A little help here?

I'm stuck.

Gobble, gobble

While mom and I cooked the day away, the girls (with M dressed up for the occasion, of course) worked hard preparing turkey napkin rings.

Pretty cute, eh? 

Also pretty cute! Just enjoying some football with daddy.

And finally! Dinner is served!! 

Love Thanksgiving! What could be better than this, really? Fantastic food (which you get to keep eating for a week if you over-cook like we did), and family (so grateful that Nana and Bopa came to enjoy the week with us. Don't know what we'll do without them)! Not to mention a roof over our heads and indoor heating, among the other things everyone added to the thankful turkey the girls made, which also served as the background for a rousing game of "pin-the-gobbler-on-the-turkey." 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Random pics from the tundra

This is one of dude's favorite positions. However, he can't get down. And he panics.

 Girlies out in our snow with the beautiful sunset behind last night!

 Yet another position to climb onto. Found him this afternoon on top of two loads of clean laundry (that yes, I admit, was just piled on the couch instead of being folded), reading a book. With one sock on and one sock off. And quite proud of himself at that.

 At the same time, J was looking like quite the little teenager enjoying her salad.

 M hasn't been enjoying much. She spent the night emptying her guts all over her room and ours. And has spent all her time on the couch since then. Except for when I found her sound asleep on the floor earlier. I believe she had started on the couch though, for better or worse. 

And this pic is just for fun since I hadn't got a good photo of baby G in her costume before. And because she's just too cute.

42nd Annual Badlands Art Show

The long-awaited art show arrived this weekend, along with ridiculously, totally unacceptably, freaking cold weather. Like "real feel" down to -20 degrados. So wish I were kidding. But yesterday we braved the frozen tundra, amid dude's constant refrain of "no wind, no wind, no wind," and checked out the show. The girls had been dying to go since they'd had to turn their artwork in nearly a month ago. Finally it was time! And look! The long wait was worth it:

J was so very thrilled with her second place award! M was temporarily bummed but rallied valiantly and was happy to see hers on the wall.

Mommy was also rather pleased to have earned a first place for the painting she finished about an hour before it had to be at the show. Sick kiddos and DIY projects around the house had kept pushing off me getting it done. Then it wasn't working at all as I painted it. Basically it went through about 2 dozen stages of ugly before reaching acceptable ... and then it won! I'll take it. Though it does make another rather poor teaching moment about how procrastination doesn't pay off :) Oh and in case you were wondering, no baby G couldn't move. And when she did succeed in slight motion, she was totally unable to find her hands. But she was warm!

I had a few other watercolor pieces in as well, and then last minute threw one into the miniature show that I had painted back in The Dalles for a miniature show they'd had there. I don't normally paint small. Nor do I normally paint in anything but watercolor, so it was an adventure all around, to say the least. Didn't earn any recognition in The Dalles, but got an award here (I painted it from a photo of M as a baby at the pumpkin patch)!

So needless to say, we enjoyed the show! Although we didn't enjoy walking back outside much at all!