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I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Ours was quite nice and very mellow… or maybe that was just the effects of turkey and pumpkin pie!

We spent the day at my folks eating good food and playing with fun toys. I think LiliBee snacked for 6 hours straight, she’s quite a grazer. CareBear is a bit pickier about what she eats, but she had quite a variety of fruit to enjoy. We’ve been pretty busy lately, so it was nice to have a day “off”.

We had another ultrasound to see Banjo last week. Apparently, that’s going to be a monthly event now that I’m both old and showing signs of gestational diabetes. It’s always fun to see the little hands and feet waving around! They got the pictures they needed of the heart and face and everything looks good. Banjo is measuring right on target for 22 weeks and still has everything in all the right places.

There was more remodeling over the weekend. Chris’ folks came up Friday and Saturday to help with molding and baseboards… it’s all so pretty! Parts of our house look like a real home again. The puppies and kitties are sure happy that things are getting back to normal.

The day after Thanksgiving, I came down with a cold… Chris had it a couple of weeks ago, but it took it’s time passing on to me. On the bright side, at least it waited until after LiliBee’s birthday party and the holiday! Also, at least it’s not the flu… On the other hand, the kids don’t let me rest enough as it is! Still, I seem to be much better today, which is good since I’m supposed to go to school with CareBear tomorrow.

This week should be fun, assuming I’m on the mend. We don’t have any doctor’s appointments (which is getting to be more rare now that I’m all “high risk”) and I get to be “art mom” at school, which is the most fun parent helper in my opinion. We’ll be visiting the farm as usual and might even do a little Christmas shopping. The girls love all of the twinkly decorations around right now.  And I don’t think we have anything actually scheduled for this weekend yet! That, in itself, is amazing.

Is everyone ready for Thanksgiving? Christmas? New Years? Where did this year go, anyway?

We had a fun birthday week… LiliBee turned two years old! Of course, if you ask her she’ll tell you that she’s three. I can’t convince her that she’s actually two and now she has CareBear on her side. Anyway, she got to have a special birthday dinner of spaghetti and both she and CareBear helped me make the birthday cake.

We had a nice little birthday party for her over the weekend (even smaller than planned since Cousin H had to stay home with the flu, poor kid). LiliBee wasn’t too sure about blowing out the birthday candles, but she’s apparently some kind of present prodigy since she tore right into them with almost no prompting! She loves all of her gifts and the party balloons, but mostly she was impressed by everyone coming to her house all at once.

In other news, LiliBee had her 2 year check up! She’s still tiny for her age, but perfectly healthy. Both kids got flu shots at that appointment and CareBear is still complaining about how annoyed she was by “LiliBee’s doctor” giving her a shot.

After all of the party fun, Chris and his folks continued our renovation project by painting the living room and getting molding up around our doors! The project is almost finished and the house is looking really nice… and I can’t help but think that being pregnant is an excellent way to be allowed to just stay out of the way!

This week should be pretty fun. We have our follow-up ultrasound on Banjo (and I promise to actually get some pictures out from this one!) and lots of Thanksgiving fun with my folks. This weekend will be more work on the house and, hopefully, a little bit of downtime to enjoy the new stuff before gearing up for December.

My kids are nudists. It’s hard to keep clothes on them and even harder to keep coats and shoes on them. So, of course, they like to go outside. In November. When it’s practically freezing.

They’re apparently playing with scraps of the new floor.

And fishing in the water dish, or something.

I ask them “aren’t you cold?”…

And LiliBee agrees that it might be a bit chilly.

It’s a blustery day today, but I kind of like it! Of course, we’re cozy inside with no where to go (for a change) so it might not be so fun for those of you out and about.

We had an exciting week… we made the big move back down into the rest of the house! It’s pretty nice, but there’s still a bunch of stuff to do before everything is back in it’s usual place. Unfortunately, that might have to wait a bit while take some time off to enjoy LiliBee’s birthday and Thanksgiving. We’ve actually been spending most of our “free” time running all of the errands that were put off during the floor work.

I was “snack mom” at preschool last week. CareBear and I made pumpkin oatmeal bars for her class and the kids really loved them. Chris had an extra day off due to the holiday so he was able to tag along and see what preschool is all about, too! CareBear was excited to have him there while she was the special helper (the kids who bring the snacks get to have extra responsibilities) and had a great day.

We did a little window shopping yesterday (and birthday shopping… shhhhh) and ran into Santa Claus! It seems a little early to me but CareBear was fascinated. She went up to say hi and got to chat with him for a few minutes. He told her to be sure to pick up her toys and brush her teeth, which she talked about for the rest of the day. LiliBee decided to be shy.

Our big news this week, of course, is LiliBee’s birthday! She’s going to be two years old tomorrow… I can’t believe it. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that she was a tiny baby. She’s still pretty tiny, of course, but she’s a little girl now. She does so much by herself these days and gets really annoyed if we try to help. We’ve even had a couple of the famous “terrible two” tantrums! That’s kind of new for us since CareBear is more drama queen than tantrum thrower. Still, it’s amazing to watch them grow up and gain their individuality.

Other than birthday fun, we don’t have too much out of the ordinary planned for this week. LiliBee will be going to the doctor for her check up and shots, which I’m sure will go over well. And have to figure out what cake to make for the birthday girl… CareBear is pulling for chocolate, of course, but I think I might try something else.

It’s a living room floor… no more step!

Check out the quality.

The floor finally reaches the kitchen!

The kids approve.

Chris works to repair the “professional” job.

The return of furniture!

We thought the girls might get a kick out of being immortalized during new floor install… so we traced their hands and feet on the sub-floor!

If anyone ever replaces the pretty bamboo, this is what they’ll see…

I posted a few pictures last week of me and the kids amusing ourselves during the isolation of remodeling… but what do the critters do trapped in one room together?

Lucy and Radio enjoy some quality sleeping time.

Maisy naps.

And Luna dozes.

Quite an active group!

Well, we’re almost through week three of remodeling! We’re still living in one room, but the floors are done and furniture is starting to move back into the regular places downstairs! We had some challenges over the last week with getting the floor finished. There were still a couple of rooms left to do after Chris and his dad were out of vacation time so we hired it out in hopes of getting it finished in time for LiliBee’s birthday (remodeling tip: calling yourself a “professional” doesn’t necessarily make it so… stay away from Kings Flooring!), but after hours and hours of repair by Chris and his folks the floor looks fabulous! The girls love it and the critters are happy to be able to check out the rest of the house again. With any luck, we’ll be mostly moved back in by this weekend! Though then we’ll be moving on to painting and getting trim back up. It will be a luxury to be able to use the kitchen and get more than 5 feet away from the kids…

We had a pretty boring week for the most part, just the usual stuff. CareBear went to school, we visited the farm, we ran errands in the rain. Our big fun was going to Z’s third birthday party! Cake, balloons and presents are always lots of fun. The birthday girl got a big kick out of blowing out the candles and doing some quality control on the cake frosting. It’s fun to see all of the kids growing up and changing so much year to year.

I promised to share the ultrasound pictures of Banjo this week, but my scanner won’t talk to my computer. I’ll have to get my computer guy right on that… or I might wait until he’s not so overwhelmed with finishing the rest of the house!

This week will hopefully bring things back to normal. Chris is back to work after his unanticipated vacation time and I get to go to preschool on Thursday to play with the kids… I mean “work”. And we’ll be planning for LiliBee’s birthday! I can’t believe she’s going to be two years old next week…