It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas

As tradition holds, we began our Christmas celebration as soon as Thanksgiving was over.  One of the first orders of business was to meet Santa and get a picture taken.  Everyone had a great time with this, that is, until it was time to actually meet Santa and get the picture taken, when Eliza decided she wanted no part of it.  Notice Ben is holding her to the side, just so that she would be in the picture.  After a few minutes, and watching Cat and Jack have a conversation with the Big Guy, she decided she could talk to him as well.  She was still wary, but I'm glad she felt comfortable speaking with him for a minute.

It was really exciting to get all of our decorations out.  I always love the way a home looks with Christmas decorations, and I think it was an extra-powerful transformation for our home, considering we still hadn't done any decorating at this point.  Christmas decorations made the house look lived-in, ha ha.  The kids always have their favorite things - the Little People Nativity Set, my mechanical frogs that croak Christmas songs, our baby sock activity advent calendar, and all of the Christmas books and movies we keep packed up with the decorations.

Then, the first Sunday in December, Cat and I participated in the Stake Christmas Choir Festival.  She and I had been singing with our Ward Choir, and the choir director asked Cat to sing a small solo at the end of our rendition of "Angels We Have Heard on High." She really did sound like an angel and got tons of compliments.

The Goings-on at School

A couple of fun things happened at the kids' school in November.  First was Book Character Day.  The kids get excited about any opportunity to wear something other than their school uniform, but this was almost like 2nd Halloween.  After talking about a few options, I realized it would be easy for Cat to dress up as Fern from Charlotte's Web, and that was also a fun choice because her class was reading the book at the time.  She loved the idea.  Done.

We had some discussion with Jack, too, and though I couldn't convince him to be Wilbur, he decided he would love to be a spider.  Charlotte A. Cavatica, to be specific.  He was SO EXCITED about it, too.  He begged and begged for me to get his costume ready.  We rounded up all of the black clothes we could find that fit him, then stuffed some of my long black socks with batting to give him extra legs.  A white yarn spiderweb wrapped loosely around him was the final touch.  He was a pretty great Charlotte, if you ask me.

I was out of town on Book Character Day, but Ben knew enough to take pictures for me.  Here is Cat's outfit, laid out the night before, complete with her own little Wilbur.

Eliza wanted in on the dress-up and picture-taking action too.

 The second fun event was Cat's Thanksgiving Play with the rest of the 3rd Grade.  The name of the play was "Turkeys On Strike" and it was all about what Thanksgiving would be like if we no longer had our traditional elements of the holiday - no turkey, no football, no Thursday celebration.  She loved the whole process of putting the play together.  She got the role she wanted (a TV reporter) and a bonus role: the biggest solo of the play at the end.  She was the only one who's casting required a costume change, which of course was awesome.  She did a great job, and we loved finally getting to watch the play we'd been hearing, and hearing about, for months.

Luke's 7th Month

This was a big month for Luke!  During a good 6-month well check, our pediatrician recommended we do sleep training with him to help him sleep through the night and it worked perfectly in just a few days.  Yeah for sleeping through the night again!

Also at that appointment, the pediatrician asked if Luke was having any separation anxiety.  When I answered that he wasn't, the doctor said nonchalantly, "He will."  And, as if in fulfillment of prophecy, Luke soon started having serious separation anxiety.  He would cry whenever I left the room, and gave a couple of babysitters a very hard time.

Luke also started sitting up this month.  Check out this big boy!

And he began crawling!  He just did the Army crawl, and only occasionally got his knees under him.  Need proof?

The kids were really excited about the crawling, and they also loved that he began "eating like a big boy!!!"  Yes, he had his first solid food this month.  He did great with the cereal we started with, and let each sibling have a turn feeding him.

  

Luke also wanted a turn feeding himself.

Once he mastered cereals, I gave Luke some mashed up avocado.

He wasn't a fan.

A big month, right?  And here's a look back...

Thanksgiving Dinner

Everyday Stuff - November 2013 Edition

Jack LOVES fish.  But to him, it's not fish if you can't see the scales and eyes and everything.
He prefers fish like these, which he fancies could swim away if they so desire, to just buying fillets.
(Of course, his first preference would be to go fishing with Papa and catch his own fish.)

Cat has a general dislike of all fish, whether you can see their scales and eyes, or not.

Cold enough for a fire!

One of the highlights of November was the Week of Forts.  At first, the girls had

their own fort and Jack had his own, but eventually they combined sheets and shared

one big fort, albeit with signs denoting which "camp" (side) belonged to whom, and why

each one was better.  We let them sleep in the forts one weekend night, which was a hit as well.

ExerSaucer: One Size Fits All

Krispy Kremes for good grades!  One free doughnut per A for each child.  Love it.

Cat's Barber Shop

Serves all ages.

Since we haven't had a baby bath with Luke, our preferred method of bathing
him has been to let Cat hold him in the bath while we wash him off.  This has
worked perfectly, and Cat has been an awesome helper!

Cat came up with this menu when we had some friends over for dinner one
night.  The back had dot-to-dot and tic-tac-toe boards, and each person
received a few crayons.

Jack likes cars so much that he even gave the letters of his name
their own sets of wheels, and their own road.

Baby Jack

In an effort to Get Out one Sunday evening we drove the kids up to Vivian Park
(the one Pres. Monson set on fire when he was a boy) in Provo Canyon to play
in the snow for a little while.  We also talked about Pres. Monson's story and the
importance of obedience.

Llama Shoes!

One day I took Eliza on a walk around our neighborhood
and she really wanted to collect leaves to bring home with us.
We displayed them proudly on our mantel.

Kindergarten Headdress

3rd Grade Headdress

Ben helped a family down the street move one day, and they wanted to sell this
drum set but had run out of time.  Ben offered to sell it for them, which means we
housed it until it sold.  The kids had a blast with the drums.

Jack and Eliza, where are you??

Peek-a-Boo!

Our thankful tree, flanked by coffee filter turkeys.

This poor tree was haunted by a Halloween Ghost,
and somehow a turkey ended up on top.