If you can’t go TO the turkey trot, bring the turkey trot to YOU.

That’s what we did on Thanksgiving morning at 8am. One of mine and Jeff’s favorite Thanksgiving Day traditions is The Turkey Trot. We have never actually entered an official Turkey Trot road race—we just invent our own. This year, it was announced to our ward, and we actually had almost 20 people there. There’s nothing like a nice, brisk 5k to get you ready for pie and turkey!

 

Our friend Chad was parked along the roadside with a camera. So here we are, chugging along. Jeff finished first (as usual) with a time of 17:56, and I pulled in a close second at 22:15. Ok, it’s all relative—I think this was the closest I’ve ever finished to Jeff.

It was fun having a few more people join us on our run.

While our Thanksgiving rolls were rising, Jay and I did a little Thanksgiving craft: Thankful Turkey Taters! When I was in Seminary, my dear ole teacher Sister Freeman had us make these guys every single year at Thanksgiving time. Jay loved doing it, and he even stuck lots of the toothpick-feathers into his potato all by himself. It was nice to sit and think of all the many things I have to be thankful for. I wrote one thing on each side of each feather. Once I got going, I had to keep cutting out more feathers—there are just so many wonderful blessings in my life. I’ll let you guess which tater is mine and which one is Jay’s. [Yes, peanut butter is between scriptures and family on my turkey.]

Ahhhh, fresh rolls. Ok, I am very good at documenting daily life with pictures. Here comes the BUT…when an actual event comes along, I seem to forget about the camera completely. That’s what happened for the rest of the day on Thanksgiving. Jeff’s brother Sam was here, and we didn’t even take a single picture. Boo hoo. Before we went over for dinner, I did manage to take pictures of my humble contributions to the family dinner: rolls and pumpkin cheesecake (click for that heavenly recipe). Anyways, we had the big dinner with Jeff’s fine family and 4 missionaries and a friend or two.

After we ate the entire pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap-pecan crust that I made earlier in the week, I made another one of those beauties for Thanksgiving dinner. But by the time we brought it over to the Whites’ house, there was only half of it left! We Browns prefer to eat our pie FIRST on Thanksgiving, so that was my excuse for bringing only half a pie. This cheesecake is so so so soooo much better than any ole pumpkin pie, even Costco’s pumpkin pies.

For the rest of the meal, just imagine a long table laden with steaming hot homemade food and 14 people squeezed along its sides. That was Thanksgiving at the Whites’ house.

After dinner, we all trooped on over to our crowded, couch-filled apartment to watch the White family traditional post-turkey movie: A Christmas Story. I am one of the few people in this country who did NOT grow up watching this movie, but it is growing on me, year by year. [Oddly enough, my favorite part this year was the bowling ball gift. If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember that part, and if not… I don’t really want to explain. For some reason, that 30 second scene really tickled my funny bone this year.]

Fast forward to Black Friday morning at 5am: I got in the car and drove to Macy’s in hopes of getting Jeff a new suit on sale. I got him 5 nice new dress shirts and 3 new ties at 75% off!  [The suit did not work out]. When I got home, we packed up and left for Bellevue and the Brown house. And that is where our Thanksgiving ended. It was happy, festive, foody, and family-filled, just how Thanksgiving should be.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good night!

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P.S. The weekend at the Brown-casa deserves its own post. Stay tuned.

Block City

In honor of Jay’s half birthday today, I’ll do a post for him. This is Jay’s favorite library book:

 

 

W. 

We check it out every other week. Literally. When we found it in the library last week, he hugged it and said “it’s my faver book.” 

 

OK, this video is super long, but Jay likes to take his time reading. For the record, I only prompted him a few times—most of this is just him “reading” the poem. I love hearing those big words and phrases in his little voice.

Jay also loves Mother Goose rhymes. We have 3 different Mother Goose books in our collection, and he knows most of those rhymes. When he’s playing I often hear him saying parts of his favorite poems to himself. Our little poet.

Jay’s favorite breakfast is pancakes. He can eat an alarming amount of pancakes (his current record is four pancakes, 5 inches each in diameter), and his little tummy just expands to hold them all.

Jay’s favorite lunch is grilled cheese.

Jay’s favorite dinner is homemade mac n cheese.

His favorite writing utensils are markers (messy). One day he was drawing and he said “Issa J, Mommy!” I looked at his paper, and lo and behold, he had written a J. Then he said “Issa B, Mommy!” He had drawn a sideways B, too. I was blown away. What kind of 2.5 year old can write? Ok, ok, he can’t write, but he can make his marker draw 2 letters! It is hard to get a picture of his letters because he likes to color them in after he does them. But the paper on the left has a little J on it. Jay amazes me more and more every day.

Ever since daylight savings time, Jay has not stayed in Nursery at church for more than 10 minutes. 2pm was late enough to be abandoned by his parents, but now that 2 pm feels like 3pm to him, there’s no chance. Yesterday at church, I had sharing time in Primary, and all our other family members that Jay loves were unavailable too. So Jeff singlehandedly handled 2 needy, nap-needing children for 2 hours. He is amazing. 5 weeks till we switch back to 9am church! Can’t wait.

Jay enjoys “helping” in the kitchen. He likes to dump flour and other things into the bowl when I’m cooking and put his hand on the beater when I’m mixing something. When the oven timer beeps, he always races to the drawer and gets out the hot pads for me (even if there’s nothing in the oven). \

Jay can reach the heater dial on the wall. About 30 times a day, he cranks it over past 80 degrees and sits right in front of the heater fan. His legs get all red and he just basks in the heat…until I go turn it back down to 67.

LOVE this little guy.

Trying New Things

This week we tried a few new things out around here.

1a. Potty training! We started on Monday. The plunge wasn’t tooooo terribly painful, even though I have no idea what I’m doing. I think Jay is doing relatively well. He’s only had 2-4 accidents each day. So far Jay has only run to the potty on his own once. I have to take him into the bathroom at regular intervals through the day to avoid accidents. So I don’t think he counts as potty trained yet. Hopefully soon he’ll start telling ME when he has to go, instead of the other way around.

1b. I got a 2-pack of those Gerber plastic pants for Jay to wear when we go places, as a safety net for his pants. We call them his “crinkleys” because they are quite…crinkley. Even though they’re HUGE on Jay’s little waist, they are effective.

1c. Jay’s gets to choose a little sticker for every potty success. He gets a BIG sticker for every stinky success (those are still few and far between). We keep his sticker success poster in the kitchen. It took a few days for him to really get the idea of a reward, but now he loves rushing out to claim his sticker and place it on the poster. For fun, (and to sort of track progress) I put a dot on the poster for every wet accident and an x for every stinky accident. The plan is to eventually cover all the accident spots with success stickers. I know, I know, that’s a bit much. But tracking the messes lets me know that there really aren’t as many as it feels like there are, too.

2a. And now for the next new thing…cloth diapers! I never thought I’d want to use cloth diapers because I thought they were the leaky, flat, pin-onto-baby diapers of yore. After reading a friend’s “cloth conversion story” though, I realized that cloth diapers are pretty much the same level of grossness as  disposables (and only a little more work). I have only used them for 5 days so far, and I still don’t have a full supply to ease the laundry burden, but…so far so good! Once I’ve finally gotten all the cloth diapers we need, I will have only spent $100! I wish I had started this sooner. Also: I’m a recycler (milk jugs, cans, etc.), so it makes me feel good to be able to re-use diapers too. We do still have at least 100 Huggies disposables that we’ll be using intermittently until they’re gone, so we aren’t 100% cloth folks yet. But we’re getting there.

2b. The cloth diaper brand I chose after allll my hours of research is called Flip. The cover has snaps on it so you can adjust the size to fit any baby. All you do is lay a cloth insert into the cover, and snap it onto a soft little booty. No pins, no confusing folding. Easy-peasy! [It will be even easier-peasier when we have our own washer/dryer again.]

2c. One more note: Cleaning out accident-filled undies makes changing/washing cloth diapers feel even easier.

3. Since it’s gotten so much colder, I’ve been worried about Rose’s little toesies freezing off while I’m out running with her in the stroller. I’m not big on putting soft little baby feet into hard shoes. I found these CUTE sweater-slipper-booties at Target this week. They go part way up her leg and fold down at the top. I love them, and I kind of want some for myself.

4. Jay tried out a new seat.

5a. I don’t want to scare you or anything—I was not feeling very spunky when I took this picture, so I went with expression-free face. The purpose of this mug shot is to show off my new glasses! Wait, what glasses? She’s wearing glasses? Yes, I am. They are rimless! I adore them. I always hated having a frame around my world. Rim-free glasses kind of give you the best of both worlds—the eyeball comfort of glasses, and the eye-freedom of contacts. Huzzah for insurance too—I paid a mere $22 for these beauties.

 

5b. The side view. Part of that design is purple of all colors, but I can live with that. My prescription changed with these glasses, so I feel like I have a new superpower or something—everything is so clear.

6a. It snowed for most of the day today! We went to the park for some serious snowman-building. In all my years of snowmanning, I have never thought to roll the snowball in a circle. Jeff is a genius. Now of course I have to add a few snowy pictures…

6b. We propped Rose up in a horseshoe pit. She didn’t really like it much.

6c. It was SNOWING HARD for hours today! Jeff and I each went on an invigorating snowy run this morning. Jay also loved it.

We conquered the leaf-riddled snow and made a missionary snowman! He’s Elder White, of course. I tied the ribbon-tie all by myself. With gloves on. [I credit my brother Brad for that skill. He taught me how to do a simple tie knot 6 years ago when I worked at a catering company and had to wear a black tie as part of my uniform]

We left our missionary companion-less (and hatless) in the park because Rose was tired of the snow.

When we got home, Jay and I couldn’t resist making one more little snow person to replace our melted one. This is our snowgirl. She has a grass necklace and a white snowy shirt with snow-sleeves. I hope nobody steals Rose’s cute skirt or hat.

I almost put #7—hot chocolate—on this list of new things, but…hot chocolate is definitely not a new thing to us.

Oh, the first snow fall of the winter…

What a joy for a boy to behold!

And since we have neither a house nor a sleigh (or a hill down the road), I’ll stop singing that wonderful song. Plus, it’s still too early for Christmas music anyway. But who DOESN’T hear Karen Carpenter singing that song in their head when the white fluffy flakes start a-floating?

Yesterday, when I opened the door to go down and switch over the laundry, it was suddenly a winter wonderland out there! (resisting more Christmas music with difficulty…) 

Something about snow just makes me giddy. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I grew up in snow-starved Tennessee, and my subconscious still associates the white stuff with the freedom of school being cancelled. Maybe it’s because snow is so different than normal precipitation. Or maybe it’s just the peaceful whiteness of it all. Whatever the reason, playing in the snow is SO MUCH FUN!

This is the first year that Jay actually liked the snow, and it’s probably because he finally had the right gear so he didn’t freeze to death while playing in it.* I am rather pleased that I had the foresight to get him a snowsuit at a local church’s rummage sale last summer. That was a 50 cents well spent. Once we were all bundled up, there was just enough nice, wet snow in our “yard” (aka parking space) to scrape together one little snowman.

*Last year’s snowgear:

Plastic bags for boots and socks for mittens were not warm enough. I still love this picture though.

The snowman was a little bit unstable, so we made some shoes to hold him steady. We used rocks for the eyes and buttons, leftover kilt fabric for the scarf, one of my hats for his head, grass for hair, a leaf stem for the mouth, and a baby carrot for his nose.

The residents of #1 were the first (and only) ones out of the 5 apartments in our plex to build a snowman. Go us. I love having a little boy to play with in the snow! Of course I would’ve gone out there even if I didn’t have a little companion, but it was much more fun with him.

Even though it wasn’t a very cold day, how could I deny Jay the joy of hot chocolate after playing in the snow? I heated us each up a half-mug of milk and added a teaspoon or two of cocoa mix. And marshmallows. I think that was Jay’s favorite snack of all time.

When we left on a walk to the store this afternoon, our poor little snowman had turned into a snowcorpse. But he was still on his feet.

When we got home less than an hour later, he was officially dead. I rescued my hat and his little scarf to save for the next snow fall of the winter.

Portland

Jeff had a 5-day weekend last week. So we planned a little family outing to Portland! We went to the Oregon Zoo there, stayed in a hotel with a swimming pool for a night, and then basked in Powell’s Books and Ikea the next morning before driving home. To sum it all up in a lame, monochromatic sentence: we had a good trip.

First stop: the Zoo. Isn’t this a sweet picture? Jeff was having fun with his camera. 

Jay ran rampant for 95% of the 3 hours we were there. Literally—he ran instead of walking. He was so-o-o tired when we got in the car, he fell asleep almost instantly!

I like how elephants always look like they’re smiling.

This guy was scratching his back on the rocks.

Looking at the o-fants.

The polar bear looked so content with his happy bearlips. His paws were crossed in front. I thought he was cute.

Don’t his big feet look just as soft and floppy as a teddy bear? I wanted to give him a big hug. But I resisted.

Jay, on the other hand, couldn’t resist climbing in and grabbing a lion by the tongue. He even stuck his arm down its throat. Ah well, we still have Rose.

Insert cat quote: “No creature is a greater judge of comfort than a cat.” –James Herriot

Jay wanted to help take pictures.

This giraffe entertained us by attempting to nibble on the grass with its black rubbery lips.

Soft sleepy tiger. I always feel so bad for the animals at zoos. They look so bored, and any time they try to sleep or get some privacy, PEOPLE are staring at them making noise.

Thankfully, Rose managed to take a brief afternoon nap while we were there.

There was this drum hut in the Africa section. It had rounded walls, and they amplified the drums loudness. Jay spent a good 10 minutes there.

hippo butt

zebra bum

If he didn’t already, Jay now has the strongest immune system of all time—he kept putting his mouth on all these kid platforms and playing it like a trumpet. Blech!

There was a giant sandbox!

I think Jay’s favorite part about the zoo was his freedom—he just ran around without being restrained by hand-holding or stroller seats. He loved climbing and looking and running. It was fun to see him so excited and happy.

The highlight for Rose was probably the moment when she finally succeeded in removing her sock and threw it out of the stroller. I had to go on two reconnaissance trips to find it.

We went to IHOP for dinner, where I discovered that IHOP is no longer one of my favorite restaurants. Suddenly it’s not-so-yummy. Jay and Rose sure enjoyed their free smiley face pancakes, though.

Swimming at the hotel! The pool was tiny with cloudy warm stinky water. It was very steamy in there so it fogged up my camera, as you can see. Jay and Rose loved splashing in the water, though! Rose was like a little tadpole, kicking both of her legs at once and wriggling her little  body in delight.

We went to our room and watched Netflix streaming on Jeff’s  laptop until Jay fell asleep.

The next morning, this little early bird requested another swim! That nasty water had destroyed my skin and hair, so Rose and I opted out of a swim. But the boys had fun.

We went to Powell’s Books, a HUGE used bookstore in downtown Portland. It was like Shaina-heaven. Sadly, Jay and Rose only let us stay for an hour. But I did find 3 books in that time, so it was an hour (and birthday money) well-spent.

Next stop: Ikea. The last time I went to Ikea, I was about 8 years old, and I played in the kids zone while my parents shopped. So this could count as my first real trip to Ikea. It was so fun to walk around all the displays and see all the possibilities for homeowners. Since we are not homeowners, though, it was kind of a wonderful-but-brutal torture. I liked the bookshelves. Jeff liked the entertainment centers. Jay liked climbing on all the display furniture. Rose did not like waiting for lunch while we browsed and dreamed.

The little display furnished apartments were so cool!

We left Ikea each holding a crazed child, pushing an empty double stroller.

 

Rose finally got what she wanted. She ate her half sandwich and then almost half of mine! It was a mess.

Then she grabbed her feet. Talk about toe jam! Thank goodness for baby wipes.

Here’s a picture that Jay and I drew at the hotel.

Another scenic drive along the Columbia River.

There’s this Stonehenge World War I memorial built by Sam Hill back in the 1920’s out there near the river. So we stopped to have a look—it was Veteran’s Day, after all.

And we arrived home to see that our clever landlord had replaced our old leaky dishwasher with a brand new dishwasher for us.