Merry Christmas!

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth...times two!!

Chubby November Duke

One night after dinner and before bed, Duke discovered that he could throw TWO balls at one time. He had a blast throwing two balls around the room, laughing and running back and forth.

 He's our portly little fella, soft and squishy, lots of pudge and a big belly that's always overflowing his diaper and pants. Chubby babies are the best, and we sure do love ours.

Some cute November reading

In november...

...Maisie drew her first "thing." She drew a mouse. Cute, isn't it?  :)

cookbook scmookbook

November was the month of me pounding away at the cookbook in every spare moment. Burnt me out by the end of it, haha! But I finished the e-book and it is now for sale on amazon.com! Jessica and I had hoped to release the print copy as well, but the printer/publisher we were using stunk. The quality was surprisingly terrible! I could have home printed a better copy. We have moved to a new printer/publisher, recommended to us based on quality. So we are hopeful that this will be a good fit and we hope to release it soon after the new year.

early november days

The weather was still warm. Maddie and Caleb would be playing outside with our neighbor kids, and Maisie would be begging to go outside.

Once Duke was up from his afternoon nap, we three would often go out front, color with chalk, "ride bikes," run around and explore.

Some days, if I had dinner simmering on the stove, we would stay outside until Daddy came home.

In fact, a lot of September and October days were spent like this too. 

Duke has advanced enough that these two have become good buddies.

Pretty girl.

I love the fall!

Under our gorgeous yellow maple that is always the most radiant of yellows come fall.

There goes a car. Duke LOVES himself some cars and trucks!

back to october because--ooops!--I forgot halloween

Our kids went around our neighborhood again with the neighbor kids. We really are blessed with very friendly and kind neighbors.

Maddie was Tinkerbell. She thought she just didn't look like Tinkerbell because her dress was the wrong color green or something like that. But everywhere we went people called her Tinkerbell just like I said they would. I thought she made an adorable Tink!

Her Tinkerbell shoes she made with the pompoms that fell off her slippers.

Caleb marches to the beat of his own drum. Despite all the great costumes/dress-up stuff we kept offering him, he wanted nothing to do with it. He made himself some paper weapons and declared himself a knight, and was very happy with his decision...despite the expression in this photo.

Maisie was our sweet little ladybug.

And Duke was Batman. The cutest, chubbiest Batman around!

PopPop & Bubby and Gair stopped by to see the kids dressed up before we went out.

 

Braden spontaneously decided to be the UPS man...

...which left me the only one not dressed up and us leaving in 2 minutes. So I ran upstairs and put on my Hawaiian dress and grabbed the kids' dress-up leis. And a little jacket because of course I'm always cold.

The kids had a great time of course! Maisie was thrilled to be with the big kids. It took her a long time to figure out everyone was getting candy at each door, because she just wanted to stay with Daddy instead of going to the doors.

Duke had a great time staying up late and getting to walk and run around the neighborhood to his heart's content. Who cares about candy when you're on the loose and up way past your bedtime?!

It was a fun evening, and the rain that had been threatening all day held off until we were just about done anyway. So once the rain began, we were already heading home.

the farm

The first Sunday in November, Braden, the kids and both sets of grandparents headed out to the farm for some fun. (I was off for some of my own fun with some ladies.)

The kids had a blast, so I heard.

Maisie and Duke playing in the corncrib.

Duke checking out the "co-co's."

Caleb loved these!

Maddie hanging upside down on the hay.