Today I am thankful. Thankful for this beautiful life I have been blessed with.
November was a little chaotic and filled with a lot of growth and change...so I am getting back to the essence of this blog and sharing it with you. Our real life and the little everyday moments that make us grateful it is ours!
they were all ready for church with apples in baggies and I just couldn't
resist a picture of this sweet family of mine!
Chloe has some serious personality! Such a little cheese!
We have painted most of the rooms in our house and hung pictures and clocks and put books on bookshelves. We have switched out light fixtures, installed ceiling fans, rearranged the great room about 20 times and I painted a few furniture projects: specifically a california king bed frame, 2 nightstands and a buffet with a hutch...that doesn't sound like much as I write it, but they were all really big projects with lots of doors, drawers and details. It is really starting to feel like home.
Little miss Ellie has become the most fun and wonderful little thing. She smiles and coos and grunts while she scoots and crawls across the room. Up until last week she wasn't quite crawling...still more like an elephant walk mixed with an army crawl and a whole lot of rolling around mixed in, but now she is rocking on hands and knees and doing some clumsy crawling and basically just getting from point A to point B faster than I can keep up with her! She also got her 2 bottom teeth and started eating applesauce, mashed potatoes and baby oatmeal.
oh this little Ellie face is totally classic! I love her!
Brynn has become the funniest little lady. The things she says crack me up. "Your hair looks stinkin' cute," she told me the other day when she was playing beauty salon and I was her client. I laughed and she grinned proudly and responded, "Me and you are funny mom!" While she is still cripplingly independent and determined to get her way no matter what, she is getting better about communicating what she wants, allowing for some negotiation and respecting rules and routines. This is making my life much easier. She is also so glad that we live close to the temple. Often when she is upset or having a rough day, she asks if we can go to the temple. We drive over and her face lights up and the bad day melts away. I love her sweet tender spirit.
Chloe has become an artist. Her pictures are detailed and realistic and colored perfectly. She is also getting really good at resolving problems calmly. She has a bit of drama-queen in her, so when I hear her take a deep breath and then calmly say things like, "When you took that from me it really hurt my feelings, can you please give it back." as she is playing in the other room, it makes my mama-heart proud. She did such a great job in the primary program and loved practicing her part...before and after the program. She also has really embraced letters and sounds and is now writing notes by sounding out the words letter by letter and starting to sound out words. To think last year they told me she only knew 4 letters of the alphabet kind of makes me sick that she had to suffer through that class for a full year. She LOVES her dance class and practices her dancing all around the house.
Morgan is such a great kid. Each day I think to myself how lucky I am to call him mine. His reading is improving leaps and bounds each week which is so fun to watch. He finally learned to tie his shoes on his own (this is a skill he should have learned a while ago, but his slacker parents didn't take the time to teach him). My very favorite new thing he is doing is list-making. When my family was in town for Thanksgiving, he made a list of fun things he wanted to do after church on Sunday. It was not only a creative list of fun things that we could do together, but it was very well thought out. He had accounted for snack time and doing outside activities first since it would get dark later. I loved how he came to an item that didn't sound like it would work into our schedule, so he took a vote, "Who wants to skip 'guess what I'm doing'?" I think it is clear that he is his mother's child. ha ha.
Seth is rocking it at work...he, of course, doesn't phrase it that way, but despite being new, fresh out of school and still learning the ropes of his job, he has the top patient satisfaction scores in his whole practice. Yep, that's my awesome husband! How he manages to be great at work when we fill his days (and evenings) at home with projects, I don't know, but I am so glad he does!
Our favorite things about November have been:
-thankful things: writing down one thing each of us are thankful for each day...such a fun tradition and so fun to look back at the things we were thankful for in years past
- visitors: My mom and John came for Thanksgiving and were here almost a full week! We LOVED having them here and were sad when they had to leave. My brother Michael and his dog, Moose, came over from Spokane for the week that my Mom was here and stayed a few extra days after she left. Sarah (his girlfriend) came up from Eugene, and she and her family stayed with us from Thanksgiving through the weekend. We had a full house and it was so much fun! As soon as everyone was gone, it felt a little lonely and a little too quiet with just the 6 of us and Callie (never thought I'd say that about my house). We loved every second of it and can't wait until the next time we have visitors (hint hint)! :)
- fall: Oregon's fall lasted forever! Our leaves on the trees in our front yard are just now changing...it is crazy. Another fun thing...the bare trees are still green because there are varieties of moss growing on them. It has been hard to get in the holiday spirit since it feels more like early fall, but the weather has actually been really nice!
the view from the girls' bedroom window
- pillow fight: part of Morgan's list for our Sunday afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa was a pillow fight...it was hilarious!
-trip to the coast: we went to the Newport Aquarium and out to the coast with my family. The sunset was amazing!
definitely not lacking in expression!
Seth finally got his iPhone...he is obsessed
- the Japanese Gardens in Portland: Brynn was having a total meltdown, but it was gorgeous with all the fall colors!
this shot so perfectly captures the grandeur of these trees...love!
Up next...
Jessie the elf (on the shelf) has been up to some mischeif
We cut down a Christmas tree
My little baby turned 6 months old
stay tuned!
