Happy Birthday Tessa

Tessa turned 5 yesterday.  I remembered all day what I was doing five years ago.  I was supposed to get induced first thing in the morning and got delayed because they were too busy.  I remember watching high school football on TV, making lunch for Ben, and taking a nap to prepare for a late night if I was able to go to the hospital that day.  They called at 3 p.m. and we pretty much ran out the door to the hospital and I was in the gown 20 minutes later.  And five hours later we had a baby girl!

This year Tessa has realized that other kids have big friend parties and, although we hadn't planned on a friend party, she kept talking about what we were doing for her birthday party and what theme she was having and when it would be.  I felt bad so two days before I invited a few girls from her preschool over.  She had six friends come over for two hours on Thursday evening.  I said not to bring gifts but she got a few presents and the girls played dress up, frosted cookies and sang karaoke and generally ransacked her bedroom and thus, she had her first friend party.

Check out Tessa's cookies floating in a pool of sprinkles.



There was a lot of...excess...once the cookies were packed to bring home so I let the girls eat them with a spoon.

Setting standards low starting in 2018...

Yesterday we planned to go out to eat in Grand Forks for supper at her restaurant of choice (Chinese...yeahhhh!) but their was a sleet storm earlier that day and the roads were really bad so I turned back and Justin brought pizza home.  Grandma and Grandpa came over and we had some cake and opened presents.

Four smiles!  Almost perfect!

Calvin was locked in on me in this whole series of pictures.  Oh, the devotion of a baby!

Tessa got some nice presents including a mermaid tail swimming suit (thank you Amazon), some LOL Surprise dolls (this is a trendy thing we will look back on and thing WTH?) and this Disney Princess collection from Grandma.  

I was really excited to give her this sequin pillow.

The sequin flip to gold.

Here is the mermaid tail.

I took some pics of her wearing it in the tub but the scumminess of the bathtub is too embarrassing to show on the internet.

Oh, my little bald baby.  I would love to have one more chance to hold her as a baby and rub her fuzzy head and listen to her innocent little attitude filled phrases like "I be right back!" and "I need five" (that was what she used to say when she wanted a lot of something but didn't understand numbers yet."

These were taken on her first and second birthday.  Due to the bald head she looks almost exactly the same.  Happy birthday little girl. 

Leaf Season

At our last house we only had one tree (yes one!) on our property.  There were shrubs and landscape bushes on the surrounding properties but we only had one tree.  It dropped its leaves at its base and then they almost immediately blew away (down the hill and onto our neighbors' properties...sorry guys!)  Our new house and street is very leafy.  Leafy is an understatement.  The leaves were ankle deep in the back yard and in the front the gutters on the street were clogged with leaves before the street sweeper came.

I haven't spent a lot of time on leaf management in my life.  We used to make a half effort at raking when I was a kid but usually ended up mulching them up with the lawn mower.  In college we used to have to rake the yard at our sorority house which was generally a fun group activity where neighboring fraternity friends would show up to help.  The greek houses used to save their leaves in garbage bags for future use pranking other houses.  So mature!  It was always fun to wake up to a pile of leaves on your front step.

Justin is very good at leaf management.  We took care of it on Sunday afternoon with the help of the kids.  Haha...but Ben actually was kind of helpful.

Look at these pictures!  You can hardly tell there were leaves there at all!

You can see the depth of the coverage inside the garden plot fence in the background.  

When it was finished we had filled two pickup boxes full.  And believe me...they were heavy, wet leaves.  

We finished just in time because it is now snowing!  An election day snowfall.  I can't wait to watch the news people on TV tonight as they all freak out over demographics and election results.  It won't be as fun as a presidential year but I still look forward to it.  North Dakota is in the spotlight this year and one of my old childhood friends is running for a local office.  It will be exciting.  

Halloween

November is here.  Look, I took out my "horn of plenty" yesterday!

Good thing we have plenty of gourds to fill it!  I try to decorate for Thanksgiving before Christmas mania takes over.  We went to Target last night and I was kind of surprised to see no Christmas decorations out yet although there was some merchandise like clothing out.  I don't mind the early Christmas takeover as long as it is in November.  It's a short time period of the year and I love the music and atmosphere.  But I also love the Thanksgiving atmosphere and how the gourds and pumpkins get a bit longer to be seen!  Speaking of gourds...are these not the finest specimen you have ever seen?

This crazy thing is the size of a dinner plate. 

And...the octopus.  I spotted this one growing in the patch this summer and waited excitedly to pick it.  It is not getting tossed until the Christmas tree is up.  

Now, on to Halloween...Calvin is the 4th baby to wear this pumpkin costume in our family and the sixth to wear it because his two cousins wore it before him!  It dates back to 2005.  

And now, a stroll down memory lane...

Milo.

Tessa.

And Ben!  I love this picture.  I have it in a Halloween frame that comes out every year.

We had a fun Halloween this year.  The kids had a few costume wearing events.  Tessa was Rapunzel, Ben repeated his fisherman costume from last year and Milo was supposed to be a police officer (not really his choice since we already had it) but he refused to wear it on Halloween night.

It was kind of chaotic the afternoon before trick or treating and  didn't get any good group photos of them all in costume.  This one is kind of funny though.  I also didn't get a picture of Allan in his pumpkin costume because...big surprise...the kids took it and lost it in the house somewhere.  It still hasn't turned up.  We went walking around trick or treating and it was really fun.  We live in a really small town now so everywhere we went we had people to talk to and it's of course very safe.  Justin handed out candy at home with Calvin.  

I haven't worn a costume for years but Justin and I went to an adult Halloween party last weekend.  It was a last minute decision to go so I threw together this costume:

You are probably thinking...hmmmm...OK what is that?  Well, scroll down:

It is me, recreating one of my senior pictures.  The classic Doc Martens with socks photo which no one thought was weird or bad taste for a photo shoot which ended up costing $600+ dollars.  Don't worry, this was only one of four outfits I wore.  I still have the jacket, warm up shirt with my name on the back and the sandals.  The very ones. Slipping into that shirt was so nostalgic...I felt like I was back in a 95 degree gym again, in front of packed bleachers, sweating because it is not at all breathable.  We usually made our circle out of the locker room and immediately tossed them on the bench.  I was sweaty from playing JV already anyway.

I felt bad about not getting a picture of the kids on Halloween but I did get a cute one the week before when they went with the Sunday School to sing at the local nursing home.

Tessa didn't have her fake braid yet in this one and Calvin isn't wearing the pumpkin but at least Milo is wearing a costume!  

On we go, to the most wonderful time of the year!  I love the food, commercials and festivities.