Happy Thanksgiving!

We wish we were with ALL of you this Thanksgiving holiday! Since we can't be, we are enjoying a relatively quiet day by ourselves. One of the few benefits of having a quiet family day is that it gives you a little more time to reflect on what you are really grateful for in your life.

I am thankful for my two beautiful Moms and my two awesome Dads. I'm thankful that I have family who are friends and friends who are like family. I'm thankful that after 14 years, Robert has consistently been my truest friend and the great love of my life. I'm thankful to my gorgeous, amazing kids who keep my heart light and my soul full. I'm thankful to my little kicker joining us at the most unexpected time in our lives.

And just one of the many, many, small, extra things things that make me smile everyday would be the love-notes that the kids leave for me and each other. Once, when I told the kids that I needed to take a nap, they quietly got together and made me this card along with a VERY large glass of chocolate milk. (They know me well.)
Another time I wasn't feeling too well (I've definitely had more of those kind of days than I did with the twins) they made me this tie-die card. (This was done under a bit too much direction from Master Ethan, but it was very sweet, nonetheless.
Austin stuck this little scrap of paper on the fridge one day and I got a kick out of its randomness. I also spent the remainder of the day slightly nervous.
Alaina is the queen of leaving random sweet notes in places where I'll find them. When they took off skiing yesterday, I woke up and found this outside my door, on the floor.
This note was actually written for Miss Sara last summer. I thought it was so funny that I left it on the fridge forever. Sadly, I managed to misplace it before it got sent off (bad friend) but I did take a picture of it first. :)
I've also found random notes that she has left for her brothers. I didn't keep them, but I kind of wish I did. They say things like "Let's forget about our argument." Or "I'm sorry I yelled." I don't know if she ever gave those to them or was just writing her feelings down.

Of all her little notes, however, this last one is my absolute favorite. It is just written on part of a post-it note, but I love it!
I am the Beast! So are you!

Happy Thanksgiving.


Here are a few pictures of our Safeway bought meal. (It doesn't get any easier than that!)

It was just the right amount of food...you can see how full these guys are.
But not too full for a nice picture with Daddy...

Or me. I sure do love these kids! We got all 4 of them in this picture. :)

I've decided that I don't do 'pregnant' particularly well. I'm more of a problem maker. Besides being tired, big and round (still half the woman I was with the twins...but still) we've added itchy to the list. Very itchy. Everywhere. Nothing has really helped me out and I now realize why Scotty used to make me scratch his sweaty ol' back all the time. I have awesome back-scratching nails. Or, as it is in my case, head, hand, arm, chest, tummy, legs, neck, feet, face, back-scratching nails. I can't stop. I did talk to a doctor the other day and she suggested oatmeal baths. I immediately balked...thinking how awful a cold, oatmeal bath sounded in the middle of winter, but she assured me that baby would be just fine with hot water. (all this time I've been taking lukewarm showers!) So, I bought the gunk and eased into the boiling hot tub. I have to admit, I did feel a little better. Not only did it help with the itching, it made me feel a little weightless again. No achy back. No weird posture trying to balance baby with the rest of my body. So nice. I started wondering why I haven't gone swimming anywhere...I'm sure there is a pregnancy swim class offered somewhere around here.

And that is when I remembered. I actually did take one of those classes when I was pregnant with the twins. It was pretty silly but it always felt nice to bob up and down in the water for a while. I remember after one class, I decided that I wasn't ready to get back to normal gravity and chose to hang out at the pool instead. There was no one else in the pool with me and the only other person around was some young teenage life-guard slouched in his chair by the edge. After floating around for a while, I started to feel like I should at least attempt a little exercise while I was there. Everyone who knows me, knows what a terrible swimmer I am and so my usual routine consists mainly of one turtle-slow breast stroke, followed by at least two lengths of a lazy, catch-my-breath, back stroke. This day was no exception. Back and forth I went, mostly floating on by than doing any strenuous exercise. At some point I became vaguely aware how alert my little life-guard had become. Well, I thought, he should be. It is his job. Plus, maybe he could tell, by my painfully slow back stroke, what an awful swimmer I was. Perhaps he didn't particularly care to save a large, pregnant lady from drowning. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was staring at me a little too intently. Slowly, but surely I made my way down yet another eternal length of water until I finally touched the wall. It's sad, I know, but I needed to take a big break in order to start breathing normal again, even from a mostly-floating back-stroke. As I stood there, trying to catch my breath, I kept glancing over at the life guard, who had continued to keep a keen eye on me, despite the obvious fact that I made it to the shallow end and in all probability, would not be either drowning nor giving birth at that time. After a minute I started to cool down. It's so refreshing when a/c hits your skin and gives you tingly goosebumps all over your body. Strangely enough, I felt a little cooler on one side of my body that the other. Glancing down, it took me moment to comprehend my problem. Only half of my swimsuit was doing its job and covering my chest. The other half had managed to slip down to my belly leaving one lonely boob out in the great wide-open. The first thing I did (and naturally what all women would do) was to sink deep into the water, rapidly adjust my suit, and start hoping that perhaps no one caught my little faux pas. No one, except the leering, teenage boy, watching my slow but steady backstroke for the last 15 minutes.

It must have been better than the nature channel. Definitely not a sexy experience for the kid, but more of a giddy-curious, national geographic moment. (you know the moments I'm talking about...sneaking looks at all those topless African women wearing little more than their thick golden necklaces. Unless, of course, that was just me.) Sadly, after going through all I went through to get pregnant that first time with the millions of doctor visits up in the stirrups, along with the daily giant shots in the bum from Rob/Girlfriends and aggressive Samoan nurses (who always added an extra slap while barking "Relax!") I was immuned to embarrassment. Let's face it, modesty had left the building years ago. So, with a shrug and small smile, I forged out again towards the deeper water in my signature wobbly, unsteady breast stroke.

Thinking back to that experience now, I think I just might keep the water treading to the good ol' bathtub. Let's face it, the last 8 years hasn't exactly firmed anything up. Plus...I don't think I have the energy to manage even my floating backstroke.

Happy Halloween 2011!

We kept our Halloween pretty mellow this year. I entertained the idea of sewing up a Smurf Family costume but good sense prevailed and I decided to grab a bunch of costumes at some consignment sales. The kids were just as happy and I was able to stay sane...so it was, as Alaina would say...a win-win. We did managed to get enough umph to get ourselves over to the trunk-o-treat a church. I threw on a shirt of Rob's at the last minute and cut out some a paper face to stick on it it to make my crafty pumpkin outfit. Even though it wasn't completely necessary, I stuffed a pillow in front and in back to make a more rounded-out pumpkin.
We also somehow made it to the pumpkin farm this year. True, it was just two days before Halloween...but we made it! (The Halloween decorations, however, never made it out of their boxes. We did bring the boxes to the bottom of the stairs and looked at them for a few days before I decided that it would be more work to clean up the decorations than I was willing to put into it. Every party needs a pooper.)

Back to what we did do. The Pumpkin farm had a small maze.
A petting farm.
A Hay pyramid. (note: cheerleader Alaina on the top.)
A hay-ride.
And of course...Pumpkins!
I was pretty beat by the end of the day, and so Robert helped them all carve them up. As usual, things got pretty serious.
And to top that night off, Alaina adopted a creepy crawly for a few minutes. (The boys weren't quite as brave as their pint-size sister.)

Finally, on Halloween, we went over to our friends, the Ackers and got a merry group of trick-o-treaters together. (check out the hand-made lego-skeleton-head -- glowing eyes and all.By chance, Alaina saw her BFF, Molly and her little brother Luck while we were out and about. I loved the jelly-fish costume.
The last Halloween with only three little monsters. Next year we'll have our newest little tag-along all dressed up to the nines. Can you imagine? Four little Jones monsters? What could be better?