Some Christmas Cheer!

A little early, but super funny.....

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/mnWJSZrlpJ9sNAlkgoLL

Leaves

We have got leaves and leaves and leaves.... We are literally swimming in them. They are not hard to rake but we aren't sure what to do with them once we rake them. Anyway, the kids had some ideas, as you can see here.

When the Saints go Marching In....

I know that I am guilty of recycling blog post titles, but I don't have time to be creative.... Anyway,the second graders at the kid's school celebrate All Saint's Day by doing a book report on a Saint of their choosing and then dressing up like them and giving a short presentation to the parents after Mass. Here is Jackson dressed up as St. Joseph and a few shots of his whole class.

Halloween

We had lots of Halloween fun this year. It kicked off with the neighborhood Halloween parade which happened to be the same weekend as Maggie's Baptism, so we were able to enjoy it with cousins Kevin and Mya and Mama ReRe and Paka, Aunt Lee and Bill, Aunt Sarah, Erin-Kate, Ryan and Rachel. We took tons of picture all weekend, all without the memory card in our camera.... (including at the Baptism) so if someone could send some, that would be much appreciated.

On Halloween night, we went out trick or treating with my cousin and Jackson's Godmother Caitlin, who recently moved to the area. She was a good sport and went out as Princess Beatrice (think crazy hat) and you can see what the kids were. They brought home tons of candy including 50 packages of fun dip, that I am still finding in the most unexpected places....

One Month

Here is Miss Maggie at approximately one month. When I took her in for her 4 week visit, they told me she still had significant Jaundice and they needed to figure out why. It turns out that often there is a protein in the mother's milk that can cause some baby's intestines to keep reabsorbing the Billirubin instead of expelling it. Some babies are just particularly sensitive to it. The good news is it is self limiting, so there is no cause for concern, because the Billirubrn levels stay at a pretty moderate level and then eventually go down. The bad news is, the only way to verify that it is breast milk jaundice is to do a heel prick then stop nursing for three days and repeat the test to see if her levels dropped. We began this process at 6 am on her 1 month birthday, so she spent the majority of the day crying for food and refusing the bottle.... Luckily, that is all it was and she was able to resume nursing without any other concerns. Amazingly, the Jaundice never really came back even when she returned to breast milk.

4 Little Pumpkins

This Columbus Day, the kids had the day off and it was Casey's first day at a new job. (more on that later) Anyway, I was feeling fallish and decided to take the kids apple picking. So we drove about an hour out of town to an orchard and attempted to do some harvesting. As it turns out we were a little late and most of the apples were on the ground, but we had fun dodging yellow jackets and sorting through them. Then we went down to the pumpkin patch and picked out some pumpkins. I tried to get some photos, but by this point the kids were so grumpy it was hard to get a good shot. On the way out we got the world's best carmel apples and a gallon of cider and headed home.

Sugar and Spice

I couldn't resist posting a couple from this week.