I'm Thankful for Fall Decorations

Isn't it fun to pull out fall decorations?  I love the warmth and color they add to my house.  My mother-in-law bought me some fall bargains three years ago when all the decorations went on clearance, and I especially love this big wreath.  In my old house, it lived just inside my front door, but I like the look of it hung over a mirror here.  (And those sheaves of wheat?  $2.50 each at the same sale.  And I'm not even kidding.)

 Inspired by this display, I saved the root beer bottles we had for Halloween dinner (except on Halloween, it was called The Draught of Living Death, from Harry Potter, of course).  However, I then a) picked the wrong (unreadable) font, b) picked a color I don't really like with this, and c) sized it all wrong.  And then, I ran out of energy to fix my mistake and determined to just live with it until next year.

 I do, however, like the overall effect of the grass cut from our flower beds with the mirror and the berry wreath.  So it still makes me happy.

Favorite Traditions

Don't you feel sometimes like it's just incredibly hard to feel grateful?  I mean, I KNOW that I live a charmed life.  My husband is kind and works hard at a good job.  My kids are healthy and I love them dearly.  I have a body that works well, a house that helps us stay warm, fantastic friends, and only first-world problems.  However, sometimes it seems like it's what I'm dissatisfied with that stares me in the face until I want to soak in a hot tub (see what I mean about first-world problems?) and shut my face to the world for an hour or two.  

This is my particular solution to that particular problem.  And yes, we just keep it up through the month of November.  But at least I'm counting my blessings every day during the month of November, so that's something, right?   For several years, we had a Thankful Jar on our dining table, which we each put a blessing into every night.  

However, last year, the girls and I stained this leftover piece of 2x6 with some poly-stain mix (which was also leftover from restaining the kitchen table).  We cut out the "give thanks" on my Cricut (but you could easily paint or stencil or even Sharpie the words you wanted), and put one nail up for each  member of the family.  The board is hung with two screw-eyes and a length of ribbon.  Then we cut out a bunch of tags and strung them with fall-colored embroidery floss.  (You can see the blank ones in the bowl sitting there on the piano.)

 Every night at dinner, we each get a tag and write one blessing we are thankful for.  Then we hang it on the board.  And we can't repeat any blessing of our own throughout the month.  Last night, Bella was thankful for her pet dinosaur.  You can see that she "writes" first and then I put the translation on top afterward, and I'm not entirely sure which dinosaur she's talking about.  In this house of girls, I don't think we even have a toy dinosaur.

At the end of the month, we write down all of our blessings in our "Thankful Notebook", which we keep with the Thanksgiving decorations.  (We did this with the Thankful Jar as well, so we've got a few years on record.)  It's so fun to review the blessings from years past when we add the new ones.
I really do have so much to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving!

We had yet another Soelberg-Wells combination Thanksgiving this year, and I think it may just have been the best yet.  Let me count out the ways that I am thankful for these delightful friends who feast with us again and again.  

1.  Craftiness!  Sara and I love to make Thanksgiving weekend into Craft-aholic Central, and this year, we made these creations out of scrapbook paper and posterboard.  (Tip for those who might want to make some for themselves:  We used a Cricut to cut out the gazillions of little shapes (wonky hearts on the "George" cartridge), and 59-cent posterboard to make the base cones instead of the $8.00 paper-mache Christmas trees originally called for.)

 2.  Billions of little girls.  (This picture is even missing the smallest one.)  It's like heaven for my girls when Libby and Jenna arrive, and the visit is full of giggles, dress-ups, reading parties (I'm not kidding), clothes-sharing, dancing, and zippie pajamas.  And you see that darling Jenna girl up with Mimi?  That little girl is so incredibly kind to annoying, destructive Bella.  It nearly brought me to tears to see her include a not-so-fun two-year old in all the fun activities.  I will love her forever.

 3.  Joe.  Being Maddie's hair twin, we would love him regardless, but any guy who will watch five little girls (John was on call--as always) so Sara and I could Black-Friday it up is fantastic.  Thanks again, Joe!

 4.  And speaking of Black Friday, I'm grateful for Menard's.  Menard's, of all places.  I don't even think I've ever checked the Menard's ad for Black Friday specials before this year, but I'm apparently the only one who hadn't gotten the memo.  This year, when we showed up 30 minutes early (with Maddies in the front carrier, deep in the depths of my parka), the line to get into Menard's stretched across the front of the store and up to the back of the parking lot.  Our buddies in line included a darling woman who had been shopping since midnight and the foulest-mouthed long-haired lady I've ever met.  She dropped the f-bomb more often than I use hand gestures, and that's saying something.  Also, unpictured is our annual trip to Jo-Ann fabric for $1.29/yard flannel.  My stash is restocked, thank heavens.  I get twitchy when it gets a little low.

 5. Tangled.  Have you all seen it?  It's maybe my new favorite Disney princess movie.  I loved it.

 6.  (On that same note) Wonderland Cinema in Niles.  I love our little theatre just 15 minutes away with $2.50 matinee tickets (but we went during "prime time", so we had to pay a full $5.00) and $1.25 popcorn.  Amazing.  It's possible for us to go to movies on opening day.  And could we resist hitting a movie about a girl with long-long hair when we had our resident Rapunzel (Libby-girl) in town for a visit?  Look at those darling girls.

7.  Edible name tags.  This is a pilgrim hat, even though it's not immediately obvious.  The making of them involved four little girls and two moms elbow deep in melted chocolate, a container of mini M&Ms studding the outsides ("I don't want just one buckle, Mom.  I want mine to be polka-dots!"), and seven chocolate footprints made by one desperate two-year old.  But they turned out pretty cute, I think.

 8.  A delicious feast with fantastic friends.  I wish I'd taken a picture of all the food, and not just Sara's amazing rolls, but it may have been our best yet.  The stuffing was perfect (even following a near-fiasco), the gravy was not crazy salty (I've learned my lesson), and the pie was plentiful.

9.  Sara's pictures which I stole from her blog.  Thank you, Sara, for always having your camera at the ready. I was embarrassed to see that I had taken two pictures the entire visit.

What are we going to do next year when the Soelbergs don't live just 4 hours away?

Oh, I'm so thankful.

For a month now, Mimi has been telling her friends, teachers, neighbors, even total strangers that her cousins were coming for Thanksgiving.  At first, I tried to correct her, saying, "Our friends, Mimi.  Our friends, Libby and Jenna."
But she would correct me, saying "My cousins, Mom.  My cousins, Libby and Jenna."
And it's okay because they feel like cousins.  Sara is my war buddy.  Our friendship was forged in the trenches of teaching junior high.  Even after each of us have moved three times, we've always ended up less than 4 hours apart.  And, in lieu of a Thanksgiving with blood relatives, the Soelbergs are the best possible option.  I have Sara.  Livi has Libby (and believe me, that simple "b" or "v" consonant sound was a constant source of confusion when the girls were teeny.  We still refer to Libby as "Lippy", just for the sake of clarity.)

Mimi has Jenna.

And poor, poor Joe.  He's got John, but the hospital never sleeps (and John occasionally has to), even over Thanksgiving, so his socializing was pretty limited.
We partied hard, until the girls crashed exhausted into bed (and crashed OUT of bed onto the hard wooden floor in the middle of the night.)

 

We ate delicious food, even if I dried out our turkey and made not-so-delicious new-recipe Broccoli Gratin.  Sara's contributions more than made up for it.

And even if the girls couldn't wait for the delicious food and sat down to a snack of Pringles with 45 minutes to go.

And even if my little baby Bella is a serious snack-snatcher.

We took pie to share the resident festivities at the Bradys, and played Beatles Rock Band until we were so sweaty we felt like we'd actually been to a concert.  (Sidenote:  Do you know you can still score 9% playing Rock Band even if you are the bass and you are following the drum part?  Amazing, eh?)
And Sara and I, we decided to make Christmas stockings, which are going to be absolutely darling, thanks to Sara's artistic abilities and my nonstop trolling of craft blogs for ideas.  (Look at us.  Even our sewing machines are exactly the same.)

Thanksgiving Highlights

You all know, I'm sure, the feast-or-famine nature of blogging. Either you have nothing to blog about because life has been so normal and unexciting or there is too much to blog about and not enough time blog it in.* (I have to say, I love blogging normal life. Mostly because then it entails just talking about myself. Which I love to do. Yap, yap, yap. Me, me, me. I get overwhelmed when I get behind on blogging actual events, which makes me procrastinate the blogging that much more.)
Anyway, after that ssoliloquy, I would like to share my Thanksgiving, which was a lovely one. Our dear friends, the Soelbergs of Fishers, Indiana, fame, came up to share our 4th Thanksgiving together. It was delightful. The girls began the morning by thoroughly bundling to play outside. Olivia and Libby had fairly conventional winter-play outfits, but Jenna and Mimi went the "no-pants-but-three-pairs-of-socks-or-tights" route. Whatever else you have to say, it is stylish.The Wheeler family also graced us wtih their presence for our feast. (Providing the mashed potatoes and pies--both essential and absolutely delicious!). It was my first time with a kids' table. That felt like a milestone in my life.Mimi ate all this and came back for seconds. That child can eat.

It was a fantastic feast, even if my gravy was too salty. (I hereby speak never to be in charge of the gravy again.) The rolls were soft and delicious (thank you, Sara), the turkey worked out (Thank you, Martha Stewart!), and the company was fabulous (Thank you, everyone.)
Growing up in Monticello, the Black Friday shopping was almost nonexistent. And I really think that I enjoy my family's day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of sledding down the ski road more than I like braving the crowds to get a good deal. In fact, the sledding would win hands down if it weren't for one little sale. Jo-Ann's flannel. For the past four years Sara and I have been fabric shopping at 6 a.m., jealously guarding our heaping cart of flannel (which is always used by the next year, so I don't feel the tiniest bit guilty). (I put this picture on for memory sake. For vanity's sake, I would burn it and any computer it had ever appeared on.)
I have felt a little conspicuous, laughing and piling and laughing some more. After this year, however, I will never feel conspicuous again. This woman (in the glasses--the other is her daughter) was the queen of the flannel. Both of those carts are hers, plus the stack to the right. It was truly inspirational, and this picture was taken as proof to John that there are people that would put my fabric stash to shame. (She makes and sells rag quilts.) She was the epitome of all the nice people you meet while fabric shopping. She smiled and giggled and talked about her grandkids and asked what we were making, and I felt like even if I couldn't interact with my grandma over Thanksgiving, at least I talked to someone almost as sweet.
I'm done, but as a preview to my next post--a shot of the inside of the South Shore Line train. So much fun.

*I often wonder, "If it wasn't blogged, did it really happen?" I find myself wanting to record everything we do, even to the point of wanting to do things simply to blog about them. It's a sickness.

Now reporting from Indianapolis

I have no pictures, which is sad, because we have done quite a bit.
John and I interviewed in Muncie, Indiana, on Tuesday. They have a fantastic program: c-sections, scopes, good peds, and--best for me--home call. Home call! Some of the wives said that their husbands usually get to come home and kiss the kids goodnight at least before they have to go back into the hospital for the rest of the night. That's a bonus. So, despite my aversion (completely irrational) to the idea of living in Muncie, Indiana, that may be the best place for us. (Disclaimer: I am perfectly delighted to agree with whatever program is telling me they are the best. I am swayed by every friendly face I meet. There are pluses and minuses to this quality in myself. Positive: I will probably be happy no matter where we end up. Negative: I am no help to John in making this decision, and I (again, completely irrationally) feel like I will be hurting the feelings of whichever program we do not choose.)

Thanksgiving yesterday was delightful. Our wonderful friends here in Indy, Sara and Joe, have hosted us since Monday, taking care of our kids while we did interview stuff, and Sara and I did most of the Thanksgiving feast preparations on Wednesday. We had only the stuffing, mashed potatoes, and brown sugar carrots (thank you, Leisy) to do yesterday. However, one hour before the rest of Sara's guests were to arrive (bringing the turkey and gravy, thank heavens), Libby Soelberg slid down the blow-up mattress into a windowsill and split her lip badly. Sara, Joe, and John (because he just couldn't resist) took Lib to the emergency room, and I was left with the other three children and the rest of the dinner to make. No problem. Then I plugged the disposal. I've taken mine apart before to unplug it, but it's much different when it's someone else's and you have a dinner for 13 cooking. I called my dad frantically, and he talked me through the checking of the p-trap. That drained, so I put it back together and checked it again. Still plugged. I took the p-trap apart, plus the t-bar (to keep with the alphabet theme, I don't really have an idea what that horizontal bar that joins the disposal to the p-trap is called), and again it drained. At this point, the problem should have been obvious (the clog was IN the t-bar), but I had potatoes boiling, carrots simmering, and onions and celery sauteeing, plus Jenna (Sara's two-year old) was crying to be let out of her crib because she needed to go potty, but she wouldn't let me get her ("NO!" she would yell, "I'll wait for Mommy."), so I stupidly put the whole thing back together again and tested before I figured it out. (That was a long sentence.) The third time was definitely the charm, and luckily Sara, Joe, John, and a four-stitched Libby returned minutes before the other guests arrived. Whew!
Lesson learned: Don't ever send any potato peels down the disposal (even if you do one potato's worth at a time) on Thanksgiving Day. Turn the dang peels into turkey-shaped centerpieces if you have to, but don't put them in the sink. You will regret it.