Gather Round

Thanksgiving is a good holiday. It's quiet, sleepy, and turkey dinner is one of my all time favorite meals.

Plus I have a lot to be grateful for. I find the older I get, and especially since I've become a Mom, the more grateful I become for the basics. My heart breaks to imagine not being able to tuck Frankie in every night - in a safe place with a full belly. And I know many parents do not have that. We've had so many blessings this year with Jerm's new job, my health getting better and better, and the hope of adoption. Life really is beautiful.

So our festivities went a little something like this:

Place cards by Frankie. This was what I had Frankie hyped up to do for Thanksgiving, since this holiday doesn't entail a whole lot that's exciting to a 5 year old. I cut up the paper, wrote the names, then turned him loose with stickers and a glue stick. He also made some for his cousins when we went to my parents.

Frankie chose where everyone sat at Jeremy's parents. We had our dinner there the Saturday before Thanksgiving. And I didn't get any group pictures. But...

Frankie joined Nick for an after dinner nap. (Or rather he put an end to Nick's nap.)

Jeremy worked a lot on Thanksgiving weekend. In fact, Saturday was his only day off. But he didn't go into work on Thanksgiving until lunchtime. So we had our own little breakfast feast before he left. I did feel a little silly out on the porch making bacon knowing that we were only hours away from total glutton. (At my house, bacon is only cooked outdoors. I've recently banned the crock pot from operating indoors as well. I don't like lingering food smells.) 

Notice, Jerm is all dressed and shiny for the day. Frankie and I, not so much. There was still some Macey's parade to watch.

At my Mom's (and Laurie's) it was a beautiful fall day that Frankie enjoyed with cousins. On the way there he asked me with no small amount of concern why we had skipped Christmas. I assured him we hadn't, and when I asked why he thought that, he said "because it's cold at Christmas time, and we never had Christmas when it was cold, and now it's warm again."

Ah, I love St. George. We had one amazing fall this year.

Behold, the feast:

And the group pictures.

Is that my child grabbing a SECOND roll and not smiling for the picture? Yes, I do believe so. Frankie mostly ate rolls for Thanksgiving.

More naps:

And we finished the evening with dishes, games for the grown ups, and legos for a whole herd of little boys.

p.s. Frankie had a "big feast day" at preschool. They made stone soup (which he raved about, but the silly kid will never eat soup for me.) They came out all dressed up in paper pilgrim costumes. It was so stinking cute. I wish I would have gotten a picture. I might still make Frankie put his on and take one, if so, you will see it below, someday.

Reminiscence

The first time I read Pride and Prejudice, I did so blindly.

I had no idea of the story, or the characters. It was assigned reading for my sophomore year English class. All I knew is that everyone else was complaining about having to read it, and they talked about it in You've Got Mail.

I remember how quickly I fell in love with Jane Austen's writing. How surprised I was that it was funny. How much I loved the characters, and how from that day forward a part of me always longed to be in that world instead of the one I'm in.

As I read Darcy's line: "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you" I dropped the book, sat up in my bed, and squealed in shock. Then I had to frantically search for my page.

One of Jeremy's first gifts to me when we were dating was the 5 hour long A&E adaption. He watched it with me (we snuggled the whole time, not a bad trade off). But he admitted it was a cool story, even though he said Elizabeth was "kind of awful." I love her slight awfulness. I've done flowers for many a weddings, wrapped Christmas presents, and who knows what else to those 5 glorious hours.

When we lived in Salt Lake, Jeremy took me to the opening night of the new Pride and Prejudice movie. I was nervous that I wouldn't like it, but it was cool to go see it that night, knowing it wouldn't be in St. George for another month. It was an interesting opening night crowd (and as a geeky girl who has been to the opening night of many geeky movies, including Return of the King in costume - oh yes - let me tell you I know an interesting crowd.)

Despite the lack of Collin Firth, I loved the movie. I like it more every time I see it, there are so many beautiful subtleties. When we get a piano, the first piece of music I want to purchase and learn is the title theme.

I think it will always be one of my favorite stories and my favorite book. There's something about it that makes me feel lovely and want to be artistic.

And I think of it every day. After all, I have my own Bingley:

 (Photo by Frankie)

This cat was supposed to be Darcy, but Jerm decided the name was too feminine. 

So we settled on Knightley, (from Emma) But he's Darcy at heart.

He's got more than just mad skills, he's got a beaver tail and a bill

As you can see, it was an eventful Halloween week. The only thing we didn't get to was making cookies, which we actually did a few days after Halloween anyway. I also took Frankie to the high school my Mom works at for their trick or treat. When we would round a corner you would hear a chorus of "Perry!" Then they would give him hand fulls of candy. (We were able to bring candy for my Mom's trick or treater's because we surely didn't need it all.) He had one girl ask him for a hug and a kiss on the cheek (he obliged) and he did a few photo ops. 

Addicted to the Shindig

As one would guess, it's been a spooky month around here. I can't believe it's already almost over, October has flown by. 

I still need to make Frankie's Halloween costume, but I have all the supplies. The hat is a hint as to what he is going to be, any guesses? It was black and I bleached it to be brown, I can't believe it worked. If the costume turns out it will be awesome, if not, it will be a memory, right? The skeleton pajamas are courtesy Grandma Anderson. They glow in the dark, and I mean REALLY glow. It's hard getting him out of them the next morning.

I let Frankie try his hand at some ghost pictures with the open shutter.

 Some of them were freaky enough that we deleted them.

Our neighborhood is doing the anonymous Halloween treat thing, where you put the ghost on your door after you've been given treats and say you've been "boo-ed."  And then you "boo" 2 others. (I had a really hard time figuring out how to write that out. I should have had Frankie hold up the little paper.) He was so excited to go deliver the treats we made that this was the best picture I could get out of him. He was an expert at the doorbell ditching: hiding behind bushes and sneaking around. It was awesome. Something happened to our ghost, though. If someone else brings us treats I'm going to feel guilty.

There is a lot of spooky artwork being created. Ever since Halloween paraphernalia started showing up in the ads he wants to cut them out. He will ask me if there is any "spooky news." I made him the cardstock book to paste in on a day that I working to finish a deadline. (I was up until 4:30 the next morning that day, good fun!) He was very studious about it and didn't want to stop until he had filled up every page. He is also the proud owner of a little supply of Halloween scrapbook paper and a coloring book that he commandeered from the cabin.