doing a little decorating

my slow, slow, slow process of hanging things on the walls continues. my dear and lovely friend sarah gifted me this graduation/christmas gift recently. sarah, we found a perfect spot for it:



and Steph, thanks for the help on where to put the vinyl lettering. the afternoon after you left i finally put them up! this also helped me finish hanging the rest of our photos in the hallway, too :)


today the last of our furniture was purchased and picked up by craigslist buyers. (as i type, mike sits in the middle of an empty living room, watching t.v. on a dining room chair). in a couple days our new sectional will arrive. i'm stoked to see how it will tie together the family room and, hopefully, warm up the space a bit.

little monkeys

apparently the gymnastics classes are paying off for all three of my boys. found them in the hallway one day doing this:

So......huh.

I've been thinking about blogging for weeks. And the longer it takes me to get around to it, the more I put it off because the task seems so much BIGer. At the moment, though, it seems I might just start posting some photos and playing some catch-up. I have a lot of photos I never posted because I'm still meandering through iPhoto, and still haven't attempted to learn how to use it yet. But I've got some fun photos, so for the 2? 3? of you who still pop in occasionally to read this sorry blog, here is your update :)

I'm gonna go waaaay back here....

Mike's 34th birthday. Hawkeye cake.

I am excited that we finally started a new family tradition this year, which is something I've been wanting to do for a long time now. This was our first year of making a Family Tree of Gratitude. Mike's birthday is on the 15th of November, so beginning the evening of his birthday we start hanging leaves on our "tree" every night all the way up to Thanksgiving. We have each family member pick a leaf, and write on it one thing we appreciate or enjoy about one other family member. The nice thought is kept a secret (except for the parent who hears the thought and writes it down for him who is too young to write). This gives us about 10 days/thoughts of thankfulness and appreciation to share and "hang" until Thanksgiving, so that's a cute little tree of 50 leaves. Then the evening of Thanksgiving, we took each leaf off and read them aloud for everyone to hear. It was super cute to see their little smiles of shyness when they heard things like, "I really like it when daddy watches me in my gymnastics class," and "I love it when Benji shares his trucks with me." It was my favorite part of the holidays this year, period, which is why I chose a photo of us and our Tree of Gratitude for our holiday cards :)






Benji and Jack's preschool holiday concerts




One more photo with Santa after driving through the Jolly Holiday Lights display. This time Gavin wasn't too scared to sit by him.

odds and ends of the past week

i was not too happy about this little prank benji pulled several days ago:


after 5 years of owning a king-sized bed, we now finally have a king-sized bed set! it's a little fun stepping up into bed rather than down onto a mattress on the floor.



we hosted mike's pharmacy work holiday party on saturday night. it was about 20 people, so busy, but really fun.





celebrated my mother-in-law's 55th birthday yesterday.

she was pretty excited about the kindle we gifted her.

learning a new lingo

i'm behind on blogging. a lot. we just traded in our old PC for a macbook, and i admit, the iPhoto software has me a bit dazed. it's not as user-friendly as i had hoped. it appears that all my meticulously-organized folders of photos from our last computer got unorganized when they were transferred to the new mac. so finding photos to upload and share has become a challenge. and when i do upload new ones, finding them...period...is also a challenge. so i'll work on it, and go from there!

for now, just a quick update that many good things are happening around here. christmas decorating is done as of today. not sure i've ever done it before december before (granted, it is nov. 30th...but still). we went to a real tree farm for the first time.




wow, people go early for their holiday trees! so many of those trees were spoken for! we picked a tree that really didn't look too large when we were there...but getting it home, we discovered it is big. really big. it's beautiful, but big. i had to buy new lights just to have enough to go up! you probably can't tell from these photos, but we have 9 ft. ceilings and we had to cut the top off the tree (and a foot off the bottom):



we don't have much by way of holiday decor, so it's simple. but nice. and easily put up and torn down :)


the boys are starting to feel the christmas spirit. and we ordered their big joint gift from santa last night (a large bounce house for the basement, to help kill the winter blues and work out that excess energy when we are held up inside).



got their photo taken with santa at bass pro shop. nothing says the holidays like getting your picture taken in front of a dead, stuffed animal. am i right?

Benjamin's Funny Bugs Gymnastics Class

Benji is taking a once-a-week toddler gymnastics(ish) class and it is FABULOUS for his self-esteem. He eats it up and is the best behaved kid there. It's amazing to watch him shine like an all star when he's not in competition with his brothers. The instructor tells me how impressed she is with how he listens to instructions and follows the rules...I love watching him in that class.

1st snow of the season

we were out by 7:45AM to play in the snow. BEFORE preschool. i know a lot of other parents were, too.

halloween, etc.

i've been a little behind on the blogging. so here are some quick shots of what's been happening around here the past month...ish.

a fun lunch with alicia, kelly, and the most adorable cheeked girl in iowa


a fall leaf project




uncle adam came for the day of beggar's night and helped carve pumpkins (and trick-or-treat)







Gav's "mean" face