boosting the economy.

First a little background: Analese has a bad case of the "gimmees" lately. When we are in a store, she sees the toys on the shelves and she wants it. Now. Of course, we are trying to train this behavior out of our child (with no help from the doting grandparents). So when we were in JC Penney a couple of weeks ago to buy Analese some pants, which she needed as a result of a growth spurt, she spotted the Cinderella brand dresses. These are beautiful, very formal, lacy, princessy dresses with full skirts that would be appropriate for a wedding or some other formal event. She is VERY into dressing like a princess lately. So she very badly wanted one of these dresses. We tried to use this opportunity for a teaching moment. The dress costs money (although the price tag was really quite reasonable for a dress of that caliber). We can't get the dress today. Her response? "I have money!" OK - this is actually true. She has a bunch of change in a bank. She very much enjoys playing with her coins, although lately we will only let her do this in her room behind closed doors because of Mariele. So Lee's idea is to tell her that she can bring her coins back and give them to the lady at the check-out counter (we will pay the difference, but she won't know that) and she can buy the dress. This would get Analese the dress, teaching her that the dress costs money, and it would get rid of her coins which are dangerous around Mariele anyway. Great idea!

Fast forward to today. She has not forgotten this offer.

A: I want to go to the pants store and give the lady my money so I can get the Princess dress and then we can go to the money store and buy me some new money.

D'OH!

What is next? The mythical money tree?

Neat project - Maybe NOT for a 3.5 year old!

Last year at Christmas, Lee's brother and his wife gave us this Christmas ornament decorating kit. Apparently, Lee and his brother and sisters got to make these ornaments long ago in Christmases past as they were growing up:



Analese and I were feeling the Christmas spirit yesterday, so as soon as I got Mariele down for her afternoon nap, we gave it a whirl. Here are all the parts:



Basically you have these metal frames and these little plastic beads that you place into the frames according to a numbered color scheme:



Then about 15 man hours later, you bake them in the oven at 375 until the plastic beads melt into the frame. OK - I am exaggerating a little bit, but I kid you not, it took me 2 hours. Mariele was awake from her nap before I was finished. Analese became bored and went to watch Jonah the Veggie Tales Movie.




Analese is having a great time playing with the finished product. And we will hang them on the Christmas tree in a couple of weeks!

This would be a great project to occupy a couple of hours of time for a couple of eight year old kids. Instead, it occupied this 34 year old mommy's time. Well, I need an occasional art project to balance out both hemispheres of my brain!

Phone Photo Friday

At the zoo!

And here they are!

The crazy feet!



I had colored sharpies in the house! I was a little concerned about the permanence of the sharpie, but they way I see it is if sharpies would stay on skin forever, then why would people be injecting ink into their skin to get tattoos?

Well, I guess time will tell if I regret this or not.......

Bloggy Slacker

Yep - that's me! But I promise I am working on developing a weekly random post. Not sure which day it will be on, but I am planning on taking notes in my iPhone to use in the composition of this weekly post. I am very pleasantly busy lately. I am having a blast with homeschooling. We are doing our usual weekly activities. The fall is beautiful here, allowing us to enjoy some nice time outdoors. And I recently discovered the popular social networking site, book face (if you don't already watch The Office, you should. It is hilarious!) Seriously, the great thing about facebook and twitter is that I can do both of these from my iPhone, which is usually either on my person, or a few feet away. It is nice to feel connected. But I don't plan to neglect the blog long term. Like I said, I've just been pleasantly busy. Gotta go try to make Analese have "crazy feet" for The Little gym today. I don't have any crazy nail polish. Hmmmm.....not sure how I'm going to do this from what I have in my household, but I'm up to the challenge.

Wordless Wednesday - Reminiscing 3 years ago

Trick or Treat!

We participated in a nice short group trick-or-treat. Analese got way more than enough candy! Here are some of the highlight pics: