I'll Stick with Turkey Thank You

On Friday Night I got super sick. Throwing up, fever, chills, sinus headache, sore throat the whole nine yards. Burke got a really sick stomach Saturday Afternoon and Jennah threw up her dinner on our brand new carpet around 7:30. We figured we must have gotten a stomach bug. I was fighting a cold and the stomach bug broke my immune system down causing the cold to hit me really hard. We finally got Jennah to bed and Burke went to the Stop and Shop to rent a carpet cleaner for $40. Needless to say it was a long night. Jennah kept waking up and complaining of her stomach hurting and Burke ended up sleeping with her on the couch down stars until 4 AM. Luckily Susanna did not start throwing up. We were finally all sound asleep when the phone rang early this morning. It was our friend Kim who had us for Thanksgiving. She informed us that both her and Sam were sick but her daughter Camille was ok. We deduced that we got sick from the Shrimp Creole the only thing that Susanna and Camille didn't eat. And that is why we eat TURKEY for Thanksgiving.

A Deal to Die for?

After hearing about the Walmart employee who was trampled to death by a mob of 2,000 Long Island shoppers desperate for a good deal I felt pretty happy about my choice to sleep in Friday morning. We headed to the Walmart around 9:00 and it was nice and quiet and there were still tons of deals left, gotta love living in a small town. I snagged the $5 barbies, Buke got his mp3 player, 4gb SD memory card and $2 DVD's. I watched people pick up the flat screen television and digital camera that the New York shoppers killed a man over. The best part was a last minute deal. $18 for a Disney character table and chair set didn't seem to attract a lot of buyers so Walmart sweetened the deal by marking them down to $2.50!!!! At that moment I felt truly bad for the poor folks who got to the Walmart at 4:30AM. I grabbed two. A few minutes later a lady asked me where the tables where. I told her they were all gone. She seemed so sad, I guess it was not a good shopping day for here. She had been a little to slow at every store she went to that day and missed all the deals she was looking for. As she walked away Burke smiled at me and said "honey we don't need two". I ran back and grabbed her and let her choose one to give to her daughter. The lady was truly shocked and was so grateful. I was so glad I could perform an act of Christian charity on the deadliest shopping day of the year.

For my Family

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with our friends Kim, Sam, their daughter Camille and friend Allie. Sam is from New Orleans and added dirty rice and shrimp creole to the traditional Thanksgiving fare. It was delicious! Burke was happy as a clam tending the fire and watching football. The girls had a great day playing with Camille and I loved visiting with Kim and Allie. I was grateful we had someone to share the day with. However, it seems no matter how nice our Thanksgiving is each year there is something missing. Food, Football, and friends are wonderful bu they just can't make up for family. I missed my family so much yesterday. I miss cooking with my Dad, snitching food with my Mom, and laughing with my sisters. I miss seeing my daughters play with their cousins, share a story with their aunts, get squeezes from Grandma and tickles from Grandpa. I miss watching Burke and his brother in laws get a kick from some inside joke. But I think most of all this year I missed praying with my family...heads bowed, hands clasped and hearts knit in a prayer of thanksgiving to our Father in Heaven. I miss hearing my Father utter tender words of gratitude for our family and for the gospel of Jesus Chirst that allows us to be together for Eternity. This knowledge is my strength and my joy. I know that the years we spend apart can only make the time we share together sweeter. I love you and I can't wait for the time when I will be blessed to share this special time of year with you once again.

I Love Turkey

Liddy's First Thanksgiving

Thumb Sucker

Liddy Ann loves to suck her thumb. She has never really liked her binki. She will take it for a minutes but inevitably spits it out when she gets bored. Her fingers are the preferred chew toy and when she is sleepy she finds that little thumb and sucks away. I was distraught at first, not with her sucking her thumb as a baby, but with the thought that she would be thumb sucking toddler. I knew she was developing a habit that is really hard to break. I worked really hard to get her to love the binki and even put little mittens on her hands when she slept. I knew I was losing the battle when she managed to free her hands from the mittens to find her thumb. In a way it is kind of nice. I don't have to worry about her losing her thumb and she is also learning how to calm herself. I only hope she doesn't get too attached you can't take away a thumb.....

How about some Bread with that Butter?

Can someone explain to me why kids like to eat butter? I knowI did when I was a kid and you probably did too. Susanna loves butter so much she figured out how to open the lid and help herself. I am sure eating butter has never killed anyone so we grabbed the camera and let her go for it.....

Communication

Susannna is one of those toddlers who knows exactly what she wants and is dead set on getting her way. Most of the time her requests are reasonable the problem comes in her ability to communicate that request. She gets so confused. Off is On, Open is shut, up is down and so forth. She knows what she wants but can't find the right words to tell me. Sometimes she gets it right but even then I still get it wrong. For example this morning's conversation when Susanna brought me her Aerial doll fully dressed...

Susanna "Aerial dress on!!!"
Mommy " How do you talk to mommy"
Susanna "Please"
Mommy " The dress is already on do you want me to take it off?"
Susanna " "On" so I take the dress off anyway and hand her the naked doll.
Susanna crying " No dress off ! No dress off!!!
Mommy" Susanna how do you ask me"
Susanna Sniffling "Please"
So I put the dress back on and she still keeps crying. Now she goes to time out for throwing a temper tantrum. I take away Aerial and her purse and then I see that in the purse is a different dress. Yep she wanted me to change her dress. Too late now. After time out I can help her explain to me what she wants. It dawns on me that everything she said was right just lacking a key piece of information. If I could just read her mind we could avoid a lot of time outs.

Susnna also changes her mind a lot. I am not used to this. Jennah has to have everything the same way all the time. She is extremely predictable. Susanna is anything but. For example at she always changes her mind about the door. At nap she said she wanted it open so I leave it open and she gets mad so close it and she is happy. So at night I ask her if she wants the door closed and she says yes. So I close it and she cries so I open it and she is fine. Go figure. Well i will keep working to try and figure her out. Wish me luck!

Princess Pony

Our local family restaurant has "family night" with a magician who entertains the kids with magic tricks and balloons. We took the girls for a special treat when Burke got back from Florida. Jennah could hardly wait to get a balloon animal and when it was finally her turn she asked for a purple "princess pony". Jennah watched excitedly as the magician twisted and turned the balloon into a pony and penned on a smiley face. However she seemed very disappointed after he handed it to her. "Mommy this is NOT a princess pony" I was mortified and quickly responded "Why Jennah what do you mean? It is purple so it must be a princess pony ". "No Mommy" Jennah continued " It doesn't have any eyelashes!" The magician couldn't help from laughing. He kindly agreed to attempt drawing his first set of eyelashes ever. Oh don't worry he got extra practice when Jennah insisted that Susanna's poodle needed to be a princess too.

As you can see Susanna's "princess poodle" did not last the night.

Liddy Ann Three Months

I have heard it said that the third child gets left out when it comes to pictures, and I am afraid it is true. I need to make an extra effort to take more pictures of Liddy. Here are a few since she turned three months old.

Liddy is so cuddly. She is easy to put to sleep anywhere. You just snuggle her up and give her a few pats on the back and she is gone. She doesn't need a binki and even Burke can cuddle her to sleep. Cuddling her is a treat because most of the time she goes down in her crib all by herself. I wish I had more time to hold her but I am grateful she is a happy and independent baby. She can entertain herself for a good 15-20 minutes on the floor or in her bouncy chair and only cries for a minute when you put her to bed. She is still sleeping from 11pm to 7 am. She is not quit perfect... she does not like to be strapped in her car seat and is very vocal about it.

Liddy is a great nurser and seems to grow bigger every day. She is officially in her 3-6 month clothes. She is at that age were you can start to "play".

It is tricky to get a good picture of Liddy because she stares so intently at the camera.

Isn't she a goof!

I thought Liddy looked so cute dressed in her little "elf" bunting.

She didn't think it was all that great.

We just love our little Liddy.

Mr. Mom

I recently started attending an 8:30 meeting every Sunday morning so Burke gets to be Mr. Mom and get all three girls fed, dressed and out the door on time for church. To my amazement Burke does a great job and is on time, if not early, every week. I started wondering if managing all three kids on my own was not as hard I seemed to believe. Last Sunday when Church started and Burke was no where in sight I knew he had finally hit a snag. I went out to the parking lot to wait for them and he arrived about ten minutes later looking a little flustered. I smiled knowingly and began helping him unload. When I inquired as to what happened I was shocked at his response"I left Liddy!" He got both the girls in the car drove all the way to the church, parked and was getting the girls out of the car when he realized he left the baby!!!!! He quickly drove back home (fortunately we only live 10 minutes from the church) where Liddy was lying happily in her crib talking to her guardian angels. I thought it was brave of Burke to even tell me! He had to know I would never let him live this one down. The next time I am late, leave my cell phone behind, misplace my keys or forget to pack diapers I can feel better knowing that at least I didn't forget the baby!

Halloween Fun

We had a great Halloween. The s looked really cute and had lots of fun at the school parade, carving pumpkins and going trick-or-treating. We kept up with Craven family tradition by sharing a big pot of chili, warm bread sticks, donuts and root beer with our neighbors and friends. Enjoy the pictures.

School Parade

Susanna wasn't feeling well so Burke stayed home and I took Jennah to the school. We almost missed the parade but luckily I found a spot to park and we jumped in right at the end. It worked out great because it was cold.

Jennah had to hang on to that hat or it would blow off her little head.

After the parade they have dancing in the gymnasium. Jennah's friend Annalisa was a witch too.

At school on Friday they have orange day. Meredith, the mom of one of Jennah's school friends, made the s matching skirts and we got them the cute shirts and socks to match. Mrs. Henderson thought the s looked so cute she took them with her to the office when she got the milk so everyone could see them. Jennah felt very special. Thanks Meredith.

Jennah was also very excited to bring home her "Fall Picture." She has been talking about it for weeks while it hung on the wall in her classroom. As you can see she drew two spiders sitting on top of pumpkins, a tree with leaves falling from it, a scarecrow and a "scary pumpkin" .

A Pumpkin Miracle
We planned on picking pumpkins with Kathleen when she was visiting but we had to much rain. I promised Jennah we would get pumpkins and carve them before Halloween. I completely forgot until Thursday afternoon when Jennah reminded me that the next day was Halloween and we had not carved scary pumpkins. Liddy was hungry so we could not stop at the store. Jennah called Burke and asked him to pick up one for each of them. Burke got home rather later then I expected and announced he had the last carving pumpkin in the town of Gardner. He had to go to several stores to find it. The little pumpkin is a "pie pumpkin" and was really hard to carve. If you look close you will notice that Jennah's miracle pumpkin is a little on the soft side:)

Happy Halloween

Susanna got a head start on the candy

It was a special treat for both the s to get "real" makeup.

The tradition continues. All of our s have been a little Elephant on their first Halloween.

Oh isn't she so cute!!

Her costume was especially appropriate this year with the election. Who knew it would be so popular. Just remember that I found mine first!

And yes we are voting republican.