Early Thanksgiving Celebrations

Even thought Thanksgiving is not until Thursday, we have already celebrated the holiday a few times!!  The first celebration was with our youth group!  We did an evening of turkey bowling!!  The second celebration was at Shane's preschool.  The entire school shared a Thanksgiving feast together after chapel last Thursday morning!

 

As part of the chapel, students were able to bring forward shoe boxes their family's packed for Operation Christmas Child.  Since we did that, Shane was able to bring our box to the front!  He was very excited!

 

After the kids finished eating, which was actually pretty quickly!, they had some time to just run around and play!  It was fun to see Shane at school with his friends.

 

Our final pre-Thanksgiving celebration was with my family today as they were all out to celebrate Olivia's first birthday!  More on that in another post!  It was a real treat to have a Thanksgiving meal with them - we haven't all been together on Thanksgiving Day since I moved out to California 11 years ago!  And it was so nice that my brother and sister were here too.  We made all the traditional foods; it was as fun to put the meal together as it was to eat it!  As always I'm always thankful for family and the time we spend together!

Another new Olivia Trick!

Even though she is two weeks away from turning one, it still seems hard to believe that our baby is pulling herself up to standing and even taking a few steps while holding onto furniture!  Already?  Just another reminder that this first year has flown by!  Sure, there were some long days thrown in there, but overall I can't believe how big Olivia is!!

This is a picture from this morning!  The first time I actually saw her pull herself up was last night.  I started a bath for her and was getting everything ready when I looked to see what she was doing and she was standing at the edge of the tub!  And trying to climb in!  The girl loves to take a bath!!  Then this morning during nap time when she was still playing after 45 minutes, Steve peeked in on her only to find her standing in her bed!  Naturally Olivia is very proud of herself and excited about this new accomplishment! 

 

And the other two crazies in our family!  It was crazy hair night at Awana! Faith requested pink hair with pigtails, and Shane wanted green hair.  While shopping last week, Faith and I found green hair spray, but of course he thought it would be crazier to add some pink too!  They had a great time!

Shane rides his bike!

For a few weeks now Shane has been talking about how he wanted to ride his bike without training wheels.  So Steve took them off, and when he first tried riding with just two wheels, it did not go well!  He seemed far from being able to do it.  Yesterday he wanted to try again.  Steve and I took turns running alongside him, keeping him from falling.  It did not seem like he was ready.  And then all of a sudden something clicked!  The determined little guy figured it out and was soon doing laps in the driveway!  He was so proud of himself!  We took a few videos yesterday, and these pictures are from today! 

 

And while we are talking about Shane...another story from today!  After Faith's piano lesson we had to run to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to make a quick exchange!  While I normally try to avoid running errands with all three kids if I can, I had to exchange something that I need for hosting Bunco tomorrow night!  I told the kids what the plan was.  After the lesson I drive to the store, and as I'm unbuckling the baby, Shane tells me there's a problem...he didn't wear any shoes!!!!  He claims he thought they had a drive-thru!!??  So I just threw him in the shopping cart with Olivia, and in we went!  Never a dull moment in our house!

 

 

And a few of Olivia!  She is constantly pretending to talk on the phone!  It's adorable!  Anytime she sees a phone, hears a phone, or hears the word "Hello", she pretends to talk!  It's adorable!  And if she doesn't have one of her pretend phones, she uses something else or just her hand to be the phone!

Halloween

We had a fun-filled Halloween complete with dressing up, going to a party, and of course Trick-or-Treating!!  Olivia even dressed appropriately in her orange shirt for the day!

 

My good friend Melissa had her annual Halloween party!  It really has become a fun event as we enjoy dinner together, and then head out to her neighborhood to do the trick-or-treating.  It's fun to see how the kids have grown from year to year!  At the first party, Shane had just turned one and went around in the stroller!

 

The kids wanted to pose showing off their muscles before we went to the party! 

 

And while I tried to get a picture of the three of them together, none of them turned out! This was the best I captured!  Poor Olivia could not sit up in her costume!  Because of the body suit being so rounded on the bottom, she toppled over every time she attempted to sit up!

 

Olivia and I at the party!  And yup, I was a cowgirl once again this year!

 

While this picture was not taken on Halloween, it was from a Halloween party that Steve and I went to this past Friday night.  Some friends of ours from church really get into decorating their house for Halloween, and this year they decided to have a costume party as well.  It was fun, and Sumo Steve was a hit! 

Trunk or Treat

On Wednesday night our church had its first ever Trunk or Treat event!  The kids were super excited to get dressed up another night in addition to Halloween! We used Steve's truck as our entry, and Faith named it Spooky Business!  Not only did we have the spider webs seen, but our trunk also had dry ice, Halloween music, and a candy bowl that had a creepy hand that would come down when someone reached in for candy!

 

Here are the two oldest before we headed over to the event.  Super Girl and Iron Man!

 

Faith enjoyed the face painting trunk.  She had a S painted on her cheek for Super Girl!

 

Both Faith and Shane enjoyed the dart throwing trunk.  Shane even earned two full size candy bars for hitting the bulls eye!

 

Sumo Steve made an appearance!  His costume is a hit wherever we are!  And Olivia was a lady bug!  She was so thrilled to have a costume on just like everyone else!

 

Iron Man Shane never misses an opportunity to pose for the camera!

11 Months Old

How can this little girl be 11 months already?  It's hard to believe that time is going by so quickly!  It's not the being 11 months old so much that is getting to me, but the fact that after 11 months comes the one year mark!  How did it go by so quickly??  The above picture was taken a few days before she actually turned 11 months, and it was taken by Grandma Poelstra when she and Aunt Joan were visiting!  I like how it shows her curly hair!

We continue to see more and more of Olivia's personality shinning through.  While she is still such a sweet, go-with-the-flow, easy little girl, she is also starting to show her anger when something is taken away!  And now that she is fully crawling, she is totally high maintenance and into absolutely everything!  She loves to go for the book shelves and take out all of Faith's school books!  And in general, she seems to like books as she has a few of her own that have become favorite toys. 

 

One thing that has been fun lately is dressing her in many of Faith's old clothes.  It seems as though I have more that fit her now as her growth is not so rapid and she is staying in sizes a little longer.  The picture above shows the two girls - Olivia at 10 months and Faith at 9 months - wearing the same outfit! 

Finally, in addition to crawling, working on talking, and discovering every inch of the house, Olivia is working on two more teeth!  The top two teeth came in last month, and she is not getting her third and fourth bottom teeth in.  While she cannot tell us this, I am sure she is glad as she continues to want absolutely everything that anyone else is eating!  She really loves to eat and enjoys just about everything!  She wasn't too crazy about the zucchini I made for dinner last night, but it seemed rare to find something she didn't like!

 

Next up will be Halloween posts!  You don't want to miss seeing pictures of Steve in his costume!!

End of Soccer

We spent our final busy Saturday at the soccer fields for yet another year!  And I know at least Steve and I could not be happier!  While it was fun at times, we are thankful to have our Saturday's free and open once again!

In Shane's final game, he scored his second goal of the season!  I was the ref for his game, and in a very unbiased manner I let out a loud "Yeah!" when he kicked that ball with authority into the back of the net!  After the game we celebrated the season with a pizza lunch at a nearby pizza parlor.  It was a great way to end the season!

 

Immediately following the pizza party, we headed back to the soccer fields for Faith's final game!  Thankfully I did not have to ref that game!  She ended her season and possibly her soccer career as she is interested in trying some other sports in the future!

 

And our sweet little Olivia was great the entire day!  I was worried that she would have a meltdown or two not having a nap until 3pm that day, but she was just great!  And she discovered a new food she loves - pizza! That's what happens when you are the third child!