Max's Animal Noises

I FINALLY got Max's sweet little animal noises on film.

Enjoy!



Thankful Tree

To celebrate Thanksgiving, the kids and I made a Thankful tree that we have displayed on our table.  We found a branch outside and placed it in a pot and then began decorating leaves to hang on it.  I explained to Colby and Stella what it means to be thankful for something, and then I asked them to draw what they were thankful for on a leaf to be hung on the tree. 

I had high hopes that my dear, sweet children would surprise me with a colorful drawing of their family, or better yet, of their loving mother.  I even drew one of my own to nudge them along....



Instead, I got drawings and words describing the things they really felt strongly about.....

Flowers 

Dinosaurs

 

My tooth brush

There were also leaves that said "ice cream," "my cup," "hot chocolate," "the sun."  And, even though I might have been a little bummed that none of the leaves said, "my amazing mommy," it was still so sweet to watch them think hard about what they were really thankful for in their little worlds. 

 

Update..... a few days after we made our tree, there are now some new leaves that say, "famleila (family)" and "my home."  Yay. 

Fall Fun

Finally! 

It actually feels like fall here!  The snow has melted leaving a huge amount of leaves in our yard to be played with.  Kelsey and the kids headed out the door early Saturday morning for a day full of raking and leaf jumping.

Kelsey made them a huge pile that they spent most of the day jumping into.  They loved running down our big hill and then landing in the pile.

Or sometimes Colby and Stella would sit in the pile and wait for Daddy to rake some more leaves on top of them.

Last week at this time, Stella was making snow angels.  This week:  leaf angels!

Now I'm just wondering if I can bring the leaf blower in the house to clean up all the debris they dragged in here with them....

October Round-Up

October is always a very busy month for us.  Between preparations for Stella's birthday, Halloween, school stuff, Girl Scouts, first colds of the season, and all of the fun Fall happenings, we are all exhausted!  As much fun as it was, I'm sort of glad November is here so I can catch up. 

Here's what has been keeping us so busy these last few weeks:

Apple picking is one of my all time favorite things to do.  Fall is my favorite season, and apple picking is a must-do for me.  We go to a local farm, Karabin Farms, where they have wagon rides out to the orchard, some farm animals, and (our favorite) apple cider doughnuts.  Southington is a mecca for all things apple and there are a ton of apple orchards in the area.  It's great!

I was, however, a little disappointed.  The weather was gorgeous that day.  Too gorgeous for my tastes.  Apple picking should be done on cool, crisp days.  You should have to wear layers of clothes.  The forecast for that day was sunny, high near 80.  WHAT?!?!  Luckily, we went first thing in the morning, so at least we started our apple picking in sweatshirts.  But, by the time we left, we were all in t-shirts.  Sad.

The kids enjoyed sampling every type of apple there was. 

We brought home a giant bag filled with apples and had lots of fun making a bunch of yummy apple treats.   First on our list -- apple pie. 

Stella and Colby loved helping.  Here they are cutting up lots of butter for the crust.

(notice the shorts and summer dress.  Another disappointing fall day for Jen.)

Max even pulled up a chair and helped out.

When the pie was finally done that night, it got rave reviews from our taste testers. 

We also made apple crisp and caramel apples.  Those apples were gone in no time.

As I've mentioned before, we're big fans of the dance party here at the Gilmore household. Here is a fine example with Max on lead vocals and Colby on guitar.

Rock on, boys.

Kelsey has a fan club in our house.  The members are two little boys.  Colby is the fan club's president.  He idolizes Kelsey and everything he does.  Colby lives for the weekends when Daddy is home and he can be his shadow for the day.  A few weekends ago, Colby had the best day ever.  It started out with him carefully studying what Daddy was wearing, and then choosing his own outfit based on what he saw.

He was so proud.  The two of them spent the day doing "guy stuff."  They went to Lowe's, fixed the lawnmower, and did yard work.  Colby was no further than two inches from his daddy all day.  It was too cute.   The other member of the Daddy fan club was not ignored during the day.   He liked making silly faces and giving kisses through the door while Daddy and Colby grilled.

That's right.  Colby was "grilling" too.  He has his very own, real grill that he earned by learning how to get dressed all by himself.   The grill was his choice.  So now, whenever Kelsey is outside grilling Colby brings out his grill, his pretend food, and grills us up some dinner.  There is always a tray of Colby's grilled food on the table at dinnertime.  It's pretty yummy.

We went up to New Hampshire two weekends ago to celebrate Stella, Jeff, and Dad's birthdays.  It was so fun to get together with everyone at Jeff and Hesty's house.  Hesty had the most amazing birthday cake for the occasion. 

The whole top layer was a Hello Kitty theme for Stella, and the bottom layer had a skier for Dad and a skateboarder for Jeff.  It was so cool.  It was almost too pretty to cut!

Stella got some fun stuff for her birthday.  She especially loved this doll head whose hair she can style and color and whose nails she can paint.   So perfect for my girly-girl daughter.

Back at home that week, Stella got to celebrate her birthday again on her actual birthday.  How is it possible that my baby girl is 6?!  It still feels like she was just born yesterday.  A couple of her friends came over after school on her birthday to hang out and play for the afternoon.  When they left, we had a little family party with cake and presents. 

And then there's Max, whose just busy being cute. 

This age has been the favorite age for Kelsey and I with all of our kids.  Max is just so funny now.  He tries so hard to keep up with his big brother and sister and tries to carry on conversations with us in his babble language.  He has such a great sense of humor and is always laughing and trying to make us laugh at him.  Max is also doing all of the animal noises now and it's hilarious.  It never gets old to hear him do a cat or donkey noise.  Of course he won't do it when I have the camera on.  Someday I'll capture it on film and share it with you.

So, I'm a little peeved at Mother Nature right now.  Remember how I said earlier that I was mad because my lovely season of fall was being ruined with temperatures that were too hot?  Well now there's snow on my ground.  SNOW!  I'm feeling like I'm getting jipped of my fall. 

We let Max go out on the deck while the snow was falling, and he had absolutely no idea what was going on.  Imagine being him and going outside only to find your world covered in cold white stuff.  Whoa.

We ended up having a pretty big snowstorm that night, which was this past Saturday.  They were predicting we would get 6"-12" and were warning there would be a lot of power outages.  Did I also mention that Colby had a fever and was throwing up and Stella's birthday party with her little friends was the following day?  It was a crazy day to say the least.

We were incredibly lucky to not lose our power considering more than half of our town did.  There are power lines and trees down everywhere.  We lost one of our trees and a big branch off of one in our front yard.  The kids have had two snow days and another one tomorrow, and rumor has it they'll be out all week. 

This was our backyard the morning after the storm.  Those poor tree branches were hanging so low.

And here's our front yard with the big tree branch down.  

Amazingly enough, Stella's birthday party went on as planned.  We had a total of 6 girls here to celebrate.  It was a Halloween themed party, so it was fun to see all of the girls in their costumes. 

Here's Stella the vampire!

The girls had a great time playing some games, dancing, and hitting the pinata.

It was a really great day and Stella had a wonderful time.

We spent the rest of the day playing outside in the snow.  Max had a blast stomping around in his boots and snow pants.

Colby and Stella grabbed their sleds and headed down the hill.

Max had to get in on the action too.  He took his first trip down on the sled and loved it.  He kept asking for more.

The next night was Halloween, and we thought trick-or-treating was going to be cancelled.  Most of the local towns canceled theirs due to the number of power outages and downed trees and lines.  Our street has power and is pretty safe, so we told the kids we would just wait and see if any other kids were out.  We waited and waited, but no one came.  We had given up when the doorbell rang and some of the neighborhood kids were here trick-or-treating.  I yelled, "Quick kids!  Get your costumes!"  It was a mad dash throwing everything on and then we were out the door in time to make it to a few houses before it got too late. 

Here's our trick-or-treaters:  Stella the vampire (this time without face make up because we didn't have the time!) and Colby the trash can. 

Monkey Max stayed home with Dad to help pass out candy.

Apparently, Max did not like his monkey tail once he discovered it was there.....

Phew!  Now you're all caught up. 

I leave you with this.  Here is another installment of Dinner with the Gilmores.  It's never boring here!

And just when we think it's too much to handle, we have to remember the words that Stella wrote all over our driveway the other day.