This weekend, I had great intentions of making a list of everything I am thankful for…but I guess that I will just have to add that to my list of things to do when I get time. This weekend was great, though. A much needed break from the regular routines of our lives. We had my mom and dad here the entire weekend. On thanksgiving, Sam’s mom, sis’s fam, and my mom and dad and our good friends came over and everyone was here until late in the evening. It was fun. And filled with laughter and stories and some new memories too. I doubt anyone of them will forget the thanksgiving where my youngest son, Karson, found a sharpie and decorated his face just before everyone walked in the door. Savannah ended up being sick all weekend, starting at dinner on Thanksgiving day. She had a temp of around 102 pretty much all weekend. I felt so bad for her. I know she wanted to play with her cousins, but she just laid on the couch pretty much all day. After dinner, the kids wanted to do some kind of craft and they decided they all wanted to make journals, so I found some old blank cards and we used those for the pages, and I dug out a bunch of scraps of christmas paper that they could collage on the covers. The kids loved it and they all turned out so cute. ( I think we made 4) On Friday, my sis’s family came over. We took turns holding baby Ava, and coloring in coloring books. Dad bought BINGO for two bucks at Menards that morning, so he taught all the kids to play Bingo. They even got some wrestling in. Saturday and Sunday, we mostly just hung around the house. I didn’t really get much accomplished, but I enjoyed being with the kids. It was like four Saturdays in a row, and I loved it. Today, going back to school wasn’t all that great. I had this annoying headache all day, and pain reliever is not working, although I am taking it faithfully in hopes that it will. Max and Savannah fell asleep on the couch at around seven, so we decided to just put everyone to bed early. I think Max and Karson are fighting something too. They are both coughing and Max is definitely not himself today. So we may be in for a few more days of taking care of sick kids. It was strange to have everyone in bed before 8:00. That almost never happens. Anyway, so I decided to come down to my studio…which my mom helped me clean this weekend. Thanks mom!…and draw the latest EDM challenge which is to draw a spoon. I chose three from our drawer. The first one is I think a little play spoon, I think it came with a mini set of silverware for the kid’s kitchen…but it is in our silverware drawer because Savannah and Karson love to eat with the tiny spoon. The other one is a coated baby spoon, also still used by the kids for stuff like yogurt and icecream. And the CareBears spoon is one of the many kid sized utensils in our drawer. We have quiet a collection of them. I usually buy them each a set for their stockings every Christmas. I also recently got a watercolor moleskine, which I love. It is the pocket size and this is just one little sketch I did on the first page of a chocolate chip cookie.

NOTE: After several attempts to upload each of my images…blogger is still giving me incomplete uploads. I will try again tomorrow, hoping that it is just some fluke thing and will be fixed by morning. And I don’t know why I got one image to work and the others show up distorted and cut off. Sorry…all I can say is check back later to see the other three images that go with this post the way they are supposed to be.

Hi! I am still here…sorry I have been absent from here for a while. It’s been a crazy month…I can not believe it has been a month since I have posted! My mom actually thinks there is something wrong with my blog. She keeps telling me when she checks it, it is still showing the drawing of Cyndi. I think she has figured it out by now though…it’s just cause I haven’t posted anything since then. I was having trouble with blogger right after that post, and then our server was down…but they are fine now and there really isn’t a good reason. I have done little journaling, wish I was doing more…I feel like many days of my life have slipped away, unrecorded and memories forgotten. It kind of makes me sad. But here are some of my pages from my journal in the past month.
Tonight, our family went to Savannah’s school to see the first grade thanksgiving play. So cute! She did a great job. The boys were a little crazy and on the way home, Sam and I were commenting that it will only be like this for a couple of more years…trying to offer each other a little hope, ya know.
After the kids were in bed, we made plans for Thanksgiving. We are having Sam’s mom, his sister and her family and my mom and dad and our friends, the Archers to our house. So we were planning the menu and letting everyone know what they will bring. We have a lot to do before then. My mom and dad are probably coming on Wednesday night, so they can probably help out a little, but I hope to have a lot done so that they can just relax. Savannah doesn’t have school on Wednesday. I wish I didn’t have to work, I could really use a day to prepare…of course, that is what I was supposed to do this weekend and didn’t.
Oh, let’s see…what else is going on?…Oh, my new little neice is so adorable! Her name is Ava. She was 7 lbs 1 oz when she was born on the 24th of October. I love to hold her. She is so tiny. I think she is almost a month old and she is still smaller than Karson was when he was born! Crazy! One of my goals in the next couple of weeks is to steal a chance to draw her when she is sleeping. You have to do that when they are still new borns, because pretty soon she will be too wiggly to draw.
The big thing at our house lately is wrestling. We bought Nacho Libre (the movie) and the kids love it. Our kids love wrestling time with their daddy, but since Nacho Libre it has been taken to another level. Sam bought all of us Luchador masks (mexican wresting masks) from ebay and for Halloween, the kids came up with their own wrestling name and we made costumes for them to wear with their masks. Max is Hurricane, Savannah is Phoenix and Karson is Kaptain Khaos…Sam is Rameses and I am Dynasty (not too original, they are names of wrestlers in the movie). We had a blast. I think we are doing a picture of us in our masks for our christmas cards. Oh, and I almost forgot, when our masks are not on our heads they are proudly displayed on strofoam heads (for wigs I think) and sit on a table in our living room. Sam and Max went to Lloyds last week to get their hair cut up in Webberville and made a stop at Grandpa Art’s house. Grandpa sent Max home with a WWF wrestling ring and about twenty different WWF wrestlers. They are a little rough looking, paint worn off and missing accessories, but Max and Karson think they are the best. Karson found one, which he named Nacho Libre, and has had it with him everywhere since Friday…in bed, at the table, to Walmart, and even to church.