A New Tradition

I really hope our friends, Josh and Cate, realize that any future Christmas tree cutting ritual is now ruined because of how much fun we had on this one. We met them early last saturday morning to drive up towards Mt. Bachelor where we would find some snow to tromp around in and saw down our family trees. It couldn't have been more perfect. 

What made it even more perfect was them having a kick ass camper van, where we could go to warm up, eat carmel rolls, drink hot chocolate and laugh and chat. 

Cate brought her old childhood sled along so we could pull the girls along in the snow. Noella and Ruth had a ball riding on it, pulling it, piling it with snow..... I'm telling you, this couldn't have been more fun for Noella. It helped that the girls were at such a great age to participate. 

Noella and her buddy, Ruth

First taste of snow

Snowman

Teamwork

Noella, doing her best 80's hairband lead singer impression, while eating carmel rolls

Telling funny stories

Aren't these two the cutest?

Earning their hot chocolate

Ruth pulls Noella, as she surfs the snow

Thanks for a wonderful time Josh, Cate, Ruth and Wesley!

A Day to be Thankful

These are literally the only pictures I took on Thanksgiving. We were a bit busy: local turkey trot in which Noella and I ran and Adam volunteered for, rushing home to change and pack to hit the road for Medford, having a lovely Thanksgiving meal at our good friend Dave's house with many good friends and way too much food..... There wasn't a lot of time for me to get the camera out. I brought it and had great intentions of getting a cute family photo of us dressed up (which we seem to do twice a year). Regardless of the lack of evidence, we had a busy, but really wonderful day. Spending it with such great friends (while our families are so far away) makes us very thankful. 

And now, for the only Thanksgiving 2012 pictures I have (drumroll)......................

Pre-race stretching

Pre-race fueling

She really did a lot of the work

In the early, frigid morn, Adam rode his bike down to the Turkey Trot venue, where he did his Boneyard Brewery cycling team duty of volunteering. He helped mark the course and keep runners in line. I pushed a 34ish lb toddler girl in a 25ish lb stroller for 3.1 miles (with a 2ish lb baby inside of me). Noella got out for about the last 1/8 of a mile to "run" with me. She was very proud of herself. She instructed me to say "mom, say 'well done, Noella!'". We try to do a local turkey trot every year. I love that tradition!

Pre-Thanksgiving Coast Weekend - The Great Nor'wester

Let's try this again. I'm really frustrated with blogger right now. For days it's been telling me I am out of photo space but then making it extremely difficult to research any other options I have (except for paying for more storage each month). I'm not ready for that commitment! 

I'm am so backlogged with blogs now that I'm now experimenting with uploading different photo sizes to see how they appear to you all. These photos below are the lowest of the low quality, and I think you can tell. Please be patient while I work this out! 

Anyway, on to the coast trip: We were so excited to be meeting our great Hood River friends, The McGeeneys, in Pacific City, OR for a few days and nights before Thanksgiving week. Little did we know, a HUGE storm beat us there and wanted to ruin all of our fun beach plans. We made the most of it though, and had playtime and movies in the rental house, meals at the next door brew pub (Pelican Brewery) and several failed attempts to still make it outside despite the 70 mph wind gusts and pounding sand and rain (the kids loved the idea of it, but wailed the second we stepped out in it). The gods smiled down upon us for a few hours monday evening and a few more hours tuesday morning before we left so we could feel the sea spray on our faces, dig in the sand and look for seashells. 

Beach combers

"Sunset" Do you see the teeny-tiny whitish ball low on the horizon?
(photo courtesy of Kate McGeeney - thanks Kate!)

Please Hold...

Sorry folks. I'm experiencing some trouble with my blogspot account. It's telling me I have no more room for pictures! YIKES! While I try and figure out what to do, please sit tight. We've had some fun things in the mix (including, but not limited to: the ballet, cutting down our Christmas tree, Thanksgiving, a trip to the coast.... not in that order).

Lately

Here are some of our extracurriculars lately:

High Desert Museum with her visiting friend, Davina. Who knew a presentation involving porcupine could be so enthralling to an almost 3 year old? 

Just hanging out at the park.

This could possibly be her most favorite thing in all the world: saturday open gymnastics.

Into the foam pit.

You can see where she got her hanging skills at the park.

Even higher.

Eating saturday pancakes. You can almost always count on this on saturdays (and you can also almost always count on her being in costume)

Evening wind-down time. She often gets to watch an episode of her choice before books. This usually ends up being Angelina Ballerina. 

A Rare Treat

Adam and I have tried in the past to establish Sunday morning/afternoons as a sort of "date" day. At least twice a month. I think the last one we had was in september BUT we did get a few dates when we went back to Missouri for a very special cousin's wedding in October. I can't discount that.

We started it back up last weekend. Even though it was blowing snow and  30 something degrees, we had a babysitter scheduled, and dammit, we were going for it. Since my center of gravity isn't normal anymore (and because it was f$%#ing cold) we decided a trail run, instead of a bike ride, along the upper Deschutes River would be nice. It started out very chilly, but then the sun came out and, well, you can't beat running by the river in the snow and sun.....  especially together. It was fabulous. Our sunday afternoon go-to sitter's name is Grace. She is surely our "Saving Grace".

I guess we weren't exactly "kid free"

Happy Skeletons

We talk a lot about "happy skeletons" around here. Noella has recently developed quite a vivid imagination (I know, that totally doesn't sound like her). This imagination comes with ghostly, witchly, spooky fears (and I'm talking refusing to walk from one room to the other sometimes because there's a skeleton hiding under her bed, or there's a witch in the grass). While I love the fact that she is creative and imaginative, dammit, you can at least walk from the couch to the kitchen on your own. So, we try and talk about happy skeletons, friendly ghosts and witches.... etc... Daddy was a skeleton for Halloween, so maybe that helped a bit. He's pretty happy and friendly. 

We were a little under the weather on Halloween. Noella and I stayed home from work/school and got in some long naps, in hopes of a little bit of celebrating. Our family was invited to the neighbors' house for chili prior to trick or treating - which was a great way to meet a few more people in the neighborhood and get to know our next door neighbors better. We love this neighborhood! It was a bit rainy and a lot cold, so I think we made it to 10 houses (all of which were elaborately decorated; One house even handed out PBRs to the parents - genius!)

Before Halloween, we needed to carve our pumpkin. Noella and I painted our pumpkins, but we saved Daddy's big pumpkin for carving (because he's really the best at it anyway). She helped, I took pictures.

Scoopin'

"Ewwwwwww"

"Ewwwwwww"

Stinks (this one got a little moldy even before we carved)

Noella drawing on the face (after watching Daddy do it)

If you look close, you'll see her version of the skeleton face

Adam, being patient so she can finish her drawing

Poor Zeb. Noella was dead-set on someone in the family being a football player

She doesn't appear so afraid of skeletons here

Princess Flower Fairy and her skeleton escort

 

Princess Flower Fairy, A "debil" (devil) and football player