Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving was warm this year, and gorgeous.  We had friends over dinner, and spent a good bit of time playing outside with the kids.  We took our annual family photo, and looking back over the last three years is kind of mind boggling.

 

The boys, Monkey especially, are still into their trikes.  Our neighbors stopped by, and N (the birthday girl from the last post) brought her new scooter and they all went up and down the driveway together.

 Bear is still having trouble riding things. N showed them how to sit on the scooter footpad and ride, which looked ridiculous and uncomfortable, but they all seemed to be having fun.  B eventually went back to just walking his scooter along like it was a pet.

The dirt pile (our leftover leaf mold) continues to be a hit. These mega blok toys are getting a lot of use out there.

Trikes, a Party, and a Painting

 It's been a busy few days.  On Wednesday, I met up with fellow moms of multiples for our monthly meeting, where I also picked up two old tricycles from a friend.  I forgot about them, which was fine because it rained all day Thursday, but the boys found them in the car when we were headed for school on Friday. They were so excited, and they spent the trip to school deciding who would own which color.  Monkey took the yellow, and Bear took the red.

Learning to Ride

 They spent the afternoon riding them, only really breaking for their nap. Monkey took to it right away, but Bear doesn't really understand the purpose of the pedals despite my various explanations and demonstrations.

Today, Saturday, they were invited to our 7 year old neighbor's birthday party.  It was at one of those kid gyms, and my guys were definitely the youngest ones there. Following along with the instructors was not really happening, but they had so much fun.

This ball pit was basically their favorite thing.

Briefly following along with the group.

Living up to his name.

I was so proud of them for getting along with all the other kids even though they were mostly 7 year old girls.  They even sat with them for snacks and cake, and used utensils and were mostly neat.
 

"I'm going to sleep here." Okay kid.

 This evening, I met up with those multiple moms again at Painting with a Twist, a place that lets you eat snacks and drink booze while following along with a teacher who walks you through a simple painting.

Taking a break so the background can drive.

The sample painting.

 It was weird for me to paint around a lot of other people like that, especially with a teacher telling me how I had to do it.  After a while I just stopped listening to her because, well, sometimes you just have to follow your artistic impulses. Also, she told me us to use the white to put in bright snow in lines, and I hated it. I spent a long time trying to fix it, and I'm still annoyed with that. But I think the snowman looks awesome, and it was a fun night out.

This is a chain, which might be individually owned?, so you can probably find this, or something similar, in your area.  They have a smaller room for private parties, which is what we did, and you get to pick the painting your group will do.  You bring your own food and drinks and it's nice. They also have a large room, and anyone can sign up for those sessions. 

On top of all of this, DS was gone all of Thursday and Friday, so I was alone with the kids. Thankfully, there is nothing on the calendar tomorrow.  Cold weather is also coming in the forecast. It's time to start thinking about turkey and snow and the magical hibernation month that is Christmas.

Leaves

It's been a year since I posted last. Oh well, I'm not even going to stress about everything I missed. Short version, the kids are nearly 3, started nursery school, and that 9 hours a week they're not home has made me somewhat sane again. Yay?

DS is off at a conference this week. It's been a while since his last one, so I'm a little out of practice. I think this might be the first once since they started school, so tomorrow should be interesting. He's getting out of autumn yard work.  I'd let it wait until he's back, but our town picks up leaves for us to turn them into mulch that we buy back in the spring for a great price, and unless they reschedule, this is the last week they're coming.  Of course, they were supposed to come once last week too, and they didn't. So maybe there will still be two, but I can't risk it. We have a LOT of trees, and I need as many of them out of here as possible before I'm stuck bagging what's left.

Since I was up at 6am on a Sunday (which is ludicrous), the three of us went outside to do full yard rake #2.  As annoying as it is to do it more than once, that seems to make it manageable. Our first year I think I tried to do it all at once in the short hours of the kids' nap and after DS got home from work. Which meant I did a lot of raking in the dark.  It was never ending and exhausting.  It still takes 3-5 hours to do a full yard sweep like this, but that's a lot better than it used to be. I can still have the entire afternoon free and be actually done (until the trees that still have leaves drop them again) instead of it all looming over me every night as I can't get finished.

Anyway, like I was saying, we did some raking.  The kids "helped," by which I mean they swung their rakes around and nearly decapitated each other and scattered my piles. And then they ran through them and jumped in them.  They had a ton of fun, and it was a rather amusing distraction for me so I didn't mind too much.  Enjoy some photos of them in leaves, including a gif that google made for me.