2 new window jobs

I think these will be the last 2 window jobs of the season. It was miserably cold when I painted these, and I don't see it getting any warmer for a while! Glad I got a few jobs in this season. Makes me feel useful. More pics on the window blog.

Days at home

So our weeks go like this: Mondays are joy school days with our neighborhood friends. Tuesday we go to preschool. Wednesday we have music makers. Thursday we have preschool again. Friday is a free day, which tends to fill up quickly with doctor's appointments, visiting teaching, running errands etc. So when we get a totally free day, with nothing required, it's a real treat. Not that we don't enjoy all the activities throughout the week. We definitely do, in fact I tend to prefer to have my time scheduled like that anyway. It's just that "free" days remind me of how much I love being a mostly stay-at-home mom.
On Monday we had the opportunity to attend the Cori Conners concert, a fairly new tradition on the Garner side. Her songs are full of nostalgia and memories. She sings one dedicated to her mother-in-law who passed away and how much she would have loved the sounds and festivities of the season. It made me want to run home and hug my babies. I was so grateful to have 2 beautiful, blonde-headed kids to wake up to the next morning. I was brimming with love, almost to the point of tears as we ate breakfast. We happened to have a free day and Miles had been ACHING to play in the snow. In fact he literally ran out of his room in the morning after waking up, grabbed his snow clothes, and got all ready before breakfast. So we started the process of digging out the snow clothes, realizing what items we did and didn't have, getting dressed, crying over not wanting to wear certain coats/gloves/boots etc, dressing and re-dressing, and about 10 minutes into the process, I was spitting fire. Forget loving my kids, forget my tenderness over breakfast, I was MAD. Why does it have to happen like this? We made it outside and the kids did surprisingly well! Miles was mostly concerned about shoveling the drive way. :) Atta boy.
In addition to a new piano, we received a free tuning! When the lady started taking the piano apart, we were all entranced. I mean, how beautiful is that? She let the kids help her a little until I made them stop so she could actually work. So cool.

The kids helped me decorate the tree. They really don't care about any other decorations, so this may be as far as we get this year. Just getting the tree up was a major effort on all our parts. Call me Scrooge, but I have little to no desire to pull out the last box of Christmas decorations and put them up around the house.
We brought in some snow from outside and let them paint it. This is my idea of playing in the snow. No cold, wet hands and the ensuing fits.
We also made some wrapping paper the other day. The best part was that we used that paper to wrap their sibling gifts in. :) This is the first year we've thought to do this, but they really enjoyed using their own money, going to a store and picking out a toy for each other. They are having a hard time keeping it a surprise from each other and keep asking if it's Christmas yet to open that one present that is theirs under the tree. :)


Speaking of sibling love, how cute it that? They usually watch a movie while I get ready in the morning and when I came out of the bathroom, I found them like this. Swoon! Knowing me, I probably got angry at something they did minutes after taking this picture.

Thanksgiving

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving week. Richie was off work the Wednesday before which allowed me to squeeze in some window painting before leaving later that day. We're still loving the fact that in order to get to St. George we only have to drive 4 hours, as opposed to 8. The kids are pretty darn good travelers, especially if we play our cards right, but 8 hours? C'mon.
This year, the extended Crosby fam all got together to celebrate Grandma Crosby's 90th birthday, in addition to Thanksgiving. Because of the size of our group, we held the actual meal and other meet ups at churches and had the feast catered. The food was good, but we were missing some leftovers when we got home. Luckily our sweet neighbors got sick of eating leftover turkey and brought us 2 bags full. :) I don't think I'm going to attempt getting the pictures lined up with the right captions, but you get the idea right? Henry and all the other cousins were amazing play mates for my kids. Miles cried all of Sunday because he didn't want to leave his friends and St. George. They had so much fun with their cousins, which is such a plus for me in many ways. We watched silly amounts of TV, ate crazy good food, chatted it up with the fam...it's was pretty much everything you'd expect out of a perfect Thanksgiving get together.
My mom has a tradition of having a grandkids sleepover every year after Thanksgiving so that the parents can go out shopping without the kids. Richie and I didn't want to brave any crowds, so we just stuck around the sleepover and got to participate in all the activities. My mom showed them the story of the Berlin Candy Bomber before going to bed on Friday. On Saturday morning, after chocolate chip pancakes, she helped all the kids make parachutes from garbage bags and balsa wood airplanes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they could have been plenty entertained with those all day. But afterwards, we met up at a tiny airstrip for people who have remote control airplanes to fly. She had arranged for one of the planes to drop tiny candy parachutes as it flew over us. It was a surprise to the kids and the audible gasp when they realized what was happening was priceless. The plane owners even let us "fly" the planes. Miles and Gwen thought that was pretty cool. Thanks mom and dad!
There are small things I hope my kids remember about certain events, or even just a general feeling they get when we take trips like this, but I'm pretty sure that they're small enough not to remember a lot of this. That's why I blog! I hope when they're 27 with kids of their own, they still remember reading the Sunday comics with Grandpa, the M&M candy "machine", making crafts with Grandma, Gwen being in girl heaven with all of Erma's barbies and dress ups, taking baths in the big tub, running around wild with cousins, Miles telling me he's "furious" and then apologizing for being grumpy, and all those other wonderful things. If they don't remember though, at least we've got some documentation here.

New Window Painting

I should have been more diligent about advertising for window painting this past year, but I was glad that I managed to get at least 2 jobs, both of which look like they will be returning customers! I thought maybe after Thanksgiving break, I'd call around to drum up some more business, but now that the snow's here....maybe not. :)
I put the rest of the pictures on the window blog.

It's only going to speed up from here

Richie and I keep having these talks lately that motivate us to get over the next hurdle, so to speak. "Once canning is done, things will slow down a little." "Once we are both done with these side jobs, things will ease up." "After the Holidays, maybe we'll get to see each other a little bit." The funny thing is that it hasn't slowed down, and it's not going to slow down or ease up any time soon. We're predicting that life will consistently increase it's speed from here on out. Would you say that's an adequate prediction all you more experienced people? We're having a baby in March, Richie will hopefully be starting his Masters program in July, and then homeschooling begins in earnest. Pretty soon our kids will be in the stages that "require" us to drive them to music lessons and sports games and get braces. Our money reserve will have a constant leak in it from now until....eternity? Yup, eternity sounds about right. I laugh when I look back at my college days and how busy I thought I was. Of course I was busy, it was the busiest I had ever been, but compare to having a baby, to having 2 babies, to etc etc etc. Ha! I'll take my college days back any day I'm feeling overwhelmed with what's on my plate. This is where it gets tricky. Everything on my plate is good, so it now becomes a matter of choosing the best.

I think playing in the leaves is pretty important, so it stayed on my plate the other day. Before raking them into a pile, I tried to make it into a maze. It was cool for about 2 minutes. We bought the kids their own little rakes and have them help us rake leaves sometimes. At first they thought it was a great idea, now they think it's a good idea for again, 2 minutes. One day when they're big enough to really work, I'm going to make them rake all the leaves while I sit inside on the couch and eat nutella off a spoon.


I'm in charge of joy school this month and we're talking about Thanksgiving and Dinosaurs. Today we had our monthly field trip to Thanksgiving point to go to the dinosaur museum. Such a cool place! Especially when you don't go on $2 Tuesday and have to shove your way around all the other warm bodies in the building. Yes, we paid full price, but it was so worth it being able to breathe and run around. Miles and Gwen ran from exhibit to exhibit shouting "Look mom! Look!" I bought the kids some glow in the dark stars, and Miles bought himself this ugly dinosaur chomper thing that will probably break tomorrow, that he thinks is the coolest. He didn't even wince as I yanked $5 of his hard earned money from his bank.



I don't have any pictures of the primary program, but Miles participated in his very first this past Sunday and I wanted to document it. I always hoped I'd be down in the audience watching for his first program, but I teach in the primary, so I watched the back of his head. :) He's been so excited to say his part. "My name is Miles and I am a child of God." He loves getting up to talk in sacrament meeting. In fact, we have to hold him back every fast Sunday so that he doesn't become "that" kid that everyone thinks is cute the first couple of times and then they roll their eyes whenever he gets up there. :) This last fast Sunday he insisted on doing it all by himself, he wouldn't even let Richie or I come up to help him. He just talked and talked all about how he was sick, and he's been to the dentist etc etc. Luckily he managed to get in a few gospel principles, and I'll admit, it was pretty dang cute. This past Sunday however, he whined and cried almost the entire primary program, except when he gave his line. The reason? He had overheard Richie and I talking about Sister Gardner in the ward and how she wants Miles to marry her little girl Presley. We laughed and thought it was cute. Presley is in Miles primary class. They got all settled up on the stand, Miles asked Presley to marry him and she said no. He was heartbroken the rest of the meeting. Cutest reason to sulk on stage ever. I found out later that another girl in his primary class also got her feelings hurt that Miles asked Presley to marry him and not her. :) Are we really starting that this young??

One more picture for good measure. Like I said, we're running on max speed these days. Sometimes just getting the kids in bed is a huge feat. We got the kids in bed, I was headed for the gym, and Richie crashed on the bed. Right before I left, Gwen asked if she could snuggle dad for a little while. He said "Ok, but only for 2 minutes and then you're back in bed." Miles made his way into the bed not much later, and when I came home this is what I found. :)

The Rest of Our Halloween Shenanagins

On Monday our joy school group had a Halloween party and everyone was invited. Gwen was so excited that she got to go to joy school with Miles! We did a few crafts and tracing pages and then we partied, complete with a spooky lunch! I'm so glad to have these other women to do joy school with! It's such a positive experience for us all.


Miles and Gwen wanted to stay in their costumes all day long so they could show dad when he got home. This picture is so typical. Dad gets home, he starts a fire, the kids tackle him to the ground for wrestle time. Not to mention the living room is always slightly, sometimes very, messy. Lately I feel like I can't keep the house clean for more than a few seconds, even though I'm working at it all day! What's up with that?


That night we carved pumpkins and watched a Halloween movie. The pumpkins we grew were some sort of super pumpkin or something because they were ridiculously hard to carve. So we kept it simple this year. The kids still thought it was awesome. Score!


That night Gwen got croup, so we stayed home from preschool and took it easy all day. I put some essential oils in the tub to help with the sickness, but Miles still didn't want to take a bath. So we decided to make it an orange bath for Halloween, and BAM, "Coolest idea ever mom! I can't wait to get in the tub." I love food coloring.


Both kids seemed to be on the mend the next day so we headed up to aunt Makenna's house for Halloween music time. I wish I would have gotten more pictures of all the fun things she had planned, but the only one I managed to snag was this cute one of Ethan and Mile snuggling on the couch. :)


We were busy the entire day of Halloween. We woke up and had orange pumpkin pancakes, got in our costumes and went to Dad's work to get a head start on our candy stash. We missed seeing his students, but said hello to all the wonderful people he works with and got some candy. These are my favorite pictures. I think this is my last year being able to persuade/dictate what the kids will be for Halloween, so I'm glad to have proof of another cutesy, matching year of costumes.


Then we headed to preschool. I know the kids probably did fun things in their classrooms, but I had to be focused on what was going on in mine. Holidays in the classroom are fun, but so ridiculously tiring. "Who's cinderella ring/spiderman mask/coat/jacket/piece of candy is this?" "I want my costume off/on/off" (a million times) "I have to go potty!" (says the kids in a 100 button, one piece costume). Whew. I was so beat. At least I got to wear my pajamas all day! I remembered the night before that because I'm ta teacher, I was supposed to dress up. I had wanted to order one of those cute skeleton with a baby in their tummy costumes off of Etsy or make my own with a stencil or something, but I never got around to it. And then at like 9pm wandering around walmart for last minute stuff, I found white duct tape and figured it would do the trick.



After school we came home, touched up our costumes, lit our pumpkins, set out a bowl of candy, and finally trick-or-treated on our street. They were in heaven! I wish we would have gone to more houses! But we were getting together for dinner and games at the Garners and didn't want to hold things up so we got in the van. The kids had fun playing with each other and utilizing (at least a little) the bean bag toss and felt monsters I made. They have boxes of old dress up stuff, so when Gwen got tired of being Minnie Mouse, she dressed up as all sorts of things. It's kind of her favorite.


Both kids cried when they realized that Halloween was over. They felt much better about it though when I let them count all their candy the next morning at breakfast and have a piece. A few days later it snowed! I'm so glad it waited until after Halloween was over. Nothing is sticking yet, but it's definitely colder. Miles came into our room on Sunday and shouted, "It's snowing!! It's Christmas and my birthday!!" He couldn't wait to get his snow gear on and take his shovel outside to shovel the snow into a big pile. We got them all decked out, sent them outside, and then they realized there was hardly any snow. Gwen got sick of it fast, but Miles stood at the ready, waiting for more snow to come down so he could shovel it. He's our little Idaho boy. :)