Happy Thanksgiving

Alec is thankful for his new bunkbed, turkey, Jesus, healthy food, paper to draw with, leaves to jump in, toys and being thankful.

Charlie is thankful for a clean blanket, new house, his best friends Ally and Lukey, muffins, church, bananas, Mommy and Daddy, and snow.

Gweny is (I'm sure) thankful for her lovey and blanket, necklaces, trains to drive "choo choo", Mommy's and Daddy's laps, grapes, raisins, milk, her entertaining brothers, and markers.

Chris is thankful for neupogen, blankets, our nice van, life cereal, doctors, and me and the kids.

I am thankful for music, Chris, Charlie, Alec and Gwen, holidays, Jesus Christ, books, a dishwasher, visits from family and friends and dark chocolate.

Chris' boss is also American and he and his wife and 2 sons invited everyone in his research group over to his house for Thanksgiving dinner at 6:00pm. Knowing the place/time and the number of kid-less people there, we opted to find a babysitter for our kids and enjoy a night of adult interaction and yummy food. But we couldn't leave our kids ThanksgivingDinner-less so we had a lunch with all the fixings as a family.

It was fun. Besides Chris' help with the mashed potatoes and the jello, I made everything else by myself taking a few shortcuts for sanity's sake: boxed stuffing and canned cranberries and sherbet with sprite instead of the traditional homemade slush drink. We tried to ease up on the stress of the day so I prepared well the days ahead making the rolls, pies and jello earlier in the week.

Cars and rugs

The boys do this all the time and while I'm glad they are playing nicely (for the moment) it drives me crazy that they do this with the carpet. I'm not even sure why it bugs me so much. Maybe it's because they leave it like this and it makes the rug wrinkled traps little toys under it to be stepped on.

Anyway this reminds me of a conversation I overheard and wrote down last week:

Alec-"do you love Lightning Anne McQueen?"

Charlie-"yea, he's my best friend betause he can win."

Alec-"yea, but be careful because Lightning Anne McQueen, sometimes he is bad to some people. There are police."

Hahaha I love the way they think. Charlie has been talking a lot about his best friends (ally and luky) recently. I'm not even sure where he picked up that phrase. Alec doesn't really say or and neither do Chris or I.

Snow!

It snowed over this past weekend! The first snow. The boys (and even myself if I'm honest enough) are so excited! Before breakfast...so this is saying a lot with my hungry boys... they put on all their new-to-them snow gear and headed outside to play. Gwen, of course, wanted to follow but on her first walk about, she fell, got snow on her face and started crying.

I thought this would be the end of it for her. But she's a tough cookie and continued to play along side the boys for much longer.


Alec was actually a bit of a help shoveling the driveway. Charlie also likes to "noe plow" the snow with his Daddy. For some reason he has a hard time saying the "s" in "snow" so it usually comes out "noe." In this picture Alec is shoveling and Charlie is laying down int he middle of the driveway. He LOVED to lay down in the snow.

Alec asked if it was going to snow every day and I said " No, like tomorrow, it won't snow but it will happen more... I think next Thursday." Later that night, Alec had a hard time going to bed. He was crying pretty loud and told us he didn't want to go to bed because there wouldn't be snow tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure many Edmontonians would be laughing at us, crying for more snow and playing like crazy people in the measly 1.5 inches we got.

Family nap

I went to bed after midnight got up with kids at least three different times and had to wake up at 6:10 to go running. I am so tired. So when Charlie kept having meltdown after meltdown over the silliest things I decided he needed a nap (he hasn't taken regular naps for a month or two now). The only way to get him to lay down is to lay down with him and the only way to get him to be still is to read books. Two chapters into The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe Charlie was fast asleep and Alec was close. 5 min more of resting and they were both out.

Although the sad thing is this probably means they will both be difficult to put to bed tonight. At least they look so precious sleeping next to each other, next to me. I know the day will come when I can't cuddle them like this. In fact Alec is already giving me instructions on what not to say when I drop him off at primary. "Ok, I love you, Alec, Be good" is on the "don't say that to me" list. Pretty soon he might not ever want to hug me or hold my hand.

Family Home Evening

We've been reading about King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon as a family and so for FHE on Monday when we suggested building some scripture stories out of Duplos the boys thought of the big tower and all the tents. We had fun building it all and even took turns being the King and announcing stuff to the people. We were trying to focus on the whole, "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God" spiel but when it was their turn to be Benjamin, somehow both boys only remembered to say that Mosiah would be the next King. I guess that is more exciting. I took my moment in the spotlight to talk about how we should all be kind to everyone, all the time. Wouldn't we all be happier? One of these times at least some of it has got to start sinking in, right?

The funny thing is Gwen starting doing it too! She'd walk up behind the duplo tower and say gibberish in a commanding and loud voice. We all laughed so hard at that. It was such a fun moment I wanted to take a picture and, of course / as usual, it took only the few moments while I got the phone out to have it all break down into utter chaos. The pictures are still funny though.

First Hall of Baldness inductee!

And so it begins! Our first member of the Hall of Baldness is Chris' cousin and roommate: Steve. Welcome! See Chris' blog for more info and later inductees.

Go Bald, be bold

Yes, the time some of you have been waiting for has finally come. The time to go bald and be bold. We shaved Chris' head this morning. I guess he gave a good tug on his hair in the shower and came away with quite the handful. We've had a good run with keeping most of his hair through the first 4 chemo treatments. It lasted longer than we thought but... now its gone.

We'd like to extend an invitation to any of you who want to join us in this venture. Shave your head or get it cut short, make a big change of some kind and SEND US A PICTURE. (preferably before and after). We'd love to do a little post about you on this blog to help document the love and support we've been so blessed to have been given.

And to my mom, I want to say I'm sorry that its come to this, I know you were really hoping we wouldn't have to do it and also I think it is important to say that even if any of you don't shave your head or make a big change, we still know you love us, so there should be no pressure for anyone to do this. Personally, I think I may have been waiting for a reason to go short myself and here it is! I hope Canada does Locks of Love or something similar. I'll post pictures of my haircut as soon as it happens. :)

Gwendolyn watched the entire procedure and Alec and Charlie ran right up to him at the end to feel it. As Chris leaned toward Gwen to let her have a feel, she slowly backed up a step at a time until he stopped asking her. I know he felt a little sad and was nervous she would be scared of him. He got all cleaned off and slowly walked to her to give her a hug and reassure her that he's still "Daddy." I got the camera out to shoot a video, half expecting her to run away crying based on her behavior so far, but check out her reaction:

So tender! She gave him a kiss and a hug. We love that little Gwendolyn Rose.

Friday night

"it's Friday, Friday...." can often be heard as it's sung around our house on, you guessed it, Fridays. The boys practically live for that day because of our dinner and a movie tradition. It used to be pizza and a movie tradition but tomato based foods (we think) are giving Chris stomach issues now thanks to the chemo drugs. As a result I'm having to get more creative for dinner and try and substitute other "fun" dinners that can be eaten over a blanket downstairs. Last night we ate chicken pot pies and watched Quest for Camelot.

Trick or Treating

I wanted to get Alec's perspective on Trick or Treating and asked him to say some things for me. Chris will do something similar with him sometimes when Chris writes his brother, Edward on his mission. I'm not sure who Alec thought we were sending this to but its still fun hear his voice in the conversation.

Me: "Alec, What do you want to say about Trick or Treating?"

Alec: "We had so much fun! Do you don't 'member what I was? Hmm.... I want to say... Say.. I know if I say Trick or Trick (write that down.. trick or trick) I know you're not going to give me candy. We got a lot of candy from someone else.. and you. And I want to say, we got a whole bunch of candy! And we heared some fireworks but they were so far away, I know that. I didn't know (write that down) I didn't know Max, one time at the last one, I didn't know we were at Max's house with the dog. Did you meet Max's house? He's our neighbor... Max is our neighbor. Man, I got a lot of stuff to say! He loves to bark. When we woke up we didn't know it was Halloween and we were so essited to go trick or treating. We first did pictures before, and we did a game. There is, we hanged donuts on strings and we hang it on a hard thing thats round and so long and we put the ribbon around it and then we tried to eat the donuts without using our hands. That what game I'm talking about. Write that down..."Th-Th-That what guh-guh-game I'm talking about. Now you write your thing about Halloween."

Ok, Its my turn I guess. :) Chris had his blood work appointment in the late afternoon and then had to pick up our van from the tire place, since we got snow tires put on, and didn't get home until 6:00 but we still managed to have a fun Halloween party as a family. We ate chips and dip

Alec wants to interject: "and the most yummy thing I liked was..the dip and chips. does that rhyme?"

and root beer floats and another of my baking experiments. I tried crossing a biscuits and rolls to try and make something similar to those crescent-rolls-in-a-can you can buy at the store. It turned out close but not quite there. ANYWAYS, (sorry for the tangent) we played the donuts of the string game and then started Trick or Treating at 7:00. The kids only lasted 30 min because after 25 minutes we heard some soft booms in the distant (we're assuming fireworks?) and both boys got scared and tried to plug their ears and said they wanted to go home. Although we did have time for one last house -- our neighbors who have a dog named Max. When we got home we dumped out all the candy in one big pile and let the kids choose a couple to eat right then. Lucky kids. Then Chris and I put them to bed and watched a movie and ate more than 'a couple' candies. Luckier parents. I told Chris it'll be a sad day when the kids start to notice that we've eaten their candy and he said, "well that's when we'll just start teaching them about taxes."


Charlie was giving me such odd "smiles" I told them to pretend like they were laughing and I would take their picture: