How Many People Can We Cram Into Our Tiny Townhouse?

The answer would be 24, possibly more. That is precisely what we did for Thanksgiving this year: cram loads and loads of people into our already squishy townhouse. Our original plan was to go to NYC and do the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with Kaden and do all the  fun Christmas stuff in NYC the day after- Rockefeller Center ice skating, watch the lighting of the giant tree, let Kaden play the big piano at FAO Schwartz, etc… but funding fell through. (We'd like to thank North Carolina and New York for allowing us to pay rent in both locations all summer, though we only lived in one…)

So we got to talking with some of our friends who also happened to have no family close by or other invites for Thanksgiving and planned our own "Island of Misfit Toys" Thanksgiving, if you will. We had a motley crew because I threw the invite out to anyone in our ward in the same situation via the ward Facebook page. The MacBeths, the Harts, the Bowens, Shipps and Springs came from our ward. We ended up also inviting a couple from Curtis' MBA program from California (Allen and Chelsea) and Curtis' friend, Shubham Sharma, from India. He'd never had Thanksgiving before so we figured it'd be a fun, cultural experience while he's in America.

I was a little worried how everyone would mesh, seeing as not everyone knew each other super well and I didn't want it to be awkward like Thanksgiving last year at the church.  Last year's felt more like an awkward ward gathering than Thanksgiving so my goal was not to have it feel like that this year.  First order of business was to offer to do it at our house, despite the lack of space and my fear of making turkey.  More homey.  Secondly I decided there must be games to help people have fun and let loose a little and get to know each other in a more fun setting.  Third, I decided that the kids needed their own fun space so adults could have a relaxing and fun evening too.

It took a lot of thought and planning and many hours to figure out how to best make everything fit into our townhouse in the most realistic way, but we did it! I think it turned out nicely and even my "decor on a major, major budget" seemed to turn out just fine.  We had to totally clear out/childproof our basement, which is normally our exercise room/my craft room and turn it into a giant playroom.  We moved every toy Kaden owns to the basement and then also some moved our desk out of the living room to make space for tables. Here is how it looked before people came.  This was one finished dining table.

 These are the centerpieces I made from bowls and rocks I already had and homemade lanterns made from Gerber baby jars and wire.  I only bought the floating candles and tea light candles.

One of the kids' tables- Turkey placemats to color on, butcher paper for coloring, and of course crayons in the turkey jar.

 This was the food table

The playroom (some of the toys belonged to our friends, which was nice since Kaden only had so many)

 Dinner went well and the turkey turned out pretty well! A Thanksgiving miracle indeed!  After dinner we had a blast playing House of Fire (a dice game) and Minute to Win-It Games.  Everyone mixed really well and we ended up having a more fun group than I was initially thinking.

 Playing House of Fire

 Rachel MacBeth and I playing Minute to Win It Flipper Paddle Tennis

Kaden wouldn't eat anything we tried to feed him but we noticed all night he kept stealing food off of the other kids' plates periodically.

 Shubham and Alan playing the game where you have to pick up the bags of different heights with only your mouth.

Kaden observed the game and when it was over decided he wanted to try it himself. He was pretty good at it!

 For Curtis' game, he had to put Vaseline on his nose and then get cotton balls from one bowl to another.

 Curtis' opponent, Laura Shipp.  Curtis did a really good job but Laura went second and beat him.

Thanksgiving was a great experience and we had a wonderful time with everyone that came. I dare say I'm not completely terrified to cook turkey anymore (just mildly, ha ha.)  If we couldn't be with family we felt very blessed to share the day with some wonderful friends in our ward family. :)

One More Year Until 30… eek!

I celebrated my 29th birthday on November 15th.  It's weird to think I am that old.  Especially since every year as a kid when I'd ask my Mom how old she was, she'd say, "I'm 29 this year."  Hmmm…. won't that be interesting when next year I'm older than my Mom? :)

It was a good birthday.  Curtis made me breakfast and then Curtis had a treasure hunt for my presents with little poems he'd created.  I was thrilled to get a fondue maker (we've already used it several times and LOVE it), a new running band for my arm that holds my phone so I can have Map My Run and Pandora going at the same time, new clothes and boots.  

The majority of November besides the first 5 days I've been sick with flu, cold and then it turned into bronchitis and "unresolved bronchitis" (aka my doctor doesn't know what's wrong after a chest x-ray came back negative for pneumonia but my lungs and ribs still hurt and I still feel terrible.)  So needless to say I still didn't feel super great on my birthday so I spent a majority of the day in bed resting when Kaden napped and then Curtis had to change our birthday night plans since I didn't feel well enough to do his original plan of dinner and star-gazing (outside in the cold- not good for a sick person.)

In the afternoon when Curtis was done with school we took Kaden to the Museum of Play for a few hours.  We love that place! It's the best kid's museum and fun winter outing ever. That night we dropped Kaden off at the MacLeans for babysitting and Curtis and I went to Red Lobster for dinner and to see Monsters University, since we'd still never seen it.  It was a cute movie and I thoroughly enjoyed a night out with just Curtis and I, even if I didn't feel all that great.  Date nights are a special treat lately since we don't have a lot of money to go out and pay a sitter, so we do a lot of "babysitting trades" with friends so we can go out for free, which means we still don't go out a whole lot, so a date night was a great present too.

The next day I went to lunch with Miranda, Janelle and Melanie.  We have kind of formed a "birthday club" of sorts since last year the four of us went out for everyone's birthdays together too.  Melanie's birthday is on the 13th and mine on the 15th so we just pick a day that is neither of our birthdays to celebrate.  We picked Saturday the 16th so that the husbands could watch the kiddos and we could all have a toddler-free lunch.  So relaxing!  We went to La Tea Da, the CUTEST little cafe/bakery place ever.  They had the yummiest Rooibois tea (like herbal tea but the South African version) and we got to have cute little tea cups and a tea pot and of course hats to dress up in to make it all the more authentic experience.  They had yummy soups and sandwiches too and sadly we were all way too stuffed for the delicious cupcakes but that is okay.  We had a lot of fun.  I'm really grateful to have these girls as friends here in Rochester.  It's especially fun to have Janelle in the same place since we were friends in high school too.  (Just for the record, I am the only one of these four girls who is not pregnant, nor the wife of a medical student. Ha ha.)

Janelle and Melanie

 Me and Miranda

I think the best part of my birthday was all the phone calls and cards and emails from family and friends with sweet messages. That honestly means more to me than anything else I could ever get. It's nice to know people remember and care and it's nice to feel loved.  Plus I love when someone writes you a nice letter or note because I always save them in my journal so on bad days or when I need a little "pick me up" I can go back and re-read them. So far 29 has been wonderful and I plan to thoroughly enjoy my last year of my twenties. :)

15 Month Old Kaden

Kaden is 15 months old today- November 16, 2013.  Our little monkey is growing up fast.  He gets smarter every day and more fun each day.  He can say "mama," "dada," "nana," and "papa."  He calls anything that starts with a B "ba"- like his ball is "ba" and his bottle is "ba" and his book is "ba."  At least he sort of has the idea…

He is really into naming body parts right now and can point to his head, nose, mouth, toes and his favorite, his bellybutton.  He is constantly flashing his bellybutton at everyone. I think it's a gesture of friendship in toddler land.  He also really loves his tongue right now and will stick it out at mealtimes and then insist that he look at ours.  I draw the line at him touching my tongue though. That is weird.

 Kaden is all boy and loves to run, climb and is trying to learn to jump.  He loves outdoors and indoors and anywhere that he can play.  He runs laps around our kitchen/living room all day and is always moving.  Most days he is usually muddy or covered in some sort of grass or leaves.  All boy.  He loves to be chased more than about anything so Curtis and I get our workouts built into each day with Kaden and the chase game.

 Kaden is really into animals right now and loves to hear animal noises.  Here he is doing the noise that the elephant makes, ha ha!  He is finally learning to sit a little bit more still and loves books, which thrills the teacher in me.  Up until this month he has never seemed very interested in them but now he will grab books out of our baskets and off of the bookshelf and back up and sit on my lap to read them.  He especially loves the "lift the flap" books and the books with different textures but if it has animals in it, he isn't picky.  He really likes Dr. Seuss books and we usually try and read one every night before bed.

Kaden really likes to do "grown-up things."  For example, he really likes to "help" when we are using the broom, vacuum or the rake.  He likes to take a turn.  

 He also likes to wear big people things, like Curtis' basketball shoes. Or his baseball hats.

Kaden likes to do big people things.  He insists on sitting by himself on a chair.  He doesn't want to sit on our laps.  As soon as he's done eating after every meal he wants to sit on a big chair.  It's just cool.

 He also insists on popping the lids off of his sippy cups so he's drinking the way mom and dad do- no lids.  (He loves green smoothies too, which is nice because I trick him into eating veggies he's decided he doesn't want during the day.)

 Kaden has this strange obsession with the blinds right now. I don't get it...

The little man continues to be more fun and curious every day.  We sure love this little guy!

The Monkey and the Zookeepers

We had a very fun Halloween this year! About a week before Halloween we did the House of Mercy 5K run (Kaden's first race).  Our stake in Rochester sponsors it and it benefits a homeless shelter in the area, so it's a good cause and some exercise.  It was a really chilly morning but luckily Kaden really enjoys going on runs in the jogging stroller so we just bundled him up really well.  A lot of times when we run he'll sit and go, "Ahhhhh…. ahhhhh….ahhhhhh…." over and over just to hear the sound of his voice while we run, which is funny.

Leading up to Halloween we went to our ward party the Saturday before Halloween and did some trunk-or-treating. We hosted a Halloween dinner for the families in Elmwood Terrace (Bertassos, Harts, Torres' and the Halls) the Tuesday before Halloween (which was on Thursday this year).  We had blood soup, Halloweenies, a giant snake calzone, teeth, slime and cockroaches, hot apple cider and graveyard dirt cups.  We played the candy bar game and did Halloween Memory and there were tons of candy bars given throughout  the night.  We had a great time with our neighbors and feel lucky to have such good friends that live by us in our complex.

The kids: (from left to right) Ethan, Tyler, Leah, Melanie, Dallin, Decker, Noah and Everett

 The toddlers/babies: Everett, Kaden, Tueller, Katie, Bri and Decker

I decided when I was a kid that I don't really like carving pumpkins.  I hate scooping the guts out, I don't like eating pumpkin seeds and I'm not very artistic so my pumpkins always look like a 5 year old carved them.  So this year I decided we're starting a new family tradition and we're going to paint pumpkins.  That is much more fun for sure.  We love Despicable Me so we decided to make Minion Pumpkins. (A real life Pinterest inspiration come to life, hooray for doing and not just pinning! ha ha.)  We really enjoyed painting these and got a ton of compliments on them.  It was actually kind of funny how many times Curtis or I would go to leave the house and someone would be on our porch admiring the Minions or asking if they could take pictures of them.

Kaden's costume is also one of his nicknames- monkey.  The kid is all over everything and loves to climb on everything just like a monkey.  Since we spend all of our time chasing him, wrangling him and trying to get him to do what we want, we thought it was only fitting that we should go as Zookeepers this year.  There's a girl in our ward here, Laura Shipp, who works for the zoo in Rochester so we were wearing actual Zookeeper shirts.  We're pretty legit if I say so myself. :)

This was the first year we took Kaden trick-or-treating.  We went with our good friends the MacLeans (Kyle and Miranda) and their little girl Evelyn (Evie).  Kaden and Evie adore each other and they have such a fun time together.  Evie is 8 months older than Kaden so she could say "Trick or Treat" and Kaden just smiled and waved.  He didn't get the concept of trick-or-treating at all and when he'd get up to the doors he'd take the candy out of his bag and try and hand it to the people at the door.  Needless to say they all got a pretty good laugh out of it.  Hey, when you're a cute little toddler dressed as a monkey you can do whatever you want.  My one regret about Halloween night is that we forgot to get a picture of Kaden and Evie together.  She was Batman and would sing the song, "nananananananananana… Batman!" all night.  After trick-or-treating the MacLeans came over for orange eggs and graveyard pancakes for dinner. All in all, it was a very fun Halloween and it makes me even more excited for next year when Kaden actually gets the concept of it all. :)