The holiday season begins

Thanksgiving kickoff interview with Josh: "I'm thankful for..."

William's interview: a one track mind!

The thanksgiving table (before the turkey and mashed potatoes arrived), with the cute decorations of our friend Staci:

More thanksgiving delight. Yum, I'm really getting to love this kind of food.

When food doesn't shut them up, I know what does (even on a pocket size screen)...

The most boring story time ever, but the beard makes up for everything:

Josh: "I think I'm supposed to like this..."
Santa: "When is my coffee break?"
William: "Get me out of here!"
Russ: "Act natural, she'll stop taking pictures eventually."

Santa: "What do you want for Christmas?"
Josh: "uh... Nuhcember 7" (his birthday)

"Oh... a car!"

Not bad for trying to look classy in freezing temperatures and intermittent rain after the kids bed time, wouldn't you say?

November in Boulder

Another month is coming to an end. It's been busy as usual: 1 craft club, 2 knitting clubs, 2 baby showers, 1 thesis defense (Yeah!! Congrats Russ), 1 primary program at church, 1 preschool class at home, a conference in New Orleans (Russ),  the big Family Housing Thanksgiving dinner (inconveniently during Russell's conference), our own Thanksgiving dinner (with a few friends)... and especially the busy day-to-day life of a family with 2 boys under 3.

Every day brings new challenges and new opportunities to learn. I never expected my children would teach me so much about life and about my own limits. I am still trying to find a balance between the chaos they joyfully and repeatedly create around me and my slightly OC vision of the perfect home and family.

It starts with trying not to freak out when William takes every opportunity available to sneak into the bathroom, climb on top of the toilet and play with our toothbrushes. I had to replace all of our toothbrushes this week after he shoved them down the drain of the sink. Of course that's better than finding him drinking from the toilet bowl. (Ew!! And to think Joshua sometimes forgets to flush and close the door behind him...) He loves to climb over and over again, and jump, and giggle. He seriously needs a full time lifeguard.

He is cute that's for sure, and sneaky, playful, mischievous, teasing, clever, funny... and I wouldn't want him any other way. 

 and he's cuddly (he'd passed his arm around my neck on this picture).

Coming home from church on a sunny Sunday morning in November. Boulder is so pretty!

 Our little Willman got his good looks from his Daddy.

On a completely different note. Tonight was the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony on 29th St mall. We had no idea, but we were looking for something to do before dinner and I thought Santa might be at Macy's so we headed there. When we got there, we found a crowd of people listening to a live performance of Christmas songs outside of the store and we found out that Santa was scheduled to arrive on his horse drawn carriage 20 minutes later. So we listened to the music, had some free roasted chestnuts (a treat!) and admired the reindeer while waiting for Santa.

After Santa arrived, people were allowed to ride in his carriage down 29th street. The line was a little long but judging by Joshua's smile when the carriage arrived to pick us up, way worth it!

 William freaked out a little bit when the carriage left, but we faced him forward and he relaxed.

After the horse ride we took Josh and William inside Macy's to take a picture with Santa. While Russell was waiting in line with William I took Joshua up front to see Santa and the kids sitting on his lap. I asked him if he wanted to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what he wanted for Christmas. He gazed at the old man and squarely said no. I insisted a little bit and showed him all the kids who wanted to sit on Santa's lap but he was definitely not interested. So we left. Before we could reach the door he had changed his mind and was screaming his guts out that he wanted to see Santa. Well, it was way past dinner time, almost bed time and we didn't want to reward his obnoxiousness so we said no. He threw a fist and screamed the entire way back home until he had no idea what he was screaming about. When he'd calmed down and gathered his thoughts about what was making him so upset, we told him we'd go back tomorrow. Hopefully he won't freak out again tomorrow when he sees Santa...

New sewing hobbie

WHAT YOU CREATE

DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT.

DON'T LET FEAR OF FAILURE

DISCOURAGE YOU.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Isn't it nice how making something with your hands makes you feel satisfied. Or is it just me? And yet so often I refrain from trying new things or I hide it for fear of failing.

When I finished High-School and I had to decide what kind of education I wanted to get, I hesitated between being a clothing designer (not the one that comes up with new trends, the one that makes the patterns - I'm not very creative , I'm more of a technical person), and being a super geek. I chose the big geek (Materials Engineering), I'm still wondering why... probably because I was already pretty good at being a geek so I wasn't risking much.
I've never learned how to sew, but I've always wanted to (and attempted to). How shameful it is to admit that my sister is an awesome fashion designer and my Mom herself made me some really cool homemade dresses when I was young. But I never really had the patience (or courage) to learn.
So now I'm thousands of miles away from them and I have to learn by myself.

And I can't sew a straight line, I can't and I won't follow a pattern (it's never exactly how I want it), and I have to open my sewing machine's instruction manual every 5min. but I've managed to finish a few projects. Of course, if my Mom or my sister took a look at my stitches they would disown me, but mehh, I'm too lousy to even see the difference.

One of my favorite things I made, I don't have a picture of but I found the tutorial here.
It's a really cute tee-shirt refashion using pleated trim around a scoop neck shirt.

After that I failed another tee-shirt refashion idea I found on the same blog (stripes of sequins on a white shirt). Although I wear the failed version I'm still planning on fixing it some day so it looks more presentable.

Then I bought a vintage skirt from a thrift store and turned it into a dress. Not much sewing there, I just narrowed it a bit and wore it as a bust-dress with a belt. I loved the result.

Then I bought another dress I thought I liked at a thrift store... and it's still in my closet waiting for a genius idea to make it modest and wearable.

Oh, I also cut a pink sweater open and added lace to turn it into a cardigan. I loved it and I've worn it a lot, but I've abused it a bit and now it's not looking so good.

So I'm still completely unable to make any piece of clothing from scratch but I'm quite enjoying taking old pieces of clothing and refashioning or customizing them.

One of my last projects was this yellow cardigan I made using an old sweater I had and a piece of ruffled ribbon I had bought for another project (aborted). I like how classy it turned out.

I also "made" (customized) our Halloween costumes this year, and my very first baby blanket for a Friend's baby shower. And I'm planning on continuing on making stuff, failing, learning, until I get tired of it and switch to something else.

Ready for therapy

When it's 10am and your almost 3 year-old has already had 3 time outs, and you open the door of the bedroom and find all the content of the bookshelves and closet has been emptied on the floor, and the wall decoration ripped off (peeling off some paint with it!)... and he blames it on his friend Sammy, (who's not even here) and he has this feisty, teeth-showing look on his face... and it's the second day of this angry destructive behavior, and you find your 1 year old standing on a chair that he pushed to the kitchen sink, holding two kitchen knives and joyfully playing drums with them, and... should I really keep adding to the list?, ... well let's just say you wish you could send them both to bed now, with an extra dose of sleeping pills and forget about them for a day..., an hour..., a minute would be great really.

Well that didn't happen so I tried one thing after another, and failed miserably at each attempt. The stupidest idea was to let them do some finger painting... Argh, what was I thinking? Josh was not in the mood to follow any kind of instruction and William covered the table with paint but did not touch his piece of paper once... and ended up sucking his thumb covered in paint.

TV worked for a while but then I had to turn it off, and that did not go well.

Sigh... the only partial victories that sad Wednesday were the preschool class with Joshua's friends and the cool obstacle game I found on pinterest.

Of course William, found a better way to play the game.

Conclusion of the day: I'm ready for therapy.

Fortunately Russell came home a little earlier than usual and planned a date for us. We went to the movie theater to watch The 3 Musketeers while a friend couple stayed home and watched Josh and William while they were sleeping. I liked the movie, silly and action packed but not gore or violent. It was entertaining.

Joshua's behavior has improved slightly since Wednesday. I'm not sure what triggered the devilish behavior, but I'm sure that me being super busy and stressed out and Russell being even more busy and stressed out didn't help. Ha! Life.

Halloween

AH!! Such a relief! Halloween is finally over. This week was insane. Actually the entire month was insane.

There was so much to do to prepare for the Family Housing Halloween party, plus the other parties we were planning on attending, and finishing our costumes, and making dinner for all the people who had babies in the last few weeks etc... And all this time Russell was cRRRazy busy with school, I was basically a single Mom. But we made it through the month, and the kids had a lot of fun.

Our Family theme was "The incredibles", one of Joshua's favorite movies.

At Russell's department party.

Sean's costume birthday party

Joshua trick or treating in the Family Housing office with his classmates.

Trick or Treating on Pearl Street
Trick or Treating in the Family Housing

Joshua's treasure

William's treasure

SOOOO much candy! Some of my friends have told me they buy a nice present and trade their children for the candy, which I think is a great idea. We monitor the candy consumption and so far Josh is very cooperative. William however, has added the word "bonbon" (Candy) to his vocabulary and uses it way more often than we'd want a 1 year old to.