Double Whew!

Okay, now that I ordered the Christmas greetings AND I have finished all work for my class, I can finally share our awesomely awesome fun trip over Thanksgiving week.

We started off with a few nights with YaYa and B, and some visits with the cousins. Always a fun time!
Miles & Evan had a blast with light sabers and trains.  Evan is tutoring Miles in all things Star Wars, the latest craze to take over our house.  Combine it with Legos and all bets are off.

Kate and Audrey are starting a band.

On our way to Memphis we stopped in Jackson to visit GG. She was visiting my Aunt Harriet and we also got to see my cousin Criss and her daughter Danielle, whom I had never met!  It was a fun though brief reunion.

In Memphis, we trekked downtown with Beebe and PopPop to see the March of the Ducks at the Peabody Hotel.  We were able to sit on the edge of the red carpet and the kids loved it when the elevator doors opened and those ducks just ran right in front of them.  Literally, it was run, run, run, splash! Audrey could have stood at the fountain and watched them all day.  But we had things to do...

We walked around downtown and ended up at Blues City Cafe for lunch, where Aunt Megan met us.

Then we rode the Riverfront Trolley which goes all the way down Main Street and returns along the Mississippi Riverfront.  It was a gorgeous day and we all had fun seeing the sites.  Miles kept Aunt Megan on her toes, always on the lookout for the next tickle attack.

Thanksgiving day was wonderful, playing and watching some new holiday movies at Mimi and PawPaw's house. We unearthed Uncle Kyle's Legos and watched him play.  He even let Miles build with some of them.

They had fun visiting with GG Mama (who is turning 95 Friday!!). 

She was impressed by Miles' drawing skills. He drew this after our Peabody trip. See the duck, duckmaster, fountain and even the red carpet!

Friday we hung out at Uncle Kyle & Aunt Megan's house for lunch and the Auburn vs Alabama game. The kids loved playing with one of their dogs, Molly (seen here with Audrey). Their other dog, Mattie, is not so friendly with strangers, so they didn't get to play with him and all day long called him "the bad, bad dog."  Poor misunderstood Mattie.

Again, Aunt Megan was a champ, keeping up with Miles.  She even pulled out Twister! 

Such a great trip over the river and through the woods. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!

October fun

{apparently I started this in October & never posted it.  Whoops!}

And a monthly catch-up post. What? my text-pictures from the field weren't enough?

Miss A. is getting big and is as spunky as ever. She loves to gallop. Everywhere.  Gallop gallop gallop, with those curls bouncing all around her head.  She's a nut.


Funny story... Audrey and were at the mall when a security guard on a segway passed us.  He did a little wheelie around us and she giggled.  I asked her if she wanted one and she didn't miss a beat: "A pink one," she said.



Miles is a giant, so tall and lanky. 

I always knew his little brain was a sponge, but now that he is conversant I'm learning all sorts of things.   Tonight I heard him answering lyrics to a song on the iPod. ( example: "Do you want to find alligator cowboy boots they just put on sale?" he said no.)  And Wayne said he totally called us out on our Chick-fil-a habit, as in "every time one of you has to do something, we get Chick-fil-a."  This was in response to me doing Race for the Cure, but he cited them dropping me off at the UT game as proof. And whenever Wayne goes to Chattanooga for the day we always go to CFA for dinner.  Insightful, he is.

Whew!

Just ordered my Christmas cards, calendars for the family (um, spoiler alert. but you expect them now, right?), and even made this birthday card for my Grandma's 95th birthday. Woo hoo! So now I can blog, but probably tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Damask Birthday 5x7 folded card

Birthday party invitations and cards by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

PS. Shutterfly's Cyber Week specials run through Dec. 1!

big Memphis tourist day...Peabody Ducks, Blues City Cafe & a trolley ride!

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Friday Fun

So I should be finishing up the last of my homework for the semester (yay!) but I'm in a blog groove, apparently, so I"m going with it. Miles and I had a fun day today. Our plan was to run a couple of errands and end up at the University Center at UT to eat - what else - Chick Fil A (which we did NOT have when I was there!) and go bowling at the lanes in the basement. Unfortunately there was a bowling class going on so we redirected to the Center for Children's and Young Adult Literature. My program runs the Center, so I'd heard about it but never visited.  It was amazing!  Miles was impressed too.  Basically they receive a copy of any youth book as it is published and it is displayed for 18 months.  The Center is open to the public, so you can come in and read all these great books hot off the presses.  The only hitch is you can't take any with you.  I did see a pile marked "Book Sale" so maybe they have one when things rotate out.  I'll have to keep my eyes out for that.  Miles is pointing to one of his favorites, Dodsworth in London, and we also read Shrek!, Even Monsters Need Haircuts, and Superhero School.  They had the brand new Magic Tree House and several others I wanted to grab and read.  May have to spend a day there without the kiddo!

After that we swung by my friend Emily's office and she needed some photos of Ayres Hall, so off we went.  Miles loved running around the lawn on the beautiful afternoon.  We'll have this kids fully indoctrinated to the Vol life before he hits middle school.

And not to leave out the princess, here's her happy smiley face.   Have a great weekend everybody!

creativity

Many years ago I read articles on a blog somewhere about corralling kids' artwork.  At the time Miles was in school a couple of days a week, Audrey wasn't here, or was just barely here, and he was bringing home a few paintings or drawings a week. I liked this cardboard box storage and we started painting.  I used USPS flat rate boxes turned inside out and painted by the boy-wonder himself.  (Of course now that I'm ready to do some with Audrey, USPS has started printing their logo all over the inside.  Guess they got sick of giving away boxes to be shipped by FedEx.) I was guessing we'd fill a box every year or two, slowing down in grade school of course.

Next I started taking a snapshot of everything, saving only the best and recycling or sending grandparents the rest.  I occasionally go back and edit even more.  I save anything with a handprint or footprint on it, and try hard to remember to date them.  I even got one of the old library date stampers, but I'm not very good at keeping up with them.  I upload all the pictures to each kid's online Picasa gallery (yes they have gmail accounts too!)

Miles' Artwork

Audrey's Artwork

Where am I going with this? Miles has become a very prolific colorer! I'm worried we may exceed our maximum box capacity too soon!  He loves to draw stick people and they are evolving very nicely.

This is one of his earliest free-hand sketches, done around his 4th birthday.  It's a self portrait!

 Soon after that he drew this cute hermit crab.  I was really impressed with the spiral.

This picture of his house was this past summer.  The sideways figures in the top left are he & Audrey in bunk beds.

And recently we've had a big series of group portraits.  Many of these have been mailed to the subject, as they were all drawings of Miles with various grandparents and other family members.

 Now we start to see other objects.  This is the crosswalk at the park near our house.

 Here's his Halloween collage. Clockwise from top left: Haunted House; Bat; Mummy; Skeleton; Ghost; Witch; Pumpkin.  But you knew that, right?

 Wayne and I love this tree.  I'm thinking about printing it on some art paper and framing it.

 And he finally drew Audrey in the picture of the family.  Guess which she is.  The other new addition is Apollo.  Poor Chelsea didn't make the cut yet.

 And now he's getting into office supplies.  He likes to make books, stapling many of his works together.  And he discovered my label maker!

 Not sure about this one.  Witch? Pickle? Oopma Loompa?

 This is rain falling on our house:

 He learned about exclamation points this week! Now they are everywhere!

 Sorry, forgot to rotate this one.  Dude has on a fedora!  He's a detective! Love it!

Here's the boy himself. Replicas of the Nina and Pinta were he this week and we went on a rainy day to see them. Still fun!

he likes the arby's shake!

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat....

Wow, it's November!  If I want to stay on top of things, that means I need to start thinking about ordering Christmas cards!!  We have ordered Shutterfly photo cards for the last 4 or 5 years, for everything from Christmas to birth announcements and even party invitations.  Usually I use my digital scrapbooking goodies to create a card and then upload it to Shutterfly's blank template for scrappers, but last year the photos that Angela Acker took of us fit perfectly with one of the photo card templates:

I couldn't complain, it was adorable and saved me a lot of time messing around in Photoshop!

Shutterfly has lots of cute templates again this year.  If I can get my act together and find some cute outfits for us, you might even see a card from us in the next couple of months! If you want 50 free photo cards from Shutterfly - which I'll be getting for sharing this information with you ;) - click here for more info.

Boo to you!

This will be mostly photos, as we're finally gotten our goblins to bed and now we need dinner! and a movie - Diary of a Wimpy Kid, no scary stuff here.

We finished our jack-o'lantern on Friday. I think it was sufficiently "scary" for Miles.

Tonight Audrey was a lion.  There was a lion face on a hood but she didn't like wearing it.  Good thing her hair worked pretty well as a mane.

Miles was an astronaut.  Last night he was sad because he'd mentioned Yoda at one point and I didn't find a costume for him.  I admit I didn't exhaustively search for it, but he had lots of great options to wear in his closet already.  Today he was more than happy to be an astronaut, especially after I pulled out my old early 1980s Space Shuttle book.

We started the day at our neighbors, the McNally's.  They had a fun party, this isn't even all the kids who were there!  Miles is a big fan of their 2nd grader, in the Batgirl costume.  Big fan. He was sort of the ladies man, as he was chasing around both of his girlfriends at this shin-dig.

Then we moved up the street to the Acker's for a hayride trick-or-treat.  This was such a fun idea, we were so happy to join them!  We drove up the street and stopped in front of the houses where we knew the families and trick-or-treated there.  We started early and we were able to hit most of our street.  They had a great time!  In fact, I think Audrey liked the ride more than the trick-or-treating!

So then it was back to home, a quick sort through the loot, a treat (or 3), answering the door a few more times, then ready for bed!

Hope you had a happy Halloween too!

roar!

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