Christmas lights

I was so excited to have our Christmas lights up this year :) Last year it got cold too fast, and we were incredibly busy, so we never got the lights up. I was able to put the garland up myself, but not our beautiful snowflake lights. As many of you know, Micah and I got married on New Years Eve and our wedding was snowflake themed...so it's become my "thing" now. I found some snowflake twinkling lights a few years ago, and the big snowflakes to go with them. Then my dad found the twinkling icicle lights we used at our reception and gave them to us-so this is the first year we put those up as well.
For the record, Micah HATES getting up on the roof, for anything. Obviously he sees a lot of injuries from people falling off roofs and ladders, and his career depends on his hands...so I totally understand that. And every year we do this-I tell him that when we finally are making some decent money, we will hire someone to do this for us and he'll never have to worry about it again. Ironically enough, we had just had a dinner meeting with some financial advisers the evening before and they discussed disability insurance. The joke of the day was that Micah should have gotten some while he had the chance! Thankfully nothing happened, and everyone was safe. Uncle Dan had come out to babysit for us the night before, and since it was incredibly nice out-we grabbed the opportunity to get the lights up and have a little help.

My brave and wonderful husband who does many things to appease me :)

Uncle Danno lending a helping hand :)

Aiden had to help too. He went back and forth from playing in his Jumpy Jumpy for the last time and getting his tools to help with the lights.

Devin apparently wanted to play golf ;)

It's all coming together!

My snowflakes!

It's so pretty :) The icicle lights and the snowflakes on top all twinkle...and I think we are the only house in the neighborhood with twinkle icicle lights :)

It's been really windy these past few days, so a few snowflakes have flipped up on the roof...and I need to fix the lights on the garland-but I'll wait until the temperature gets above 11 degrees!
Thank you honey for putting our lights up this year! And Uncle Danno for helping out!!

4 Thanksgivings

I have a lot of catching up to do! And part of the reason is because we have been so busy, hence the 4 Thanksgivings :) The weekend before Thanksgiving my mother-in-law had hers that I already posted about. Then on the Wednesday before, Aiden had "Feast Day" at his preschool, and Grammy and Kiki drove out to celebrate with us. On Thanksgiving Day we went to my Cousin Anne's for dinner, and we just wrapped up the festivities at my Mom's this past weekend. Needless to say, we are a little turkeyed out...but we enjoyed every single one of them-and I loved not having to worry about dinners for a few days with all the leftovers :) Here are some pictures of us stuffing our faces.

Feast Day-also the day we had to take Devin in to the doctor for Croup-poor little guy.

Sick or not-he's still a goober!

My little Indian :)

This is a rare picture! Aiden is one of the pickiest eaters I've met...and sooooooo slow. He chews forever. He has learned that he doesn't have much of a choice and needs to eat what we give him-and he does. It just takes him forever. But I have picture proof now that he eats!

My cousin Anne is waving in the corner with the rest of the family all around. It's been great getting to know this side of my family better, and we love that they open their homes to us during the holidays when we can't be with our own families.

This was the best picture I could get of my cousin Tina...she apparently blinks in over 90% of pictures!

The "kiddie" table :)

I had to try and get Brian's face in the picture.

And finally Thanksgiving at my parent's house. My Aunt Judy from Australia was in town so that's why they waited so she could come. Too bad my sister Lauren could not be there since she moved to Colorado-but she was in our thoughts and we're looking forward to seeing her in a week when she comes in for an early Christmas ;)

Daddy took a pictures so I could be in it.

The boys were just wiped out!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone ;) Hope you had an enjoyable holiday and counted all your blessings...we sure have! Now the countdown to Christmas has begun...

Apple Pie

For Thanksgiving I made an apple cranberry crisp, and I had almost a full bag of apples leftover. So I decided to try my hand at making an apple pie. I hadn't made one by myself since high school...so this was going to be interesting! And I was inspired by my neighbor who had made pumpkin pies from scratch and shared a piece with us, and then later a whole pie. Well, after I got it in the oven I was pretty darn proud of myself because it looked pretty good. Then after a minute or so when I was trying to put together a mini pie for Aiden since I had a little dough and apples leftover, I realized I had forgotten to put some butter on top of the apples before the top crust! I was so frustrated and praying it was going to at least be edible now. Well, it came out and looked pretty good. Of course Micah's pager went off and he had to go to the hospital as I put it back in the oven for another few minutes, and was in the middle of making dinner for the night. Oh well, it should be here when he comes home.
So I let the pie cool a bit and then cut into it so I could send a piece over to my neighbor as a Thank You for her pie. But of course I had to try a bite or two and make sure it was edible enough to share. The Devinator was right there with me begging for a taste too. He really enjoyed it and was really mad when I wasn't giving him more. We still had to eat dinner! I ran the pie over and Carol seemed to like it-hopefully she didn't gag after I left ;) Just kidding...it's actually pretty good! I was getting dinner out of the oven, and looked over and saw this:

Of course I grabbed him off immediately, but had to snatch up my camera because I thought it was hilarious. He has just started really climbing on our furniture, so I know he was probably pretty proud of himself for getting up there. So I did let him get up one more time to get the pic and then scolded him gently ;)

He was of course inconsolable, and had been for the past half hour since his first initial bites, and I gave in and fed him a few more bites before dinner.

And here is Aiden with his pie. I haven't tried that one yet, but I'm sure it's good-he seemed to enjoy it enough ;)

Poor sick Devin

Earlier this week Devin developed croup. He had his 15 month check up Monday morning, and had woken up with a bit of a cough that I only heard until after breakfast. The doctor gave him a decongestant and said he was doing great, 90% for weight and 75% for height. Then he woke up from his nap and sounded so awful, and Tuesday didn't get much better. I had called the doctor to tell him I think he had croup, and he prescribed him an antibiotic over the phone. Then on Wednesday when Kiki and Grammy came into town for Aiden's Feast Day at preschool, they expressed their concern and thought he really should be seen. I waited for Micah to get home to listen to him before calling the doctor again. Sure enough after Micah called them they asked us to come on in. The doctor ordered a chest X-ray to be sure it wasn't developing into pneumonia, and prescribed him a steroid, a different antibiotic, and some breathing treatments.
So, as you can imagine, for all you parents out there who have had to go through the torture of breathing treatments, they don't go over well! Neither did taking the x-ray...but we haven't heard anything about that, so I think we're in the clear. Anyway, as he's gotten used to the routine, he's usually good for about 5 minutes, and then he's done. So we have to physically hold him down so we can finish. Well, tonight the poor guy was all tuckered out, and after only a minute or two of fighting me, he went really calm and just zoned in watching the Wonder Pets. Then he started nodding off! It was the best breathing treatment ever ;) I know the instructions say not to use while sleeping, but I think it was ok.

The treatments and the meds are working, you can't hear him breathe any more, and he is getting better every day. I hate it when they aren't feeling well, but I sure love the cuddling :)

Family Pictures

We celebrated Thanksgiving a little early with Micah's family since we were needing to stay home for the holiday because Micah was working a few hockey games. Since we were going to be in town, Sandy took the opportunity to get some family pictures done...something we have all been needing to do for the past year. It worked out well because Devin is a little older now and was easy to entertain-to an extent. But he's also independent and mobile, so that was an obstacle we had to work with. Overall the shoot itself went well, and quick. The entire process on the other hand...not so much. But in the end we got some great pictures, and I'm so glad we finally did it. We have some of them in frames, so I have them sitting against the walls where I want them hung-and I have found Devin on several occasions just laying down and staring at them :) It is so cute to see him just stare at everyone, not just himself, and be so content. I snapped a few pictures quick, but he also has been seen with his head on his hands-which I did not capture. But you get the idea ;)

Early Thanksgiving

We went home to have an early Thanksgiving with Micah's parents this past weekend. It was good to spend some quality time with family and not do much work...on Micah's part at least! Here are a few pictures that Sandy took of our time together.

Sandy and Larry

Getting ready to stuff our faces!

I love that they had their own "turkeys" :)

Digging in!

And then after dinner...

Later that night we went to see Adam's new house he just bought-it is so cute!!

Just hanging out in his new pad :)
It was a fun weekend-I love the holidays!