Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I hope you all had a relaxing holiday, we certainly did. For the first time we had Thanksgiving with just our little family. Nobody came over, and we didn't have to go anywhere. I loved it. I could get use to this small celebration. I didn't have to worry about being somewhere on time, and I didn't have to worry about the house being clean and dinner being on the table at a certain time. I just did things at my own speed, and I think we all really enjoyed the day.

I did most of the cooking, actually, I did all of the cooking. I didn't mind, but Holly wasn't too happy about not being cuddled by me all day. So I put her in her booster seat at the table so she could watch me. That kept her content.

Before we could start eating though she fell asleep. So I snapped a quick picture and laid her down for her nap. You can see the steam from something I was cooking in the picture!

So...what did we have?

I made homemade cranberry sauce! I've never done that before. It was pretty darn simple, and yummy though. You can find the recipe HERE

I've been seeing a recipe for Candied Coconut Sweet Potatoes everywhere lately, so I decided to try it out. They were pretty good, but I think I prefer sweet potatoes all by themselves. The topping on this was to die for though! You can find one of the many recipes for this HERE

I made homemade rolls for the first time. They turned out OK, but they were a bit heavy. The recipe called for 8-9 cups of flour, I put in about 7 1/2 cups, and they were still heavy. I guess I'll have to play with this one a bit more. But hey, no company, so I wasn't too worried if they were great or not. You can find that recipe HERE

I cheated on the Stuffing. I went with the Stove Top box! But it's good stuffing, and easy to make.

Scott wanted Butternut Squash. So I made a little for him. I have no idea how to cook it though. I just boiled it, mashed it, and put a little butter in it. I didn't taste it though, so I have no idea how it tasted. Scott ate it though, so it must not have been too bad.

Mashed Potatoes...lots of sour cream and butter. YUM! I also made turkey gravy from our drippings, but no picture.

And of course Mr. Gobble Gobble. We will be feasting on him for many days to come!

So Owen was at the table long enough for me to snap this picture. (I wonder how long he will make the silly face for when we tell him to smile?) He then wanted to go get a spoon for Holly when I said she needed one. He got upset when I didn't get the right kind of spoon for her...

...he laid down on the floor and went to sleep. I think it was nap time anyway. He never eats much of anything though.

Holly had fun trying out some new foods though.

I think she got more on her than she did in her mouth though.

After dinner Holly and I joined Owen in his nap, and I woke up to find Scott cleaning the kitchen! What a guy!

What We've Been Up To

We've been busy these past few weeks. Mainly trying to get Owen to use the POTTY! He seemed really interested in it at first. He was going in the bathroom all time to use his little potty. Pretty soon he didn't want us to come in after him. We discovered why. It's a lot easier to get into the hairspray, hand soap and mascara when no parents are in the room with you. Owen is also learning to dress himself. He put these pants on all by himself! You might not be able to tell by the picture, but they are on backwards. Oh well, at least he got both legs through different holes.

Holly is getting better at walking. She's still not a pro, but she's learning. She'll be running around the back yard by next summer for sure!

But for now she has to just crawl through the leaves that have covered our yard. Thankfully Scott got off work early a few times last week and was able to rake up 20 bags of leaves! New England has beautiful trees, but they sure leave a lot of leaves on the ground come fall time.

Holly is also trying to master the stairs. Whenever the safety gates are down the first thing she does is head for the stairs. She is getting pretty good at going up and down now!

We took the kids in last week for the family pictures. We haven't had family pictures taken since Owen was 11 months old, so we decided it was time again. We think they turned out pretty good, but it wasn't fun getting them. You will notice arms wrapped tightly around Owen in the pictures, that was to try to keep him still for the few seconds it took to get a picture.
In this one he has two arms around him. Scott's to keep him from running, and mine to keep his hands down. Of course that left Holly's hands free to cup her face in a "look how cute I am" fashion!
If we thought pictures of the whole family were hard to get, pictures of just the kids were 200 times harder. With nobody to hold them down they both kept trying to go check out all the neat props in the room. And whenever we tried to get Owen to smile, all we got was this super cheesy smile.

We did finally manage one good picture of the kids, and then we called it quits. I'm hoping this process gets easier as they get older!

Holly's 1st Year

Click here to view this photo book larger

"I Need Candy" said Owen

We had a pretty busy Halloween this year, but we still had lots of fun.

In the morning I took Holly in to get her 1 year pictures taken. That was quite the chore. Holly does not like to sit still for anything, especially not to get her pictures taken. I think they turned out pretty cute though. I forgot to get the CD with the pictures on it though, so the pictures above were scanned in...that's why they look a bit blurry and splotchy. I guess we need a new scanner.

Then we had to carve our pumpkin. Owen wanted nothing to do with pulling all the pumpkin guts out, but Holly was all about getting down and dirty.

Owen was pretty proud of his one toothed pumpkin though. I know it won't win any pumpkin carving contest, but oh well. (It did have two teeth at first, but my knife cut a little too far, whoops!)

Then we got the kids ready to go trick-or-treating. I took Owen and Holly around to our neighbors houses and a few others. Then Scott and Owen went out in the rain to visit the rest of our fine city and get some candy! They come home soaking wet, but they seemed to have had fun anyway.

Holly also got her first trick-or-treat candy, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. One of our neighbors gave her a sucker (or a lollipop as Scott calls them) while she was sitting in the back of the stroller. I didn't unwrap it for her, but she pretty much sucked through the parts of the wrapper. So I unwrapped it for her and she ate the whole darn thing, tootsie roll center and all. It seems she has inherited her mother's sweet tooth.