Such . . . creative . . . children

A long while ago, Roni's mom gave the kids fingerpaints, which I promptly put up in a very high cupboard. Today we finally remembered them and got them out for the kids, who had a blast.

Unfortunately, the blue turned out NOT to be washable. Oops. Yesterday was my friend Paige's annual cookie party, which is always chaos and great fun. The children created these, complete with the ever traditional Christmas dinosaur and foot. They also are very stuck together in places, creating permanent cookie towers. But I can personally attest to the fact that they are very tasty!
(Not sure why the picture keeps turning itself sideways.)

It's good to be with family

Success. Great family, good food, and the house hasn't looked this cleaned up in a long time! D had a great time at his first Thanksgiving feast, and J helped us sing the turkey song to his uncles, aunts and cousins on our phone calls back and forth. The turkey turned out perfectly, and although I forgot the rolls until the end, we definitely weren't short of food! This was a very good day.

Swedish turkey?

Is mine the only husband who thinks that Thanksgiving cooking should be done while blasting "Dancing Queen"? I don't think that the Swedes are particularly into Thanksgiving, or turkey. I blame it on a childhood devoted to the annual Eurovision competition.

Though we do have lefse, which is Scandinavian . . . but Mr. Al bought it, so it is more likely Norwegian lefse. (He says they were out of Danish lefse - Thanksgiving is ruined.)

Preparations are in the early stages:

Getting chilly around here

The weather has set its pattern for the darker months - cold, damp-to-soggy, and all around bleakness. I actually like this type of weather in small doses. Perfect for knitting in front of the (gas) fire, hot chocolate excuses, and without all that blinding sunshine my house looks less dusty. But it is making the boys suffer from cabin fever already. J wants to be out there digging and running and jumping and tricycle riding - drawing letters just doesn't cut it for him. We try indoor dancing and how-many-can-you-run laps around the living room/kitchen/hall circle, but that gets old quicker, and unfortunately Mom can be really unreasonable about long distance couch bouncing. D doesn't mind as much, he's content to follow J around and copy him (shirt off? me too! hopping on one foot? me too! crying because he can't eat Halloween candy for breakfast? me too!) but that can be dangerous for him. If he gets too close or bumps some important J project, D is liable to be punched. We're working on that, but it would be a lot easier to work on it if the sun was shining!

D has started daycare for real this week, after visiting multiple times over the last couple weeks. Three days a week, same as J, and overall it is going as well as can be expected for such a big change in his days. He is very sad when being left, and cries when Roni shows up to pick him up, but phone calls during the day have assured us that he's playing and eating and napping with everyone else in a generally happy manner. Roni picks the two of them up earlier than when it was just J. We'd both like to have him home longer before starting daycare, but Roni has no other options if he is going to go to job fairs and interviews, and we really need Roni to have a job!

Belated Halloween pics for the grandmas:

These shots better work!

Today was one of the few days that the H1N1 vaccine was available in our county. They were going with high risk populations first - pregnant women and very small children, health care workers, people 6-24, and teachers/day care workers. Three out of four of us fit those categories, so we left Dad at home and headed off to one of the clinics offering the shots.

I went early, because in the only other shot day I'd heard about, my cousin waited for 1 1/2 hours to get his daughter the vaccine, and they ran out of shots by the time their turn came (luckily they had flu mist left, so his daughter got that). But apparently, not early enough!

I should have realized when I couldn't get through the intersection without waiting through several lights that we needed to get up a lot earlier, but I thought maybe there was an accident. when we passed the clinic, we could see that the line was very long, but it wasn't until we parked quite a ways away and hiked over that I realized that the line was many, many lines that snaked and doubled back and twisted all around the building. They'd used yellow "caution" tape to create the Disney rollercoaster type paths to keep everyone in order. There were hundreds of people.

Three hours and 45 minutes later (!) the three of us got through the doors and then soon after were rubbing our sore arms/thighs.

Next plaue scare, I come more prepared - lawn chairs, a lot more toys than the wimpy two I had, the stroller for napping and a food cooler. We were lucky that the woman in front of us had family to call to bring snacks and she shared the goldfish with us. Then Joey found left-over grapes from yesterday's lunch in my bag, which kept us from full meltdown.

The kids did really well for a very long time, and it wasn't until the last hour that I had to threaten to take away Halloween or switch carrying them on a five minute rotation. And we were even luckier that it didn't rain until we were coming out of the building!

And now we won't die, so that's good too.