our first tree as a family of 5

last Christmas we were moving to denver, thus we did not put up a tree. so this is our first tree as a family of 5. daddy and townsend did a great job of picking a perfect one. i also had daddy get some poinsettias as they were on sale at home depot. i guess i should have had a longer talk with the kids about flowers. i was in the kitchen making dinner and the kids were in the living room. playing so nicely. no fighting. no whining. every once in awhile i would hear one of them say, "decorations." and i would just say, "we will put up the decorations after supper." well, when i finally went into the living room i saw that the kids had already "decorated" the tree. with poinsettia petals. it looked kinda pretty to be truthful. but what the kids didn't know was that the pretty red petals would very soon wilt and turn brown and crunchy. :)

lots of ornaments down low.

mary comes and thanksgiving 2009

i cannot believe i do not have one picture from our friend mary's visit. or thanksgiving at the rolfs. i will try to get pics from mary and ann and put them on.
mary flew in from austin early on the tuesday before thanksgiving. i was so excited to see her but of course we had the potty training going on so that put a bit of a damper on things. thankfully, she is the kind of friend who just likes to hang out so we did. at home. cleaning up marin's messes. :) after about two accidents mary was kindly suggesting that we go buy diapers but we held on another day. when marin stood in her chair at the table and peepeed into her booster seat and didn't think a thing about it, i finally concurred. but back to mary's arrival. actually, i think the first thing mary did was clean my kitchen. she is very thorough and everything looked so beautiful. then we started cooking and well...not so clean now. she brought some new coloring books and markers for the kids which scored big with them. now they always pray for mary at night. on thursday we went over to the rolfs early and had breakfast. the kids played and then after they went down for naps the adults had thanksgiving dinner. so yummy! the next morning norton and townsend went to home depot to get a tree which is where i finally got my camera out and started taking pictures. mary and i took the kids and did a little shopping but she had to head back to austin early that afternoon. come back soon mary!

pottytraining school dropout

well, we finally threw in the towel after 6 days. there were many many towels actually. to clean up the many many messes. on day 3 marin used the potty two or three times and i thought it was going to click. but days 4, 5 and 6 were disasters. and we had company, our friend mary, starting on day 5 so she had to endure it all too. sorry mary! we decided that we couldn't take marin to the rolfs for thanksgiving with her peeing all over the place so i had a talk with marin and we put her back in diapers. i felt so defeated. but much less stressed. : ) note to self-do not try to potty train within a month of any holiday.