Thanksgiving is Coming!!!! Turkey and Sweet Potato Crunch, here I come!

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving 2010

My baby boys have grown up so much in two years!  But their fat heads will still be shoved in those amazingly awesome turkey headbands come that fateful Thursday at the end of November :)
I am really excited for Thanksgiving this year.  Not really sure why, either, just am!  I hate that the stores all skip over it and head straight to Christmas.  Maybe I am boycotting that by being so excited for turkey, Pilgrams, and turkey head bands.

And P.S.  the turkey iron ons will be listed in my etsy shop this week.  Leave a comment if you know you want one...some of the fabrics are a little different this year, but it is the same color family and same design...why change a good thing?  :)

Benson Ward Trunk Or Treat in pictures

FOOD:

I made a ton of white chocolate dipped pretzel rods.  They were so yummy, too.

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GAMES

Pin the wart on the witch.  The warts were little dots of that yellow sticky stuff you can put on walls...genius!

Even grown ups got to play...Bart ROCKED the toss the skull in the buckets game.

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Prizes and Photo Ops:

I am dressed up.  Charity, girl singer from The Head and the Heart...totally!

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I love Diana...I am so glad I got to know her and can call her my friend!

 Same thing goes for Rebecca...she really gets into character...actually DYED HER HAIR to be Lucy from Charlie Brown!

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CANDY!!!!  The reason for the season!

Sometimes Red Eye is Funny

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Demon babies or a group of the most adorable 2 turning 3 year olds around?

 This picture has you believing demon babies, I know.  But deep down, K is really a super sweet girl and this picture just LOOKS like she is attacking L, maybe a zombie baby out for zombie brains???  Hmm, I will let you decide.

The Head and The Heart, Lost In My Mind MUCH LOVE

Downsizing Netflix

A few weeks ago, Bart and I decided to downsize our Netflix from two movies out at a time to one.  We just aren't watching movies as quickly as we used to (we used to watch 2-4 movies a week, eek!) and would have one sitting around for at least a week before getting watched.
Then, we started thinking about it more...really, we rarely even watch movies on DVD, and half the time we rent them from a redbox or Blockbuster $1 box because we don't feel like watching the Netflix movie we have laying around.
So, on 11/11/11, we will no longer be Netflix DVD recipients.  We've really loved the ease of getting DVD's from them, but our watching habits have changed, and we feel the redbox and Blockbuster $1 box option is the way to go for us. 
We kept the Netflix instant streaming, though, b/c we love having a variety of movies right on hand for the boys to watch (and no DVD's to scratch, lose, break) and we LOVE watching their t.v. series.  We watched all of "Arrested Development" (did you hear they are maybe going to bring it back on t.v.?  EEK!  So excited), and are currently on the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  We are discussing what series to watch next.  With my work schedule ( I work from home for a telecommunications company), it is easy to watch one episode before or after work, but not a full movie.
Best story about instant streaming (I think that is the right word?):  Ethan is potty training.  Ethan has not pooped in potty.  Ethan watched at least 2 or 3 episodes of kid cartoons as he sat on the potty.  That would not have happened if I had not had a netbook and Netflix :)  Nothing else happened either that trip, but hey, at least he tried!
Have any of you downsized Netflix yet?  Have you thought about doing it?  Or downsizing other technology type things?

Pumpkin Patch That Must Not Be Named

I am not going to name the pumpkin patch we went to Thursday with MOM, though if you are in the Omaha area, you know where we went.
I am angry with them for not giving us the fifty cent discount I accidentally gave my group, and I will go to my grave insisting their website said $6.50 a person when I booked the date, not the $7 they swear it has been for years (it has not, last year when we went, it was $6.50 a person...I doubled checked the calendar on MOM to confirm it).  Considering we had 83 paying people, that cost me $42...AND it would have been easy for them to waive that difference.  I mean, they got well over $500 from our gate admissions, plus the oodles of money the mom's spent there that day.
So, needless to say, I do not feel like giving them any business via a google search that happens upon this blog post, even if we did have a great time while there.  The part that was rubbing salt into a wound is that as they were counting up the thick pile of ones and fives I gave them (40 adults, 43 paying kids), another group came in.  Now, yes, I know it is a special ed field trip and the people accompanying the children should get in for free...but that group got like 20 people in for free.  (That would be $140)  They didn't even give me, the organizer, a free pass.  Lame.  They could have waived that $42 we wound up owing b/c of the miscommunication in the price increase.
So, that part makes me very frustrated...I am trying to decide if it is worth it to email more about it or just let it go.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the day.

Best part of the day!  I was picked to play a game during the Pig-tucky Derby.  I think I made a fabulous contestant!

my prize

bart bought a warm caramel apple.  he said he liked the string of it.  see next picture to laugh at him more.

this picture is larger then all the rest so you can see how lovely that "string" from the caramel looked on his face :)  love you bart!

hayrack ride.  we don't call it that in LA.  we call it a hay ride

notice the farmer brown pc of straw?  real nice.

"mining"...my least favorite part.  when i agreed to go there, i thought each boy would buy a rock for a dollar or something.  nope.  $10 for a freaking bag of dirt and tiny pebbles.  i was hopping mad, but i had made a promise and they were for the most part very well behaved all day at the pumpkin patch which must not be named.

Fun day.  Cold day.  But, luckily, low wind day.
Will we go back next year?  I don't know...maybe time will heal the wound of the frustration to get in.  Or, maybe they will stumble upon this post, realize they were real jerks for making me have to pay the money (p.s. I got about 75% of it back b/c I just asked if anyone had the .50 to cover the difference if they'd pay as I gave out stickers) that I did not know to collect.  Next year if I do plan this out again, I will take a screen shot of the pricing the day I send the reservation so we have PROOF of our pricing.

Skinny Jeans

My daddy doesn't think Bart can pull off the skinny jeans and little boots look so much...well, to prove him wrong, I bought BOTH Bart and my dad MATCHY MATCHY outfits to wear at Christmas! 

True or false?  IDK but the THOUGHT of either of them actually WEARING that outfit brings me to tears from giggling at the awesomeness of it.

The Head and The Heart Rock Omaha

Bart and I got to go to a concert last Sunday night.  When we lived in Louisiana, we went to lots of concerts.  Since moving to Omaha, that was his third and my fourth.  Lame, I know!  It's not that Omaha doesn't have good bands come through on occasion, it is just that we have 3 kids and we are lazy about getting babysitters.

 But when Bart excitedly emailed me, telling me "THE BAND of 2011" was coming to Omaha and he really wanted to go, I knew it would make a great birthday gift (and it did!).

It was The Head and The Heart, with The Devil Whale (opener, WAY better then the youtube video makes them out to be) and Thao with The Get Down Stay Down .  Holy cowboy boots, is Thao a spunky chick.  She stomped up a storm and has GOT to have amazingly strong thighs if she rocks as hard as she did last Sunday night!

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It was a SOLD OUT show, so I was really glad I'd gotten our tickets in AUGUST!

This show was so good.  The best part is that all three bands got together once during each performance and sang and rocked out all together...the chemistry between the three groups was great and it was really fun to be a part of it, even if it was from the third row, standing.  I don't know that I've ever went to a show where the bands did that, especially three times!  It was a hit and my favorite part of the show!

Since attending this concert (a huge THANK YOU to KM for babysitting), I've become drawn to my skinny jeans again, but have yet to try them on and see if they fit.  They probably will, but I guess I am waiting on my boots I bought for a killer deal (but at JCP when is it not a killer deal?) to come in the mail to go with them...although actually, now that I think of it, the girls had on dresses or black leggings and a big tee dress thing...the GUYS had on the skinny jeans and these peterpan hippy looking shoes.  I wonder if Bart could pull that off???

Potty Training Time

Ever since we returned from our adventures in Louisiana, I've been having this nagging thought in the back of my mind..."It's time to get Ethan out of diapers" it will say. 

"But no, I am too busy doing X, Y, and Z" I will respond, and slap another Target brand diaper on his naked-tina butt.  Putting it off for another day.

Then...ALL his friends started potty training.

AND he developed a rash on the inside of his thunder thigh.

So, one day last week he was pantless/diaperless for the morning to give it some air.

And Ethan cried.

And he screamed.

And he refused to leave his doorframe for an HOUR.  Finally, Toy Story 3 won over and he sat in the chair (covered in a triple folded towel) and watched a movie, with me taking him potty every 30 minutes.  At lunch he got a diaper back on and you would have thought I'd given him the best prize ever he was so happy.

Then, yesterday, when I went to get him dressed, I just didn't get a diaper.  I got a pair of big boy underwear.  Well, he wanted nothing to do with that.  But we had no where to go that day so I thought, "Hey, you will be diaperless all day...I don't care!"  And the voice in my head didn't pop off with a reason NOT to do it, so he was diaperless.  I was glad my voice in my  head didn't argue with me.  It likes to do that and cause me to doubt myself.

Expressing Independence:  he dressed himself.  Only allowed to do such things on days we have NOWHERE to go, lol.

After about the second or third trip to the potty, he asked for big boy pants so he wouldn't be naked-tina any more (that is what he says anytime he sees anyone missing any part of their clothing, whether it be the shirtless punk who came to pick up a kid at school, a Jackson getting his pants on in the morning, or full out NAKED in the bath with his brother).  After that, he was fine.

Today I was getting his pants and he came and asked for the Spiderman underwear.  Cool.

It went okay today, but I think he is getting tired of me taking him potty every time Nick Jr. or Disney goes on commercial break.  Whatever.  I am not disciplined enough to do the traditional 3 day method, so we are doing the m&m's and as much t.v. and toys in the living room (read:  hard wood floors) as you want method. 

Today, there was an "incident"  You see...I stepped in something that looked yellow on the floor in the kitchen.  Now, it seemed like more then an almost 3 year old's bladder would hold...so I am sticking to my "it's from the apple juice he insisted on pouring himself" theory.  Let's not test that hypothesis, m'k?

We will see how the weekend goes, with brothers and daddy and a trip to the fabric store and Posh Princess to make a delivery...keep your fingers crossed for us!

Omaha Prenatal Yoga Classes now offered

My good friend Mandy is a fabulous yoga instructor here in Omaha and she is teaching a really neat new class.
In her words,  "I am offering my first prenatal workshop early next month.  It's Wednesday mornings 10:30 to 11:30 for 6 weeks starting November 2.  The cost is $75 but it includes the workshop, childcare, and an at home practice guide."
It seems like a really neat class...click here for more details, or to find out about other classes offered by Sound Method Yoga.