Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree....

I hope my brother doesn't eaaaat you. Decorating sure takes a lot longer with a baby around. Last year, it was a one-day-deal, but it is more like a week-long-deal now. We finished my little tree the other day and finished the big tree last night. Mom is still slowly putting stuff up around the house. It has been too c-o-l-d to do much outside! Zach has been leaving the tree alone for the most part, he doesn't like the way the needles tickle his face. He is however, crawling everywhere. He is now a full-time job, but it is good for him to be mobile and finally have some independence. He has a habit of lunging for things to pull-up on, but he often forgets his arms are too short and ends up hitting his head. He has a couple shiners after just a week of crawling.

I started bowling again last night. They now taught me how to put my fingers in the ball, and I am doing much better. School is going well and we're working on lots of projects for the holiday season. Today, we're going to buy Nutcracker tickets and donate some of our old coats. Not sure what the weekend holds for us, but hopefully it will be warm enough for Dad to put up some lights.

Hope you are all getting into the Christmas spirit. December is just a day away!

Later
Katherine

It's a Festival!

of lights that is. We went out into the cold tonight to partake in the annual Festival of Lights Parade. Every year, the local folk take on the very serious task of making huge sculptures of light, which they haul up on top of a hill for everyone to see. It is kind of a standing museum of lights that you can later drive through. The spectacle can be seen from miles away. The roads closed at 5:15, so we arrived around 5 and waited. And waited. Finally, the parade made our way around 6:30. There was a Pizza Hut nearby, so we walked over and grabbed some grub. We parked in a funeral home lot and watched the parade from there. There are only pics from the first half, though. We thought the parade was done, so we went to the car. Well, after Mom started defrosting her toes and Zach fell asleep, we realized there was more lights upon the horizon. So Dad and I went out to see the rest while Mom stayed in the car, missing the Starship Enterprise, the Star Wars and the Santa float. Yup, that's right. Santa trekked all the way down to our neck of the woods to wish us all a Merry Christmas from atop his extravagantly lit, reindeer float. I had a GREAT time and really loved the dino floats the best, of course. Zach was happy too, even if he was a bit too bundled up for the event. Here are a few of the floats we were able to capture in their electric beauty. Enjoy!

No. More. Turkey. Nooooo!!!

Bleh, I'm tired of leftovers! I never really liked the food when it was not leftovers (<---see my plate), so is it any wonder that I don't like it warmed back up? Just turkey, please. No 'taters, no beans.....no stuffing or cranberries for me, thanks. I did have a great time with my family and a very nice Thanksgiving. I'm having a quiet 4 day weekend with Mom and Dad. We're going to the Festival of Lights parade in another town tonight, should be fun! I also had a blasty-blast swimming at the hotel pool yesterday. I got around really well in just my floaties. Zach had fun too. I miss my family, but I will see them soon. Our town won the State football championship just a few minutes ago. Not a big deal now, but it is fun for Mom and Dad to think that someday we'll be playing sports for that school. I hope we'll get the tree out this weekend, but Mom says she doesn't know if she is ready for Christmas thoughts yet. The way my logic works is that the sooner the tree goes up, the sooner the presents start piling underneath it, and there's nothing wrong with that! I've got a pile of new library books to go dig into, so I'm outtie. See you later, turkeys



Baby's first Thanksgiving

Of All the Days...

Is it a bit selfish that we kind of wish Zach waited until tomorrow to learn to crawl? Regardless, we're happy that he can get around better now and feel like a big boy. Next lesson, "NO"!

Yay Zach!

Turkey Lurkey

Check out my cute little turkeys. Mom and I had fun making them, but boy, eight turkeys sure took a long time to make! I even made one for Zach. Mom had to do most of the hot-glue action, but I wrote all the cards by myself!

I am very excited for tomorrow. My family should be here by noon and I'm sure we'll have lots of good food. I don't have school today, so I am busy helping Mom with some cleaning and cooking around here.

Hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Love
Katherine

Work that Bump, Girl!

Look at our friend Leah. Doesn't she just look glowingly fabulous? She makes 24 weeks look dang good. Mom is trying to convince her to make the 13hr drive or flight to P-town for a baby shower...come 'on Auntie L, do you have a problem with free stuff??? Mom and I are planning a trip to see her after the baby comes in March...we just can't wait!

I had a great day. Started off with a lunch playdate with Libby and then school. Dad left for the farm by himself and will be back tomorrow. No point in us packing up the car for just a day trip. So Mom made my special choco-chip pancake dinner tonight and let me stay up a bit late. I think I'm having some friends over tomorrow for a Sat. morning playgroup since a lot of our Daddies are working this weekend!

Happy Hunting Season. Stay safe. There are some guys in the field behind our house wearing orange and bearing firearms. Gotta love the Midwest.

Happy weekend my peeps
K

Showoff

I swear this kid is stealing all my thunder lately. It's hard to get a reaction out of anyone around here since I've already mastered things like walking, toilet training and not getting food all over myself. A little praise for the well-mannered already?

I think we're heading to Grandma D's this weekend to finish up a few last farming things. It's starting to get nutty around here with Turkey Day but a week away. Mom is transitioning between slightly neurotic to that full blown nutso phase she goes into. Actually, just kidding -- she is pretty sane so far. The grocery bill for a shopping trip like this will usually kick in the crazies though.

I'm off to Carson's house for a playdate while Mom goes to the dentist for a cleaning. Lucky her! She's a bit bummed she doesn't get cool prizes and stickers for being good. Maybe if she says please.

Lates!
Katherine

Tuesday Tidbits

As promised, here is some video. Mom was asking me a lot of questions and I really was NOT in the mood to talk to the camera, so all that came out of it was Zach being silly. Mom always keeps saying she's going to take more video, but things get busy and the camera never seems to be around when we need it.

I'm off to take a nap. I've been being quite dramatic about the very littlest of things today, so Mom seems to think a little rest will cure my attitude. We didn't have any junky Goldfish to snack on and judging by my reaction, you'd think someone just told me that Santa was on strike. And then I had another meltdown when Mom shut the car door and didn't let me do it. She's really going to have a hoot with me in about 8 years.

Trophy Girl

Sorry it has been so long. Believe it or not, Mom does help me out some with this blog and she's been very busy the past few days. You know, taking care of us, the house and oh yeah -- busy getting OLD! Mom turned 30 without much fanfare, just the way she wanted. I was a little sad when she left on Friday, but I had tons of fun with my family. Papa and Adam arrived on Thursday and Nana came Friday. I had so much fun playing with them all and getting lots of extra attention. Mom and Dad had a nice time in Chicago and came back on Saturday.

I've been meaning to show you my very special bowling awards. We had a little awards ceremony last week and I received a participation award, or as I like to call it, my trophy. I also got some cool patches and a sanction card. We'll have two weeks off bowling and will start back up again after Thanksgiving. Can you believe it is less than two weeks away!?! Wow!

I think we're stuck inside because of the rain today. I have no school in honor of Veterans' Day. I hope everyone took a moment to thank all the people that have served our country over the years. Mom likes to bake when it is rainy, so I bet there will be cookies later, yay!

Mom's hoping to get some video of us later, so check back soon. I promise not to take a week off again!

Katherine

Berrylicious

It's no secret that ol' Zackaroni loves food. He's yet to meet an edible he doesn't like. Mom was always convinced that kids will eat anything early on, as long as you offer it to them frequently. Well, then she had me and realized that some kids do indeed have picky palates. Zach, however, is an open canvas ready for the world of food -- more like his highchair is a canvas ready for whatever he'll schmear on it next. He was really diggin' on blueberry crepes this weekend. The clean-up took more time than it did to make the food. It was worthing losing a pair of jammies to see him so happy. I liked calling him "messy Bessy". His healthy appetite has even gotten me to try some new foods as well. Happy Eating, Zach!

Tree Huggers

I was so excited to go for a mini-hike on Saturday. I was even excited to get to walk and carry my own load. However, after being on the same trail for over an hour, I was all of a sudden not so happy that Zach had taken over my place in the backpack. I had logged a lot of miles on that carrier and had seen many famous places from behind the view of my Dad's head - Pisa, Rome, Venice, Normandy, Monaco, Florence - all forever blocked from my memory by Dad's big noggin. Zach was happy as could be though, so I sucked it up and kept on truckin'. We finally gave up on "trail #3" when it turned into an open field and realized that it was time to turn around. We actually planned on hiking at a new place, but it was only a 5 minute hike to a small pond. Although the pond wasn't too boring, because Mom and Dad were convinced they saw some people on the other side frantically putting their clothes back on -- gotta love the locals. So we got back in the car and drove to our usual spot. It was a beautiful fall day and I had fun crunching in the leaves and enjoying nature. I always like going places when Dad comes along because there is usually ice cream involved at some point during the outing. The rest of my weekend was pretty quiet. We spent today going all over looking for a new car seat. Zach is getting too big for his infant carrier and is going to take over my car seat soon (see a pattern here?), so it is time for me to graduate to the next stage of child restraint systems.

I have a fun week coming up. I am looking forward to Uncle Adam, Nana and Papa coming to stay with me later this week. Mom & Dad are going to Chicago for Mom's bday, so they are going to be brave leave us in the competent (?) hands of my family. I asked Mom how old she was going to be and she said somewhere between dirt and death, which I didn't really get.

Get a load of this! Last night some very naughty juveniles came and smashed our pumpkins. They had the nerve to ring the doorbell at midnight after committing the horrible crime. Mom said it was kind of funny to see Dad standing on the front porch in his jammies with his hands on his hips -- just waiting for the little perpetrators to come back. Hooligans! I was pretty sad to hear that "Oinkie" was reduced to a pile of pumpkin pulp, but Dad had cleaned up the carnage long before I saw it, whew!

Hope you have a great week!
Katherine






Yay, walking is fun















Replaced, snap!




















Pretty pond

Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet....

That's the cool thing about being 4, I learn all these cool sayings from my Mom and use them over, and over and over. Man oh man, what a day yesterday was. I put my costume at 9am and didn't take it off until 9pm! All my friends at playgroup dressed up. Then it was off to school where I had a fun party. Mom stayed to help out. We made lots of Halloween crafts and played some games. After school, we went bowling. My Supergirl powers really helped me bowl well. Then, after bowling we waited till dusk and did some hardcore trick or treating. I went to at least 20 houses and wanted to keep going, but it was getting really cold. There was one house that was really into jumping out of the bushes and scaring kids. I was really, really scared and almost started to cry, but then they said sorry and took the masks off -- then I thought it was pretty funny. Superbaby stayed back with Dad to pass out candy. Unfortunately, Dad ran out of candy early because he made the fatal mistake of letting the kids take as much as they want out of the bowl! We got back and sorted out my loot. I had a few pieces and went to bed without a fight. Mom told me that today (Thursday) is my special day to do whatever I want since we ran around like crazy people yesterday. I decided I'm going to play all morning and then I want to go to the library after lunch. I have French class tonight and then hopefully we can rest after that and spend some family time together.

Hope you had a spooktacular Halloween!
Katherine