Happy Thanksgiving!

Sadly, it has been just about a month since I've posted. So I'll start off with some Thanksgiving pictures. We had a quiet (well, with no cousins to keep the kids occupied I suppose it wasn't actually "quiet") Thanksgiving with just the four of us. I now have lots of turkey to freeze, and at least half a pumpkin pie to throw away, otherwise I'll find by the end of the weekend that I have eaten an entire one by myself which just isn't right.

We made some crafts early in the day. Played some games. Watched some TV. Cooked and ate a lot of food. The pictures are a little fuzzy because the light was low.

For one of Grace's crafts she traced each of our hands, cut them out and had us write things on them we are thankful for. If you look close on the thumb for Alex's hand you might be able to see that he is thankful for his new sheets - the robot ones Grandma and Paw Paw sent him. He also reiterated that thanks at the dinner table that night. He REALLY likes those sheets.


Alex's hand turkey he made. Instead of drawing the additional parts of the turkey, as you can see he wanted to cut them out and tape them on. He's really into using scissors these days (and possibly dispensing tape too).


Our Thanksgiving crafts that came home from school this week. I especially like Alex's paper bag turkey and Grace's paper bag fall tree (next to the turkey).


Our little family Thanksgiving feast. The pan of rolls in the front were handmade by Grace and myself that day - her first time to help me with any sort of yeast bread. I think she really enjoyed making them, and she's a surprisingly good kneader.


Sweet Alex, probably avoiding looking at the turkey because he said it looked "gross," both when raw and cooked.


Sweet no-front-teeth Gracie Lu.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Happy Halloween!

Fun times for our first Halloween in New Jersey. Even though our town mostly goes out in the mid-afternoon to trick or treat (kind of weird). We had a few kids come later, but they were mostly older kids. Just as well - the rain hit by about 6pm, so we missed most of it except for a few sprinkles.

Festivities started on Friday with the annual Halloween parade at Tamaques Elementary. The kids get to head home for lunch to put on their costumes. After lunch they have a parade around the horseshoe that connects the school to our street, with class parties following afterward.


Alex (aka The Beast from X-Men) waits with two of his friends/classmates for the parade to begin.


Grace in the parade as Hermione (or HAM-ione?) from Harry Potter.


Our toothless wizard.


Grace's entire class. The teachers all dressed as "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." Mrs. Riley had her dog there for the parade, which all the kids loved.


I had to put a picture of this costume on here. It's Paris Hilton. As portrayed by a 5th grade boy. Sadly, he walked better in those high heels than I would have.


Today for trick or treating we first hit the streets with some of our friends. Alex had already taken his mask off because the running from one house to the next for two blocks can make you sweat. We kept telling the kids they could walk, but they wouldn't listen to us.


And here's my little wizard and superhero ready to hit the streets in our neighborhood for some treats.

Happy Halloween everyone!

The boy turned FIVE!!!

I can't believe I missed posting a blog on Alex's birthday. Five years old! It's a momentous birthday! But to give those of you who (for the first time) were not able to attend his party an idea of what you missed, look at this video.



And this is early in the party BEFORE they got even crazier. We were supposed to get a bounce house and have the party in the back yard, but the weather conspired against us to give us a cold and rainy Sunday. So the bouncer was canceled, the furniture moved against the walls and we had 12 kids ranging in age from 4 to 7 inside the house.


We unfortunately didn't get a whole lot of pictures. Hard to get non-blurry ones when you've got a bunch of kiddos running around. But here's a few:


Grace's welcome sign posted on the door.


Kids loving each other before the party. Alex is wearing the birthday crown Grace made him.


The cake Alex picked out to go with his Batman-themed party.


We started out with superhero coloring while waiting for everyone to arrive.


Alex poses in front of his Pin The Batsignal in the Sky game before the game is played.


After the game is played. The winner got her signal suspiciously in the EXACT correct spot. I'm thinking that blindfold wasn't tied very well on that one.


We tried out some new games that were a hit.


And the wonderful shot of my big boy blowing his candles out. I love that guy so much!

Busy

I know I've been horrible about posting lately. Seems like we've just been a little busy the past couple weeks. A visit from Mom & Dad filled up our time nicely. And now preparations are underway for Alex's birthday party this weekend, which was supposed to be in the back yard with a bounce house. But since the weather has dropped to a high in the 40s with drizzly rain, we now are having twelve 5-year-olds INSIDE the house for two hours this Sunday. Had to suddenly shift gears in how the party was planned.

Anyway, as usual we didn't take enough pictures while Mom & Dad were here. But we did take a few at Central Park with Dad (Mom was struck with sinus problems and had to stay home). Once again it turned into one of the kids' favorite trips to the city. We went to a different part of the park (closer to the middle) than we did on our previous visit.


Of course the kids needed to climb over all the rocks in the park. Hard to tell from this picture, but they were on a pretty big rock. I think Grandad was getting a little nervous about it.



Looking over Turtle Pond toward Belvedere Castle.



Grace loved climbing the Alice in Wonderland statue. I can tell this destination will be demanded when we go to the park again.



This is called "Conservatory Water," where the radio-controlled boats sail. Lots of fun to see all those little boats out there.



We had to stop at one of the many playgrounds. This was a fun rope structure. Grace made it to the top.


Alex didn't go quite as high as Grace, but made a good show on the ropes too.



Patiently waiting for ice cream.



Dad and the kids on one of the overlooks at Belvedere Castle.



Isn't this just a beautiful place!

Love HGTV?

Jim and I love to watch HGTV. It's just about always available, and for the most part there is always an interesting show on. It's easy to put on and veg out to at night between putting the kids to bed and falling asleep ourselves. But we started talking this weekend about what it may be doing to the expectations of homeowners in the U.S. (or at least the ones that watch the channel).

We were watching Bang for your Buck, which looks at three similar remodels and decides which homeowner will get the biggest return for their dollar. A designer and local realtor go through the space and give thumbs up or thumbs down to decisions the homeowner made with what they spent their money on. The episode we watched the other night was about $90,000(!) master suite remodels in the Boulder area. This interests us in that we will be looking to do a master suite remodel in the next few years (but hopefully not to the tune of $90K). First thing you notice is that most of the houses - on this show and on many others on the station - are BIG. One of the bathrooms in the houses featured was at least as big as our entire bedroom. One of the complaints made by the realtor was that a beautiful remodeled shower had no seat in it. Am I the only person who still simply gets in the shower, takes my shower (while standing), and then gets back out? Another house elicited the complaint that there was no seperate tub in the bathroom. This same house, which was a smaller, older home in a historic district, also got the thumbs down from the designer for only having about a 4-foot space between the bed and a wall in the bedroom. Luckily the realtor pointed out that people looking to buy a home in a historic district will realize they will not be getting expansive master bedrooms.

This made us start wondering why people feel they need huge houses. And by huge, I mean 4000 sq ft or more, though we have the same feeling with a 3000 sq ft house. Most of these people don't have families any larger than ours. Our current home is slightly smaller than our Dallas home - probably around 2,200 square feet, including the basement space - and we really don't need much more room than this. Oh, the kitchen could be larger, but realistically we should be just fine with what we have.

But are people getting their minds skewed by what they want vs what they need by watching some of these shows? Does everyone really need stainless steel appliances in the kitchen? Do you really need a seperate Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom (don't even get me started on the heebie jeebies the idea of jetted tubs give me with what sort of skin particles, old soap, etc, must be stuck inside them)? Do you really need a media room? A "man cave" to get away to (because god forbid you have to hang out with your family)?

I want to see HGTV produce a show focused on smaller houses. On living with less. On taking what you have and making it beautiful, rather than making it bigger. On the value of living in a smaller, older home rather than needing to mow it down to build a zero-lot line monstrosity. Does this show already exist and I'm not aware of it? Or am I reading too much into the network, and I should realize most people look at these as dream homes vs reality?

Another blog to check out

I finally got around to checking out a friend's blog this morning, and decided to link to it to share with my MANY (hah!) readers. From Hoboken to Chengdu is written by a Facebook friend of mine. We've never met face to face, just online. But she's a cousin of a friend of mine from A&M - he hooked us up so I'd know at least one other person upon moving up to New Jersey. Her blog is detailing her adventures during a 10-month stay in China with her two children. Very interesting read. Love the most recent post (September 17) with the discussion between her son and the New Zealand-educated native.

Last few ADK pics

Just a few more pictures from our long weekend. One of the afternoons we took the kids for a walk down the lake from our motel to a tiny park right near Saranac Lake Village's downtown area.

This is the view we had on the walk. As I mentioned before, we couldn't have asked for better weather. Probably one of those buildings on the far left of the photo was our motel.


The view looking the other way, probably taken near the spot above.


This is what we took the kids to see. They had two cute bear statues (father and son going fishing) that I knew would be right up the kiddos' alley. Here's the kids with daddy bear.


Grace with baby bear.


Alex with baby bear. They both liked this statue the best. The good thing about this park is that we got to hang out there for quite a while while the kids played pretend with the two bears.


Here's how my kids walked back the entire way. Thankful for small miracles when something like this happens.


As I mentioned, they walked like this the ENTIRE way. Love those kids.

Hiking pictures

How about some more vacation pics? We went on two family hikes while on our long weekend in the Adirondacks. We had glorious weather the entire time there - sunny with highs in the low-70s. First hike was to Panther Mountain.


My kids proudly at the summit of Panther Mountain. Alex especially was very excited about having hiked to the top of a mountain.


My goofy kids posing with their wonderful Daddy-made hiking sticks.


Grace apparently took a cue from cousin Joey's picture at the Water Gardens, because we looked over and she was cross-legged in a meditation pose. You can't see here but her hands were in the thumb-finger touching circle on each knee.


Second hike was a short one to Copperas Pond. We could have made it a longer day and hiked also to the smaller Owens Pond nearby, but decided short and sweet were the best hikes for our new little outdoorsmen.

Posing at the trailhead sign before starting out.


This was the view in front of me on the rocky hike to the lake.


Where we stopped to have lunch before turning around to head back to the car.


Right down the highway from the trailhead was a path down to a beautiful river. So of course we had to take our shoes off and test out how wonderfully cold the water was.


And the day ended up like so many of ours do when we are out in nature; with the kids throwing rocks in a body of water. Apparently it's one of the most fun things EVER.

Vacation!

Long weekends are wonderful.

A few weeks ago we decided to head up to the Adirondack Mountains for Labor Day weekend. We found a motel with vacancies in Saranac Lake, NY, so decided to try it out for a few nights. It took us 5 hours to drive there, but well worth the trip. The area is unbelievably beautiful. Plus we had perfect weather - low- to mid-70s during the day; high-30s to low-40s at night.

When we arrived we were a little dismayed at first - the pictures of the motel on the website don't quite show how "in-town" it is. But it turned out to be a very nice place to stay. We had easy access to restaurants and stores in town and had just a short drive to wonderful hiking out of town. Plus it was right on a lake, which was nice.


This was part of the view at the end of our motel. Quite a bit more water going to either side too.

I'll post our pictures in batches. The motel had a pontoon boat you could rent to take out on the lake which we did our first full day there.


Grace couldn't wait to get her hands on the wheel. She hated having to wait until we got out into more open waters. Don't ask me how she sees when she has that had over her eyes like that.


Alex taking his turn at the wheel. He concentrated very hard. Both kids took their driving responsibilities very seriously.


Proof that I was on the boat, taken by Miss Grace.


Nutso kid determined to swim in COLD water. She didn't swim very long, and not very far off the boat, but by gum she SWAM.


Once Grace had been in the water Alex managed to pull out of his "I won't have fun" funk and decide he needed to go into the water too. Here he is very proud that his legs were in the chilly lake. Luckily his bravery only extended to the bottom rung of the latter and maybe floating for 5 seconds about 6 inches away from the boat, so I could sit on the end of the boat and hold onto him without actually getting myself in the water.


Of course this is how our kids eventually ended up - Grace on her DS...


...and Alex on his Leapster.


That's okay because then the kids were happy, and I got to enjoy this view while reading my book and having my husband motor around the lake.


Oh, and we decided this would be a good place for cousin camp next year. I'm sure it would only cost about $10 grand a week or so!