Thanksgiving Weekend

This year we enjoyed a lovely weekend up North with the S side of the family.

We started our Thanksgiving day with a trip to the neighbor's house to visit "Tom" the turkey.

We attempted to get a picture of all four of the cousins together, but that didn't work out so well. The two big ones decided to pose for us, though.



Then on to the playground we went.

We all struggled with taking turns on the swing, but we managed to get all the kids on for turns with only a few tears.
Jana found a new friend in the "Rocking Froggy". Here she is taking a break after a round of rocking.

Jana also enjoyed the big slide this time - she's been too cautious to try it out until now.
Back to the house we headed for a snack and some naps. I'm always amazed at how much Justin seems to grow each time I see him.... This, however, helped me to realize just how much he has been growing. Here he is with Jana (almost three) and Justin is not yet two. Tyler better watch out or little brother won't be so little soon.

We opted for a casual Thanksgiving dinner - if we were in the formal dining room, it would be far more difficult to keep an eye on kids and dogs while we ate.
After dinner it was time for some crafts. Tyler made these wonderfully neat turkeys with his stickers (he enjoys things neat and orderly); however, our little miss crazy opted to pile all of the feathers onto one turkey. It just about drove Tyler crazy, but he showed fabulous restraint for a 4 year old and resisted the need to "show" her how to do it right.

Our evening ended with Justin and Jana being entertained by Dada showing them pictures on his computer.

Kara's 18 Months Old!

How is our baby, now a toddler? How did that happen?

Kara's grown up so much this month. She now has quite a few words, and she's so busy. She loves to take our kitchen utensils out of the drawer and wander around with them. We find random spatulas and slotted spoons strewn about the down stairs. We even found a wooden spoon upstairs.

Upside down Kara!


She is also very into shoes and jackets. She LOVES shoes. She insists on wearing them as much as possible. We found Jana's old slippers and pulled those out because we didn't want Kara wearing shoes all the time, but she loves to have them on. She also loves jackets. It started with her "fuzzy bear" jacket. It has now expanded to her fuzzy winter jacket. She can be wearing enough layers to be warm, but insist on wearing her jacket too, and ends up all sweaty.

Kara loves to giggle. She also seems to love to scream, but this kid is such a giggler. Sometimes there seems to be a fine line between the giggling and the screaming, especially when it comes to rough housing with big sis.

She's also getting more confident and flirting with people whenever we're out. It's almost as though she scopes out the room and decides who she's going to flirt with... and people seem to love her. We get so many comments about how cute she is and what a sweetheart she is. Between that big smile and glowing eyes, she just seems to exude happiness... except for when she's screaming. :-)


Auntie Sarah (with her new and fabulous camera) took this series of pictures of Kara last weekend. I just love these. This truly shows how intensely she watches people and why they seem to be so drawn to her.



Kara had a wonderful time and Jana's Thanksgiving program and dinner. She had so much space to run around and so many people to flirt with.


Kara's words now:
Mama, Mommy, Dada, Daddy
Issy (Sissy), Gampa, Gamma,
Up, cup, mo (more), ishies (fishies), ga-goo (Cracker), cheese
pre-ahs (pretzels), iwk (milk), uice (juice), binkie and probably more I can't think of.

She does the baby sign for hat, more, and dog on a regular basis.
She answers questions by nodding her head or shaking her head.

Ahhh, it's so much better being able to communicate with her.

We love you, little one!

Birthday Weekend Fun

We headed north for a fun weekend of celebrating birthdays at Gramps and Glenna's.

Jana loved helping with the present opening.

Jana loves giving hugs. Some gentle, some not so gentle. This however, was a sweet one.

Posing for some pics with "baby cousin Arianna."
It was fun to watch Kara and Ari interact.

And add in cousin Max and it was quite a party.

Mama, Auntie Meg, and Auntie Jenny took a trip to the playground to let the girls burn some energy. I was a great little park with a wonderful toddler-sized playground. The girls loved the swings.



They also had a slide that Kara had a blast on.

And there was this great climbing wall that Kara loved to climb on. She wasn't too thrilled when Jana joined her.

If you even wondered why we aren't able to get many (if any at all) pictures of the girls together, this is why; this is how pics of the two of them go.

The set up.
Settle in and a split second of contentment.

Jana hits Kara
Kara screams and cries.
Kara hits Jana back and Jana laughs at her.

And we wonder why Kara's a drama queen. Poor kid!

Jana's 2 years and 9 months

Oh what a joy (most of) our days are!

Jana is an energetic, spirited, sweet, articulate, and very intelligent little girl!

We have been very busy this last month, resulting in fewer pictures. :-(

Jana loves preschool and loves all of her little friends. We got to witness her interactions at their Halloween party and Thanksgiving program. It's very obvious that the other kids spend more time together than she does, but they are all so sweet to her and they always exchange hugs when they see each other.

She now always says "I love you too" in response to "I love you." Ahhh. Wonderful words to hear.

She also has some sayings that we're not so fond of. As a friend said, if you ever want to know what you say too much of, listen to a toddler/preschooler play pretend with her dolls or stuffed animals. "You don't act like that. That's not a good bunny." "You kicked your sissy. That's a bad bunny." "Stop that right now." Ugh! "Why are you in time out?"

But at the same time, she says, "Mama, you crack me up." "Kara's a crack up." (In the car) "Mama, Kara's cracking me up back here." And my favorite, "Mama, I'm so stinkin' cute!" Hee, hee!

Jana and Grammy at the pumpkin patch.

Catching a ride at the pumpkin patch.
Getting some love from Uncle Dave while at Gramps' house.

Jana on the swing at the park near Gramps' house.



Silly girl at her Thanksgiving program.


Jana wearing her Turkey hat. You can kind of see the turkey head at the top of the pictures, the legs dangling down, but I wish I had a picture of the "feathers" in the back. They used traced hand prints for the tail feathers. So cute!

The ladies in the nursery at church have decided that Jana is too big to be in the nursery anymore, despite the preschool group doesn't start until 3 years old. They declared that since she's potty trained and very articulate that she was more of a helper than anything else. She would walk around to the boys (who are all around the same age) and say, "Hi I'm Jana, what's your name?" They'd grunt at her and she'd walk to the next one "Hi I'm Jana, what's your name?" Hee, hee.

Jana's Thanksgiving Program

Through Jana's preschool, they do a Thanksgiving program and dinner. The evening started with a potluck-style Turkey dinner with all the fixings.

Then the different age classes sang songs or recited poems for the audience.

Jana's class was one of the last to go and they sang two songs. The class walked onto the stage, with Jana in the lead.

But then Jana freaked out and came off the stage to watch her classmates with me.

I don't remember the first song, but the second was the Hokey Pokey. "Put your turkey wing in, put your turkey wing out." But the cutest was "put your tail feathers in..." and they had these little tail feathers sticking out of the top of their pants. Too cute.

Here are the cute little turkey hats they were wearing.
Jana and Kara rolling on the floor. What one does, the other must follow!