The Best Christmas Ever

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

We are in Henderson, and the girls are enjoying playing with their cousins.  I have had a great vacation, myself.  I have been SOO lazy so far this trip, and loving it.  We had a great visit with my grandmother and Jeremy's oldest sister and fam in Lake Charles, but no pics (see aforementioned laziness).  Today, however, the kids decided to make a movie and asked me to record it, so I had to move from my place on the couch.  I had to record it in two parts because of the different scenes.  Sorry for the shakiness.  It's hard to walk and record at the same time.  :)  It works best if you click on the Google video icon in the corner of the screen and watch it in original size.

Click on the capital "T":

The Best Christmas Ever - Act One

The Best Christmas Ever - Act Two

Halloween

I'm lagging behind again.  At least I got these posted before Thanksgiving!  Here are some pictures Virginia sent me of the kids.  We went trick-or-treating with Emerson, Atticus, and Sabriel (not pictured).  We worked hard for the candy this year, folks!!  You do a lot of walking when 1 out of every 4 people are at home.  More of you should be at home on Halloween!!! :)  

Harper Lee was a "Spanish princess" and Olivia was a vampire.  I have no idea what made Olivia latch on to the vampire idea.  About a month before Halloween we were in the car together and out of the blue she said, "Mom, do you know what really ties the whole vampire thing together?  The teeth.  Without that, it's just a costume."  

Thanks to Virginia for sending me these pictures.

The Tradition Continues

I don't know how many years now that we've carved pumpkins at my mom's house.  William was quite small when we started, I know that.  It has elevated in status to right behind dying Easter eggs (which if you know my mom, you know is a HUGE deal at her house).  We had a great time today because the girls both did a great job and really did almost all of the work themselves, so it was fun to watch.

For some reason, slide.com cut off some of the jack-o-lantern pictures (which I had a hard time getting anyway).  Anyway, you get the idea!

Career Day

Both girls were chefs this year.  This is the "Iron Chef" pose.

MORE October Fun!

After weeks of construction, our foam haunted house is finally complete!!!  The girls and I had a blast working on this.  I think because you could only do small, easily completed steps and then you had to wait on the glue to dry.  It was perfect for my attention span.  :)

October Fun

Halloween has been all the talk at our house lately.  Tonight the girls made fairy wing costumes for some of their favorite stuffed animals.  

They were both so funny.  They were such proud "parents" of all their animals, going on and on about how adorable they are.

What to do on a Saturday in Leeds, Alabama

One thing you can do is to walk around the Antiques Mall / Flea Market and find nightmare-inducing junk.

Jeremy, the girls, and I spent a couple of hours there this past Saturday and here are our top finds:

Bronze Medal:

I don't know what's scarier, my sweet youngest daughter's face being replaced with a frightening tortured face, or the diseases that probably lurk in the mask that she is inhaling.

Silver Medal:

I don't really know what to say about this one.  Can you imagine having this hanging on your wall?  I personally thought this little beauty was a close call for the gold medal, but Jeremy fought hard for the gold medalist.  He said it was by far the creepiest.

Gold Medal:

Why?

You Cannot Raise Children Around Their Dad

Actually, that's a favorite saying of a good friend of mine, but I think it might be true.

Seriously, chasing kids with a riding lawn mower can't be safe.

I'm So Lucky!!

A lot of mornings, Harper Lee fixes Olivia's hair before I even have to trouble myself with it.  I don't know what we would do without her help!

Recipes Around the World

Anyone who knows Harper Lee very well knows that she loves the Food Network.  She knows all the chefs, and she has her favorites.  From time to time she tapes her own food show here at our house.  It's called Recipes Around the World.  I haven't posted any of them here because they are usually quite long.  I finally uploaded one to Google Videos:

Recipes Around the World

Even if this is too long for you, be sure to fast forward to the end to catch Harper breaking down her theme song.  I might should post a poll here to ask if you think we have allowed her to watch too many hours of Food Network, but I'm afraid to see the results.

Rehearsal Dinner

I finally got around to posting some pictures of the rehearsal dinner.

Both my mom and my dad have fairly big families, so I had a lot of cousins that I grew up being close to.  So now that equals lots of second cousins that we are close to.  I gave each picture a cliff's notes label for those that don't know who these people are.  It's so fun to see my cousins now and watch our kids play together like we all used to do.  

We're So Proud!

All those casting calls and auditions finally paid off. Harper's first print ad. We're so proud!

First Day of School

The girls had a great first day of school. Both of them love their teachers. Per our yearly tradition, I let them pick out a new outfit for the first day. That is all the back to school clothes shopping that we do because it is SOOOOO hot for the first part of the school year. I try to let them do this totally on their own, within reason. I love the differences in their personality that this highlights.






Harper Lee's ensemble includes the girliest outfit she could find, and she refused to let me touch her hair.




Olivia, on the other hand, chose the most comfortable pants she could find, and put them with a 4th of July top she found because "her Aunt Jana would love it." Additionally, she and her dad ganged up on me to let her keep the exceedingly visible Pop-tarts tattoo on her arm. Did I mention this was the FIRST day of school? I am wondering what her teacher thought about me.




My regret from today is that I missed the best photo op of the day. For the first time, this year the girls will both go to the gym each morning to await the start of the day. I think Harper Lee was really excited about that, because she took Liv's hand and they walked down the hall together. It was soOOOoo cute. Oh well, I definitely froze it in my mind. I can't believe I have a 3rd and 1st grader this year!!!

This is definitely my favorite memento from today:


The buses are all named so that the children can remember what bus they ride. The girls ride the turkey bus. I often wondered last year how their bus got its name. I imagined that they let the drivers name them, because our bus driver is the best. I can totally imagine her teasing the kids and saying, "Let's call mine the turkey bus because you guys are a bunch of turkeys!!"

Anyway, I love the Hello my Name is Turkey. Too funny.

Before and After

Okay, you asked for it (or some of you did, anyway) . . .

front of house
before: after: inside front door, looking down the hall
before: after: living room
before: after:

not entirely happy with the faux finish (for lack of a better term) on the fireplace wall. it'll do for now, though. i am, however, exceedingly happy with the red and light blue combo.
looking into dining room from living room
before: after:
if anyone is interested, trying to stencil letters on your wall sucks. vinyl letters, however, from greatlettering.com, do not. you can order anything you want, in a lot of different fonts, and they are very easy to apply. i am trying very hard to resist the urge to order every quotation that i can think of that i love and putting words all over my house.

dining room
before: after:
my amazingly talented sister-in-law, Rhonda, made these curtains. she is fabulous!



guest bathroom
before:


after:




guest bathroom sink
before:
now you see a goobered up chunk of molding on the right that's missing . . .



after:
. . . now you don't!



stairs
before:
after:


kitchen
before:


after:

laundry room
before:
after:
(now the back porch)







back of house
before (minus the missing windows and the holes that the tornado made in the back wall):


after


This seems like a good time to thank everyone who helped us with the house or watched the girls while we worked on the house. I don't know what we would do without friends and family who are willing to help us, even though we are the ones who got ourselves in to this mess to begin with :).

And most of all of course, thank you, Jeremy, for the many, many hours of hard work that you put in to the house. You are our family's superhero!!!!