So many reasons to be Thankful....

Time to play catch up!We arrived in Rochester on Tuesday evening in time for William to have his bath, play a little before going down for the night. Wednesday we spent the day hanging out with Grandpa Heidt and at the McGarry's.

William loves the computer keyboard. Here he is helping Grandpa Heidt with some pictures.

Playing with Grandpa's remote control truck


Brrrr! It is so cold! It was 70 degrees when we left home. It was 28 degrees when we got to Rochester. Good thing we had our winter coats with us!


William helps Grandpa unwrap his birthday present - a TV pacman game!


And then he helps Grandpa play the pacman game. Where did his clothes go? I'm not really sure....


It's never to early to plan for the future! Aunt Kaye reads William a brochure about financial planning.

On Thursday, we had a lot of family at the McGarry's house for a late turkey lunch. William enjoyed all of the attention very much. He got to meet my Wennersten cousins for the first time on his first Thanksgiving! We have so many reasons to be thankful this year - I won't go into each one right here. But, we had a great day and a lot of great food with some of our favorite people. What more can you ask for?

William with Great Grandpa Budd and Great Grandma Nona


Grandma and Grandpa with some of the grandkids (and William)
Bottom row (L-R) Kelly, Ashley, Megan, William
Top row (L-R) Amber, Budd, Nona, Kyle


I'm not sure what you would call this game. Great Grandpa barks at William and William laughs uncontrollably. Every time.


William and the Wennersten cousins Ashley, Kyle and Amber


Climbing up the stairs to eat dinner - don't you love his reindeer socks?

Trying lefse for the first time! Mmmmm....he loved it! It was great this year - Grandma, Aunt Kaye and Aunt Megan did a great job making it together!

Home, Fine, Wonderful

We're home.

The trip/trips were fine.

We had a wonderful time.

More later. Tired now.

Merry Thanksgiving!

Merry Thanksgiving! Pictures are coming. John was supposed to update and let you know we are in MN. Tomorrow morning we leave for MA and onto RI.

Project...uncompleted

As always, the timeline I have in my head for completing a project is completely different from John's timeline. Apparently, mine was a little unrealistic. Imagine that. But, there was progress this weekend...

I almost hate sharing this picture. The before of our TV alcove. From the beginning, we always meant to do something to fix this area...almost 5 years later....


The cabinet in pieces. Stained and ready to go. John is attaching the backing to each piece.


William is organizing the screws for Daddy.


Big helper...


"Enough watching! I want to do it!"

"You go ahead, I got this...."

Oops...you'll have to turn your head. The TV alcove all cleaned out.

Here comes more help - with his hammer!

The lower part of the cabinet fits (after removing molding...)


Then we decided we needed to paint the walls on the sides of the cabinet...

Shucks! Turn your head again! Here we think the painting is done and the lower cabinet piece is installed. Can you figure out where needs more paint?


Where we are at right now. Both pieces of the cabinet are installed, some painting is done. Trim has been measured, carpet cut. Shelves are measured...and we are sort of at a standstill as we work out the finer points of the shelves (if anyone asks, I am right). Progress was made this weekend.


Busy busy busy busy....





And William practices standing.....


More standing - this time without a spotter...

New trick: opening closet doors. I'm not sure that we're excited about this one...

This may be the only post this week as we are leaving Tuesdayish for our wild Thanksgiving trip (MO, IA, MN, MA, RI). I have lots of laundry, packing, wrapping of gifts and general worrying to do! Unless William starts walking or reading, expect to hear from us Tues/Weds!

You thought I was kidding about those bubbles...

The rest of this post is not for the faint of heart. John and William spent some boys time together Saturday morning and tried to out snot each other. Unfortunately, William is unable to operate the camera, so we only have pictures of William and his bubbles....

FYI for anyone hoping to spend any time with us next week: when you go to wipe his nose, he gets quite upset which causes his nose to run and make the situation even worse. Wipe at your own risk.

PS What? You thought I was above posting snotty pictures of my kid? Think again.

My kid can blow bigger snot bubbles than your kid

I think that says it all. Snot is flowing full force here. Baking, packing, shopping, washing, and wiping of noses all going on high speed around here. Big project coming near completion. Maybe we'll have some real pictures up tomorrow? We're teaching confirmation tomorrow - I need to go study...

A Round of Applause Please

We were all laying around on the floor in William's room. John and I were discussing various adult topics such as: who was the coolest smurf (Handy or Smurfette - I'll leave it to you to figure who was arguing for who) and which animal noise on one of William's toys makes the most realistic noise when something amazing happened. William turned to John and said "Dada dada." Very clearly speaking to the plastic bat in his left hand. We have been trying to make a big deal out of these types of occurences thinking it might transfer into him being able to identfy us by name one day. Names of course being "Mama" and "Dada". As we cheered, William got a huge grin on his face and let the plastic bat drop to the ground...and clapped his hands together. Just like we were doing. This, of course made us clap and cheer more loudly then before. William paused for a moment and looked at us as if we had both managed to loose our minds at the exact same moment before bouncing himself up and down and giggling like crazy. And then clapped his hands some more. Every time he clapped his hands, we cheered and clapped for him. Every time he looked at us like we were just a little nuts before joining back into the clapping celebration. Kind of cute when your kid thinks you're a little crazy.

At different point throughout the day, we would try to encourage him to clap some more and practice this vital skill. However, every time we would start clapping to encourage him, he would look up with a surprised look from whatever he was doing and look at us like "Hey guys, really it isn't that impressive that I just..... [insert lame activity here]" He was convinced to join our craziness a few other times and clap with us. I got the feeling he was just kind of humoring us though.....oh well. It's about time he started learning to humor the craziness at this house.