Before moving full-on into Christmas, let me add a few more pictures from Thanksgiving that Aunt Cacy sent today.
PawPaw with the kids at their table
My mom, Marcy, Cacy and Me
The pretty table where we ate
One more day in November! Crazy. We spent most of today decorating when we got home from church. It looks so good and is very Christmasey. I love this time of year.
Today was a gorgeous day! We decided to go ahead and get our Christmas tree and start enjoying all the wonderful fun of the holiday earlier than usual. I got out on “the wrong side of the bed,” one might say. Josh quickly told me that if I was going to be “Bah-Humbugging it”, then we would all just stay home. I laughed at him and decided to straighten up! Then, Ruby started pouting about the jacket we told her to wear. Josh told her the same thing he told me. She straightened up, too. As we pulled out of the driveway, I could hear Molly singing and singing “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.” I commented on her joyful disposition this morning and that’s when it started. A new Dorminy Family tradition….the “JOLLIEST ELF AWARD.” Josh decided that Molly should receive the JOLLIEST ELF AWARD for the 10:00 hour. Ruby said she wanted the award and wanted to know what it was….she didn’t quite understand that the award is the title itself. Molly was so happy to be the winner of the hour and kept up a good attitude, giving us all a run for our money. I am not sure Mack ever got the award…maybe once. He was a stinker off and on all day. He wouldn’t smile for the camera most of the day, and he was into EVERYTHING when we finally got home and tried to start decorating.
At Chick-fil-A, note Mack looking away from the camera
At the tree farm in front of our tree, note Mack’s “non-jolliest elf” disposition
Inside at Berry Patch Farms, enjoying a cookie….what a face that Mack is making!
This is the tree that is now sitting in our living room. We are all so tired from a full day, so it won’t be decorated until tomorrow. We made time to put up an artificial tree in the kid’s school room. It has colored lights and decorations they have made or have been given over the past five years. It looks so great! I love that they have their own tree. Josh unplugged it tonight after putting them to bed, then we heard scampering around, and when Josh went upstairs to his office, he saw that the tree was plugged back in. I am sure our “jolliest little elf” had nothing to do with that! I will be posting later on the full day’s experience of tree-shopping and family fun, but for now I will leave you with these pictures of Mack…..showing you another reason why we will have to wait until tomorrow to decorate. This stinker is into everything!!
And lest I forget, let me finish the “jolliest elf” topic. After the tree was tied to the car, the kids were all buckled in and we were ready to go, Josh accidentally spilled Molly’s diet coke all over his seat. He started a little rant about how it shouldn’t have been in the car and what a mess it was and on and on….He walked away to throw the can in the trash and someone told Ruby to say to her Daddy when he got back in the car, “Daddy, if you want to win the JOLLIEST ELF AWARD, you better be careful!” He just looked at me. Hilarious. Let’s just say Daddy didn’t receive that award during the 1:00 hour.
More Christmas posts to come!
We got back this evening from Augusta. It was such a wonderful Thanksgiving! All of the cousins played and played and played some more. I enjoyed catching up with my sisters, and I always like the late night talks with my parents after the kids are in the bed. We ate way too much, but that is just how it is on Thanksgiving, right???? Right. I will narrate as I post the pictures. Cacy will be sending me some more pictures, too.
We went to see MeMe on Wednesday afternoon. She was doing very well and seemed happy that we all came to visit with her.
What do you do with little kids in a nursing home? Blow up the gloves into balloons and bounce it around the room! That’s what.
That night we all ate outside at my dad’s “lean-to” behind his shop. Molly followed Renn around “helping” her all night.
This is my dad getting the heater ready down at the “lean-to.”
The kids played with, what I called, “glorified trashbags” that I brought. They would just throw them around, hit someone with them and them pop them. Fun times.
Aunt Marcy with my girls
Mack and Vance
Aunt Cacy with her daughter, Kaybeth
Vance–mad about something
Classic Tommy (PawPaw) and Kay (Sweetie)…he never leaves his bedroom without shoes and socks…she could have been out in the freezing temps with shorts on!
My sweet husband
Molly was quite bossy most of the time. There are seven grandkids and five of them are younger and shorter than her! She took full advantage.
Molly and Renn
Mack in a little swing
Thanksgiving morning with three little munchkins I am thankful for!
Our family of five
My mom and Ruby
My dad and Josh watching the turkey fry
Mom making her dressing
Ruby reading “Dick and Jane” stories
Marcy, Jesse, Rennison and Vance…her finger is up her nose, how cute!
Renn is not happy
Mack wasn’t willing to be a part of the cousin group
Aunt Marcy doing dishes…had to get a picture of this!
Aunt Cacy watching Aunt Marcy wash the dishes
Renn and Me
Kaybeth picking her nose
Renn eating a turkey egg roll thing that my mom and dad made…..they were very good….turkey and dressing in an egg wrap and then fried. YUM.
The guys all hanging out
We went to Aunt Cacy’s house later on Friday and the kids played outside, then went inside the playroom for a dance party.
Ruby doing the sprinkler
All tuckered out from the dancing
All seven grandkids with Sweetie
All seven grandkids….at this point they are over getting their picture made! They are all so sweet and cute.
Maybe after a good night’s sleep and some cleaning up around here, I can think of some stories to go along with all the pictures. For now, I will go to bed!
My sister emailed me these pictures from Thanksgiving 2007. Fun times at Gran and PawPaw’s house….here are my little Indians….and Mack, the chubby turkey.
Molly, 2 1/2 years old
Hilarious!
Look at those thighs! Good grief.
A family picture…don’t all of our children look so happy to be with us???? Mack looks too chubby to make facial expressions or turn his head. And Mack and Molly look so much alike here! Ruby was 3 1/2 years old here…she has changed a lot, though she still has her very round shaped face.
I hope everyone is gearing up for a fabulous Thanksgiving! We are! And I am so thankful for so many people and things in my life. I am so blessed in so many ways…to begin to make a list would be crazy because I am not sure I would ever be able to list all that I am thankful for! The list gets longer and longer with each passing year. This Thanksgiving I will be thanking God for His wonderful protection and provision in my life and the one’s I love. I am so thankful for each person in my family, starting with Josh, the kids and moving on out to ALL of my family. I am thankful for Josh’s job that God has used to meet our needs. I am thankful for an incredible group of friends and fellow believers we get to attend church with. I am thankful for my health. See???? I could go on and on…..I am so THANKFUL. Happy Thanksgiving!!
This Monday has been filled with lots and lots of laundry. I had no idea how much laundry was stuffed into the clothes hampers in this house! Whew. I am not finished yet, but I am very close to being able to say that most of the clothing in this house is clean. I have been packing some stuff today for our trip. We are all very excited to see family very soon. I got to catch up with Mary today, which is always nice. The kids enjoyed playing with their friends, too. Josh got home, and I was upstairs cleaning up some stuff. He decided that a pizza would be good for dinner, and I agreed. Nevermind the fact that the kids had cheese pizza for lunch. Ruby said that the “other kind of cheese pizza is much better.” In other words, she is over the store-bought pizza…bring on the Papa Johns or the Johnny’s Pizza. Whatever! So, at the table I caught some very crazy pictures of the silly kids. BUT FIRST, let me tell you that Molly has learned how to put her hair in a pony tail and in pig tails. She has done this countless number of times today. I am thrilled! What a great thing to keep her occupied, and she is so very proud of herself.
THE FRONT
THE BACK
And then the craziness ensued…..
Ruby would still rather not wear any clothes than wear clothes…even in really cold temperatures! She is a mess.
So on this Monday before Thanksgiving, I will say that I am very thankful for the three little “turkeys” that are in my life. Life would be so boring without them!! Gobble, gobble.
Well, Thanksgiving Day is fast-approaching! We have already started the festivities. Ruby had a Thanksgiving Feast at her school today and there was a little play in her room right before lunch. Gran and Paw Paw got to come up to be a part of it all, and we have had so much fun.
I volunteered to make Thanksgiving-themed cookies for Ruby’s class; I was so nervous because my first reply to the one who asked me was that I would order something and be sure to have it there. I thought ordering something would be great considering that I would have made sure they were really cute and appropriate for the Feast. I am quickly learning that homemade food is the preferred choice. Sooooo, after doing a little google searching, I found this cookie:
I thought it was so very cute, but I was unsure of my abilities. I am not, and never have claimed to be, Wonder Woman in the Kitchen. I can get by, but I am not savvy at any of it. BUT, these turned out great! I was very happy that I had tried something I wasn’t sure I could do. (even though I lost some sleep over it and when I was sleeping I was dreaming of all that could go wrong and nevermind the fact that I couldn’t find BRACH’S candy corns anywhere when I needed them……)
We baked the sugar cookies, then spread chocolate icing on the top curve and added candy corns to make the feathers.
Then, we used green icing and mini-chocolate morsels for the eyes.
The end product didn’t look exactly like the picture, but they did turn out adorable—in my humble opinion. 🙂
Gran and Paw Paw helped us make the cookies. Paw Paw also had fun creating his own cookie.
Around 11:30 Ruby was having a play in her room before lunch, so we all headed up to the school. We were all very excited to see Ruby!
Molly got all dressed up for the occasion.
Ruby, the pilgrim woman! How sweet is she?
I could hardly stop taking pictures of her in that sweet little bonnet.
These were the Indians.
The pilgrim men
During class the kids had come up with their own Thanksgiving menu. There were some funny items…nerds, frogs, and more!
Amazing Mrs. Honaker….love this lady! Oh, and look…do you see what I see on the table????
Take a closer look over to the left….yes, right there. The Turkey cookies some crafty mom made. ha!
OK, back to the focus of this morning. Ruby’s line was, “Mercy Me!” It was so stinkin’ cute.
They had to hop up and down saying “pop, pop, pop!” each time Mrs. Honaker said the word corn.
Then, one of the parents got to participate. Lucky me. It would have been much more fun to watch Josh with these other two dads say, “Mercy Me!” and hop up and down.
And now to the good stuff. Mack was enjoying some mac-n-cheese. The lunch was catered by Family Traditions. YUM.
Molly smiled for only parts of the lunch. There was a person dressed as a Turkey roaming around and scaring her to death. I told Josh that there is no way I am paying good money for Disney anytime soon with a child who is deathly afraid of “characters.” I’d be forcing her to give Mickey a hug while she pee’d in her pants—-all because “we paid good money for you to have fun!” No thanks. We’ll just wait until she is 10 years old, I guess. Maybe we will be forced to have all of our vacations take place at the beach until Molly can handle the costumes. Hmmm, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all.
What a fun day! I love Ruby’s school. It is such a wonderful place to be. I am so thankful that she gets to go there this year!
Mack is so sweet. He can be a stinker when he wants to be, but for the most part, he is sweet. He was forced to sit on the potty today because he is having some pooping issues. He hates sitting on the potty these days. I don’t know why. Anyway, after many stories and lots of whining, I told him to lean over so I could clean his hiney. He leaned over and said in a very kind voice, “Thank you, Mama. Thank you for clean my hiney.”
Then, tonight when I was wiping his hiney and finding it to be raw from so much wiping because of the weird pooping issues, I decided it needed some cream. Molly brought it to me. I gently put it on his little hiney, and he sweetly said, “Oh, thank you, Mama. Thank you for the cream.”
What a sweet little guy. I hope he is always so polite. He tells everyone when to say “Thank you” and “You’re Welcome.” So funny.
Another story……Molly asked if she could put a movie in the other night. I told her that she could, and then I heard a familiar voice (and when I say familiar, it isn’t because I have heard this voice recently…just at some point in my past) and wondered what in the world the girls were doing.
They decided that they needed a little exercise. Pilates, anyone?
Crazy girls.
This is a picture from last Tuesday morning right before walking out the door to school.
This has been a full week! I am looking forward to the Dorminy’s coming to visit for a couple of days. I am also looking forward to Thanksgiving! I can’t wait to go to my parent’s house and hang out with all of the family.
I do have this one issue I could use some input on….every single night I have a head ache. I have stopped drinking coffee or any caffeine, really. I got a clean bill of health from my doctor’s appointment—no sugar issues, no cholesterol issues, no thyroid stuff—-SOOOOO, do I need to get my eyes checked? I am just wondering what could be causing a head ache each night. Surely by now I am used to three rowdy kids and all that the days entail. I have got to figure out what the cause is! Let me know if there are other things I should check or if you know a good eye doctor in the area.
Ruby says so many things to her teacher and class about us, and I am not sure how it all comes across. BUT, this time she shared what someone else said about their dad, and I know this person and had to laugh. She said, “He said that his daddy cuts the heads off of turkeys and watches them still run around.” What probably happened is that in an innocent conversation the dad of this little boy was telling him how turkeys sometimes run around even after they get their heads chopped off….but this little boy decides to say that his dad actually does this. Because I know the family, it makes me laugh even harder. They hardly strike me as the type that would do this for fun. Oh, I wonder what all Ruby has said. I remember asking my mom, “What will she tell her teachers?” My moms reply was, “Everything.”
Great. Let’s just hope Mrs. Honaker is very keen on how Kindergarteners can exaggerate or fabricate a story in all sorts of ways!
I am not sure where I should start considering I haven’t updated the blog in a few days. I think I will start with Thursday night. We gave a shower for our long-time friend, Stephanie Dutton, at a Mexican restaurant. It was a lot of fun. Then, I went and picked up a babysitter . She spent the night with us so that Josh and I could go get a physical. Go get A physical, like a doctor’s appointment. Josh joked about the slight difference between getting A physical and getting physical. Where did he make such a joke? In Sunday School class in front of everyone. Lovely. Anyway, it cracked me up when he came out of his appointment with the doctor asking if I had to do ……… or ……….. I said, “NO!” and laughed at him, thinking he was just trying to make a joke. He was serious this time. Poor guy. I didn’t know what I was getting him in to! But I am glad I didn’t have to do all of THAT. The three years of going to the OB/Gyn is enough to last a girl a lifetime. I did, however, have to get the flu shot, lots of blood drawn, AND T-dap vaccination. You know, in case I step on a rusty nail or happen to come across whooping cough. All will be well. I am still sore on the shoulder that got the T-dap. Still. It is ridiculous. It seems to be right where the children like to tap me to get my attention.
Josh and I enjoyed our time together. I told him to take off a Friday more often just to spend with me, and I won’t be forced to schedule doctor appointments to have some time with him. It will cost him a lot less, too. We went to Cheesecake Factory to eat lunch. It was so nice to just hang out with him and talk. And eat, of course.
I took our sitter back home, we all took a short nap, then went and got Ruby from school. We went to the church park to enjoy the weather. Everyone seemed to have fun. We picked Wendy’s up for dinner, so ALL day Friday I didn’t cook one single thing for anybody. It was soooooo nice to not spend any time in the kitchen.
Saturday was an awesome day. I was sad that we weren’t in Augusta for Jud’s birthday party, but we will be going to Augusta next week for Thanksgiving, so we decided to stay home. We cleaned out our garage, got my car and Josh’s truck all cleaned up, I took a nice long walk in the gorgeous weather….and the kids and Josh played outside all day long. The kids went to be really early, which is always nice.
Sunday was great! We went to 8:00 church service first, then went to Sunday School at 9:30. I think I am really going to love that schedule. We are used to going to Sunday School first, so it was nice to do something different and not feel so rushed in the morning. We are going to figure out Care groups this week so that we can start them this Sunday.
So, we have had a great few days, and I am looking forward to a fun week. We accomplished a lot this morning during school time. I am about to feed these little ones some lunch, then put Mack down while I clean up! There is a ton of laundry to fold and put away, a lot of hardwoods to sweep and mop, and several beds that still need to be made! At lunch time I wonder if I should just leave them unmade? I mean, it’s not that long until they will be climbing back into bed!
The Dorminy’s are coming to visit later this week. Ruby is performing in a Thanksgiving play on Friday, which should be great. Her line is, “Mercy Me!” She says it very cutely. I am excited to see her in her classroom with her friends.
Ok, let me leave you with some pictures since I have rambled lots of random information your way.
As promised, here is a goofy picture of me from our “Would You Rather…?” game that we played at the Ladies Sleepover. 🙂
I made these cute little Indians for our Thanksgiving Dinner at my parent’s house. I made enough for all of the cousins to have one. They turned out super-cute!
This is what is waiting on me. Fun, fun.
Ruby played a cute word families game with Turkey Feathers this morning. Evidently it was “Backwards Day” at home school Kindergarten because she insisted on wearing her clothes inside out and backwards during school. Who says home-schoolers can’t have fun?!
Molly and her endless art project.
The mess Molly left from her endless art project.
Molly hiding from the mess from her endless art project
Mack playing with puzzles.
Ruby writing a story about a word that starts with the letter A. I tried to help her come up with something really creative during our brain storming time….I told her she could have THREE “A” words and tell a story about leaving Alpharetta to go to Augusta to see Sweetie and Paw Paw, then going to Albany to see Gran and PawPaw. BUT, she had a grand idea of writing about a very creative “A” word–Apple. She told of picking an apple that was juicy, then taking five apples home to make an apple pie. Oh, well. I tried. It is HER story though. 🙂
I hope everyone has a great week!
Last night I was changing Mack’s diaper. I asked him when he was going to start using the potty like a big boy. He said, “I like diapers.” I told him how gross they are…the nasty tee-tee and yucky poo-poo….”A dirty diaper is so gross!!!” His reply was, “Yes, it is!!!” And he had a big smile on his face then said to me, “Don’t tell me that, stinker bear.” He is crazy.
Then, this morning at the breakfast table, I was going over Ruby’s Sparks Verse and Molly’s two Cubbie Verses. They did very well. Mack, feeling left out, said, “My Puggle verse is…PUGGLES.” And he smiled really big like he had done something great. We all smiled back and told him how smart he was. What a funny boy.