Gobble, gobble

Black Friday.  Otherwise known as our day to recover from the stuffing-our-face-hangover caused by Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house.

I think my entire family enjoyed the "brown Thursday".  What's not to love?  Going over to Grandma and Grandpa's house, snacking and eating all day, watching movies on TV all day (after the Lion's game of course), and staying up late.

I love this holiday for so many reasons, but mostly because it's the start of the holiday season.  Starting with the ginormous pile of sale ads in our Thursday paper.  Flipping through the Target and Kmart ads get me all giddy thinking about the gifts I still have left to buy and the season that's upon us.  That and homemade pumpkin waffles were enough to get me in a spectacular mood.

After a stressful hour drive in the inch of snow (black ice is no joke), it was so nice to walk into my parents' warm house with the scents of turkey and stuffing in the air.  Delicious!

Evan definitely enjoyed his first official Thanksgiving.  I don't consider him experiencing a Thanksgiving until he's old enough to scarf down the turkey, mashed potatoes, etc.  Some of his favorites included the carrots, sweet potatoes, and stuffing.  The turkey was a bit challenging to consume with his....7 teeth.

Aside from the grub, the whole family enjoyed being together for the first time since the spring.  My grandma, two uncles, and aunt Marianne came out.  All of whom I wish we saw more of.  And the night was finished with some homemade apple pie and pumpkin cake and a Facetime session with my brother and sister-in-law in Portland.

Sean also managed to celebrate a first for something - his first hot chocolate!  In an espresso mug, which just happens to be the perfect size for a 3 year old.  How stylish is he?!

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, but this one is surely one for the books.  I'm thrilled my extended family was able to come.  That's definitely something to be thankful for.  That, yesterday, everyone was in good health and spirits.

Today, we all rolled out of bed a little later than usual (thank you, boys!).  Our main goal was to get the house ready for Christmas!  The tree is up, the lights are up outside, Cookie Monster (Sean's Elf) arrived, and we went to downtown to watch Santa's arrival by fire truck this evening!

Sean was ecstatic to see Santa arrive in one of his favorite vehicles and to me, it's really started the momentum for this holiday season!  I'm so thankful for my little family.  It's such a joy to experience these holidays through my children's eyes.

Happy Thanksgiving, from my family to yours!!

'Tis the season for Pinterest!

I confess.  I have a slight obsession with Pinterest.  To the point where I'm staying up later than I should on weeknights, pinning to my heart's content on my Kindle.

It's a catch-22.  As relaxing as it is to lay down for the first time all day and silently daydream about all the fun crafts I can do with my kids or recipes I can make, it also gets my adrenalin pumping.  Because as I pin all of these ideas and recipes, I start instantly planning all the ingredients or things needed to make them and suddenly I'm excited to go to Michaels, Target, or Kroger.  I'm not only pinning, I'm now making my shopping list, my crafting list, my meal plans for the following week, and my lesson plans at work.

But, this is my favorite time of year on Pinterest.  All the festive holiday pins with delicious Christmas trees made out of fruit or pizza or even a cheese ball.  The Elf on the Shelf ideas that someone is creative enough to think of and I'm sly enough to borrow (okay, steal).

One of the ideas I saw this year for Thanksgiving was to take the usual turkey hand prints for kids and put them on a table runner.  I love this idea!  The pin I used suggested using the same runner year after year and adding your kids' hand prints.  Perfect!  Since I'm not big into sewing, I didn't have any fabric to use as a runner other than burlap.  So, burlap it was!  Unfortunately, with burlap I can't easily write their names and year, but I'll figure something out.  For now...I love the way it looks on our dining room table!

Considering Thanksgiving is a mere two days away and our Elf will be "arriving" shortly after, I got on the ball this year and found this adorable mailbox from the dollar store.  Yes, it was $1.  I've been telling Sean that his elf will be arriving in the mail any day this week so he's been checking both yesterday and today.  Little does he know, he'll arrive on Friday in this mailbox!

I plan to do our pancake breakfast, similar to last year.  Although instead of reindeer pancakes, I'm going to do snowmen with mini marshmallows and bacon for the scarf.  He'll love it!

Another Christmas pin I've had for 2 years now is the felt Christmas tree for toddlers.  I'm not worried about Sean touching ornaments on our big tree this year, but Evan is going to be a nightmare.  So, I'm hoping this felt tree will let him feel like he can take the ornaments off and decorate the tree any way his heart desires.  The felt was about $8 from Michael's and it took me two nights of cutting pieces and taping it up to the wall.  I can't wait for the boys to see tomorrow when they wake up!

Since Sean is able to count well into his 20's, I saw this Santa countdown pin where your child glues a cotton ball on creating Santa's beard.  I guess it's technically counting "up" to the big day.  Either way, it combines counting and fine motor skills of gluing.  An easy printable worksheet that I colored in and glued on construction paper.

Speaking of preschool activities, my jaw dropped when I saw the pin for "Silver Bells".  Essentially, Hershey Kisses with dots on the bottom that have uppercase and lowercase letters.  The child has to make matches.  This is perfect for Sean considering chocolate is his motivation to do anything.  For every 5 matches, he gets a piece of chocolate.  And given his attention span, he gets one piece of chocolate and he's ready to move on to something else.

Last, but not least in our preschool activities, is the crocodile "Cascade" tub.  I turned a Cascade dishwashing gel container into a crocodile giving him eyes and a nose.  I'm going to fill the bin with flashcards.  Sometimes it will be letters, other times numbers.  Eventually, phonics flashcards and sight words.  There's a cute saying that I saw on the pin that encourages Sean to pull a flashcard from the tub.  I think I'm going to give this one as a Christmas gift this year.  He's big into games, so I know this will be a hit.

It's been fun spending some one-on-one time with Sean doing these preschool games and activities I've found on Pinterest.  Considering I have the "mommy guilt" about being away from him and Evan five days a week, it's rewarding to dedicate 15 minutes a night to working on some of these skills with him.  And in just a short time, he's already learned to write his name (for the most part)!

As for me and my Pinterest obsession, I still have 12 things on my list of must-do projects before Christmas.  I'm ready for the challenge!

November Happenings

Squeeeeee!!!  Two more days of work until Thanksgiving break!  It's first break of the school year after the longest stretch ever.  Once we've made it to this point, we are downhill from here.  Seriously.

After all our Halloween festivities, we made an effort to tone down the events for November.  But, birthday parties come about, great opportunities present itself to have friends over for a Mega Bloks party, and Dinosaur Train Live rolls into the Fox Theater for a production.  And just like, we're as busy as we were in October.

That's okay.  I think secretly, deep down inside, I live for these things.

When else can you justify having 5 of your girlfriends over with their kids for a play date that includes FREE toys?!  And coupons for Christmas gifts?!  Please.  Thanks, House Party!!

We enjoyed some trail mix (a.k.a everything I had in my cupboard that I could possible combine together as a snack - and hey - it was tasty!), grapes, and the songs that the Billy Beats Piano provided us.  As annoying as the toy can be, the kids loved it.  And I love that I set it aside and plan to re-wrap it for one of Evan's Christmas gifts.

Thankfully, we're going on two weekends in a row of everyone in our house being healthy ::knocks on wood furiously::.  So, I was thrilled to take Sean out tonight for a very special night out with mommy.  We headed down to the Fox Theater with Aunt Jackie and cousin Adelaide to see Dinosaur Train Live.

It was so fun to see the Fox and other parts of Detroit all ready for Christmas!  Gosh, the trees they put up in the Fox Theater and the nutcrackers are absolutely stunning.

I guess I should talk about the show.  It was quite possibly the strangest theatrical production I've seen yet, but it had some great moments and the kids loved the songs.  Sean has seen Dinosaur Train a few times, but doesn't know the names of the characters by heart and he still seemed to enjoy it.  I think the hardest part was getting over the fact that people weren't wearing costumes.  They were attached to large stuffed puppets with wire contraptions.  I don't see the benefit to this at all.  Luckily, it didn't make Sean question it at all.  But, Jackie and I exchanged a few questioning looks.

The kids enjoyed it, nonetheless.  They stuffed their faces with popcorn and fought each other with glow sticks that were $10 each and hopefully worth every penny.

Sean asked if we could go back to the theater tomorrow to see it again, so I'm sure he had a great time.

As for the rest of this month...we have delicious food to look forward to with Thanksgiving at my parents' house and the official start of the holiday season according to Scott.  We'll probably put up the tree and decorate the house on Friday while we're home together.

It's going to go by so fast.  I can tell already.  So, the rest of our weekend is wide open with time to enjoy as a family before the craziness of the holiday season starts next week.

Note to self:  Pause a few times during this season to marvel in it all.  They're only this little for a short while.

A dose of reality.

Life is funny sometimes.

Just when you think you've got everything figured out, life hits with a dose of reality.

Pretty much one month after Evan was born, I was ready for him to be a toddler so we could be done with the baby phase.  As selfish as that sounds, after a stressful delivery and a month of trying to figure out that he had a milk protein allergy, I pretty much knew that any thoughts of having a third child were going to be tabled.  Permanently.

Don't get me wrong.  Being a mother to these two beautiful boys has been probably the greatest and most rewarding gift I've ever received.

But, no one ever really tells you exactly how hard it is.  Or that it takes and drains every ounce of energy, patience, love, understanding, compassion, and hard work that you have in yourself.  And the way I see it, I've got just enough of all those components to spread among my two boys.

Since that realization, I've been anxiously awaiting the day I could sell all our baby items and clear out approximately 8 Rubbermaid 18-20 gallon bins of clothes, toys, burp cloths, breastpump accessories, and the dreaded Quinny stroller I had to have.  I kept telling myself, I'm ready for the next phase of our family.  I'm ready to do things that we can't do with a baby.  I'm ready to watch my babies grow into little boys and then into young men.

Meanwhile, everyone asked me as I prepped for the sale, "Don't you feel sad at all about being done with kids?"  They'd tell me with a smirk on their face, "I bet you'll have another child" or "My cousin/sister/aunt/grandma said the same thing and they ended up pregnant 6 months later".  I shrugged all the comments and questions off, set up my massive sale (see the picture below of the amount of stuff one can accrue with motherhood), and didn't look back as each item was sold or donated.

Because as each item was sold, I reminded myself that each of these hard-earned dollars was going towards Scott and I setting sail on an "exotic western Caribbean cruise".  In exactly 39 days and counting!  Seems fitting that our celebration for completing our family and surviving a four-year roller coaster ride will be exactly how we started with the dream of a family.  On a beach in the Caribbean declaring that this was our last "hurrah".  The calm before the beautiful storm.  And in 39 days, we will be taking a much-needed deep breath and will be putting time, energy, and love into the very foundation of our family, our relationship.

All along I felt so confident in our decision to be finished with expanding our family.

And then the strangest thing happened.  Today, after work, I attended the ever-so-pleasant annual exam at my OB/GYN.  I rushed to the other side of town, skipping out on an important staff meeting since getting a 4pm appointment at this office is as tricky as getting across town in rush hour.  I walked into that office for the first time in a year and noticed the changes they'd made to the waiting room.  I signed in and sat down to read a magazine noting that it was so nice to just sit down for the first time all day.  I allowed myself to look around the room and I saw a couple sitting anxiously waiting to be called back.  And suddenly, just like that, I was flooded with memories.

Because it wasn't that long ago that we were in their shoes for the first time.  Anxiously awaiting our first ultrasound to confirm that I was in fact pregnant.  Daydreaming about how we'd break the news to our family and talking ourselves out of just calling them and telling them right then.

I tried to shake off the strange feelings as I sat in the waiting room.  Luckily, the nurse called me back and I allowed myself to get engrossed in the magazine.  Until the doctor walked in the room.  And again, I couldn't hold back the memories.  Out of six doctors in the practice, I lucked out and got my first choice doctor to deliver Evan.  And it was the first time I've seen her in over a year since he was born.  I'm sure any mother can relate, but I feel an instant connection with this woman.  Not because I've known her for years.  But, because she brought my baby boy into this world and made a decision that, in turn, saved both our lives.

Thankfully, the appointment went by quick and I rushed off to Somerset to grab a Christmas gift and meet my dad for dinner at J. Alexander's.  I had exactly 20 minutes to pick out a gift and meet him so I was on a mission.  But, of course, who can ignore the beautiful Christmas decorations and Santa display at the mall?  I found myself feeling sad thinking back to Sean's first Christmas and wishing we lived back on this side of town.

I drove home that night, sitting in traffic, yet again and tried to pinpoint why I felt so sad.  See, it's not because I want to have another child and feel sad about the decision we've made to be done having children.  Rather, I find myself feeling sad thinking that I'll never get to experience these memories again.  That this exciting and overwhelming stage of our lives is over.

I know we've made the right choice for our family, but I can't help but get a little teary-eyed thinking I'll never get to experience what it feels like to have a baby inside me.

Or the excitement of sharing the news with family and friends.

Especially the thrill of going into labor and the rush of, "I can't wait to meet him!!!!"

Surely, nothing will top the moment they first laid them in my arms.  Just the awe in seeing what you've created and nurtured and dreamed about for the last nine months.  There really is nothing that can compare.  Scott and I are truly blessed.  We really are.

Sean Madden - 10-1-10

Evan Jameson - 9-2-12

The reality is, while it brought tears to my eyes to think about that chapter of our lives coming to an end, I relish the memories.  They make me appreciate everything we've been through as a family and everything we have to look forward to as we move on to the next chapter.  Today, with Thanksgiving around the corner, I can't help but be thankful for every single thing that has made us in to the family we are today.  I love my boys more than words can express.  And even though motherhood is the most challenging thing I've ever been blessed to be a part of, I wouldn't trade it for the world.  It's truly defined the person I am today.  

I have everything I need right here in this picture.  Another baby isn't the answer for us.  Embracing and appreciating what we have is.  

Microwave Rice Pudding

There's something so magical and exciting about the first snowfall of the season.  I guess I have it made.  I left work at 3pm and was home in 15 minutes before the traffic, before the accidents, before the slippery roads.  And I got to see the rain change to snow with my two boys watching through the living room window.

Of course it didn't dawn on me to grab my camera and snap a picture of us, faces glued to the front window.  Maybe it's better that way.  We shared 30 seconds of complete silence and awe this evening.  That is, until Evan took off to go play with a toy and Sean whined about wanting to watch TV.  And just like that, it went back to being a normal Monday night.

With Scott stuck in traffic, I grabbed the opportunity to let Sean watch The Grinch while I warmed up a container of chili that had been in the freezer as leftovers from a few weekends ago.  Scott has a no-Christmas-music-or-movies-until-Thanksgiving rule in effect right now. A loaf of whole grain bread in the oven and some chicken sausages on the indoor grill for the boys and dinner was served.

And I thought...what better night than to make my mom's microwave rice pudding?

It's one of those recipes that reminds me of growing up.  It warms the soul.  

Okay, it warms my tummy.  And it makes my house smell wonderful.  So, a win-win.

Microwave Rice Pudding

3 cups water

1/2 cup rice (I use basmati)

1/2 tsp salt

1 can sweetened condensed milk

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

nutmeg

cinnamon

In a 3 quart pryex or glass bowl, combine rice, water, and salt.  Cover and cook 7-8 minutes on high.

Reduce power to 50% and cook an additional 15 minutes.  Remove and stir in condensed milk.

Beat eggs in small bowl.  Stir in small amount of rice to egg and then return the entire egg mixture to rice whisking to prevent egg from cooking.  Stir in vanilla.

Cook uncovered on full power in one minute intervals for 4-5 minutes until the pudding lightly coats the spoon.  Remove and sprinkle with nutmeg and cinnamon.  Cover and let stand 20 minutes.

I'm going to enjoy a bowl of my rice pudding while Scott and I catch up on The Walking Dead from last night.  That's another wonderful thing about the first snowfall.  There's nothing like curling up on the couch with blankets, fuzzy fleece pajamas, slippers, and warm treats.  Happy Monday!