Yikes - I can't believe another month has flown by!  Its been a good one, full of fun birthdays, Halloween preparation, fall celebrations, vacations and visits with family.  Maybe November will slow down some so I can catch up on blog posts??  I feel like a broken record about not being able to keep up...  Oh well!

We went to visit Grandmother the day before her birthday bring her presents and a cookie cake.  The kids were so excited about making her lots of "gifts."  Nathan drew "a picture of Grandmother in a doggy costume.  She has on a mask... like a doctor's mask. Those are puppy dog curtains - like a puppy dog on stage."  (I don't have a picture of the completed artwork, and I'm not sure where he came up with the idea for his drawing either!)

Sarah drew pictures of Grandmother and Granddaddy for each of them.  Grandmother "is the one with the hair because girls have hair."  I guess Granddaddy doesn't have enough hair (in her opinion) to warrant adding it onto her drawing.


In addition to their stick-figure pictures, both kids constructed some random, complicated creation that started with coloring page pictures, which were then cut out and pasted on various colors and shapes of foam and then wrapped in some Christmas gift bags that I just happened to find the day before - actually, the same bags that the received their presents from G & G last year!

They were so excited to give Grandmother all their creations immediately after we got to her house!


I baked a pan of (Grandmother's recipe) Chocolate Espresso Bar cookies, so that we would have something to stick candles into.  The kids are still convinced that one doesn't officially turn a year older until the "Happy Birthday" song is sung and candles are blown out.  So I made sure we did that with Grandmother!


Right before we left (and unfortunately just after Granddaddy headed off to bed), I remembered to get a picture of Grandmother with the kids, and was also finally able to get one with Odile (sp?), an old friend of my grandparents who had come for a two week visit from France.  How fun!

We have a lot of special family and friends with birthdays this month.  To get us all started was Gran's birthday this past weekend.  The kids and I headed over to the lake house on Saturday evening (Brian was on call) to celebrate with Gran and Pawpaw.  Per Gran's request (I told her she had to let us make her a birthday cake), the kids and I baked and decorated a cookie cake for her.  They had never heard of a cookie cake before, but it certainly was a big hit!  Sarah helped me with the whole cake, Nathan joining in when it was time to crack the egg and dump the flour into the dough.  Then after the cake was baked, they helped me pick out and mix the two colors of icing and applied the sprinkles to the cake.  A pretty festive result, I think!



Gran had mentioned to me earlier in the week how they don't usually make a big deal out of her birthday, but I told her that one of my goals now that we're living so close to family is that we can and should start making them a big deal!  So hooray for a first fun birthday this month!

We finally got around to taking a family picture in front of our new house to document this latest transition in our lives.  Here we are the night before we left Boston back in July, on the way to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, El Centro, with some good friends.   


And now a little over two months later in front of our (first) Knoxville house.  I'm definitely sporting a larger baby bump these days, but otherwise not much change in our overall family appearance.


After two months in our new place we are basically unpacked... until we pull the baby stuff out of the attic in a few weeks and have to figure out where to put it all!  The garage is reclaimed from "stuff storage" to a place to park a car and house the fleet of riding toys we own, there are pictures are on the walls in some of the rooms, and we've even bought and hung new curtains in two rooms.  We are only planning on being in this house for about a year, which will give us time to adjust to a new town, make sure Brian wants to stick with his job, and at least a few months to spend house hunting after the new year.  We are looking forward to all the adventures and changes this next year will bring our way!

One of my great aunts (and therefore the kids' great-great-aunt) is Sister Diane, a nun who currently lives in Kentucky.  Dad and Mom had been planning on bringing her down for a visit to their lake house for a while, and our family had the pleasure of spending an evening with them this past Monday.

Aunt Diane is one of the sisters of my late paternal grandmother, Grammy.  Grammy was the third of eleven children, and the oldest of the five girls in the family (Diane was the fourth oldest child in the family).  Grammy passed away about two months after Nathan was born, unfortunately before I was able to take Nathan to visit her.  Dad and Mom drove me and baby Nathan up to Washington DC for her funeral, right after Christmas in 2009, where we had a wonderful visit with all four of Grammy's sisters who had also made the trip for the funeral.  That was the last time we had seen each other.

Though Nathan was tired when we got to the lake house and wasn't feeling very social, Sarah thrilled all of us by running right to give Sister Diane a hug.  Sister Diane picked her up and Sarah exclaimed "I never met you before!!" with a big grin on her face.


We had a nice visit and then after dinner Nathan perked up quite a bit.  He challenged Pawpaw to a game of Go Fish, so Gran and I stayed downstairs to chat while everyone else headed upstairs to watch the action.  After a while our curiosity was piqued as there was lots of rowdy noise and laughter coming from the second floor.  We got up there to be greeted by this:


Pawpaw and Nathan in the middle of a rousing card tournament - I love that you can see how much fun they're having in this shot!  Sarah was also playing a game with Sister Diane of "throw the cat, run to retrieve it, then climb back into your lap".  (I love Pawpaw's expression in this picture as well!)  We all had a really fun time!


Also after dinner, Aunt Diane brought out presents she had thoughtfully gotten for us.  Brian and I got a set of cute ladybug mugs and both kids got a a treat bag.  The biggest hit with them was not the candy in their bags but the battery-powered Halloween candle!  The kids immediately switched them on and ran to the secret hiding place, where they could fully appreciate their beauty in the dark little room.  Then, of course, the special presents had to be displayed in the pictures we took before we headed home. 


Sarah's candle was so loved, in fact, that after bed that night Brian had to break out the super-glue to repair and reinforce Sarah's candle. 


We were all so happy about a wonderful evening to visit together!

Sarah's been doing much better at preschool these past few school days, thankfully.  Two and a half weeks ago she decided what she needed to do when she got to class was "sleep with my Kitty Cat".  I told this to her teachers at drop-off and they got her cuddled in a corner with her stuffed animal and said that after a while she came out and happily participated in the rest of the class activities for the rest of the day. Since then if she starts acting too sad when we get to school, I remind her that she can just cuddle with her Kitty Cat until she feels better and that idea tends to help her hang onto her composure. 

I've been packing the kids' lunches in the morning before school, since there's no point in my mind reminding Sarah unnecessarily the night before that there's school the next day.  She'll just start her fussing and whining and telling me with a quivery lip "I don't WANNA go to school!" at night rather then sometime during the morning.  For the first couple days, mention of her school lunch would send her spiraling down the fussy/crying portion of our day, but a few mornings ago she tried a new plan of attack. 

Mommy:  "Kids, what kind of sandwich do you want?"
Sarah: "Anything!" (translated - "I don't want anything" aka nothing!).
Mommy: "Do you want grapes or apple slices for your fruit?"
Sarah: "Anything!"
Mommy: "Do you want carrots or cucumbers?"
Sarah: "ANYTHING!!"

Her refusal to cooperate cheered me up since it was a vast improvement (in my mind) to threatening to break down into tears!  Brian and I are sure that some of the angst and sadness is related to the fact that she's been cutting her two year molars ever since the beginning of September, so we are REALLY ready for that to be over so she doesn't have the added stress of her mouth hurting her. 

Last Friday was "Big Orange" day, so we had to run out and buy some Tennessee orange paraphernalia for the kiddos.  Nathan kept insisting that he needed an orange shirt AND some orange shorts and I finally understood what he was getting at when he said in a confidential tone "But Mommy, if we don't find any orange shorts I don't want everyone to see my underwear!"  A week or two earlier they had "blue day" at school and he embraced it whole-heartedly by wearing blue shorts, blue shirt and blue undies, so this time around he had it in his mind that he couldn't wear shorts that were any color but orange.  Unfortunately for him we didn't find any orange shorts that would fit on short notice, though Sarah did have an orange skirt that she was able to wear to complete her orange outfit!


Last week Nathan did an evaluation with his teaching assistant, Ms. Kaci.  They had told us that they do evaluations with the pre-k class in the fall and spring to determine where the kids are in terms of kindergarten readiness.  Nathan came back from his evaluation saying that "I'm really smart.  I knew all the answers!"  I got the evaluation form back today and it turns out that he did know almost everything that they asked him!



We are so thankful that Nathan (and we believe Sarah too) has been blessed with plenty of intelligence, but we try to avoid calling them "smart".  We believe that it is even more important for them to develop good morals (kindness, compassion, honesty, etc.) and also a good work ethic.  But even so, this Mama's heart did swell with pride when I found out that he did so well on the evaluation!