Happy Thanksgiving!

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Calm Before the Holidays

I wanted to post this picture, because to be in my kitchen at this minute was to experience a little bit if magic.
Everything looked (and in that second was) so calm.
Cool and dark, bright and brilliant, the sun highlighting the breakfast dishes and the fact that I need to clean my tea kettle.
The fleet of kitchen sprays at the ready*.
This might be the last time this kind of calm settles on my kitchen until the new year.
The Holidays are coming!

*I LOVE to clean the counters in the kitchen. It is my joy and solace to spray and wipe, spray and wipe, spray and wipe the counters. Hence, the fleet of sprays at the ready.

A Two Slipper Day (The best kind)

Today is a two slipper day (unlike last Friday...see last post.) Which is a very good thing.
A slow Friday in my slippers has lately been my reward (to myself) for otherwise managing the week now behind me. All those early morning preschool drop offs, with the hurry hurry, and the putting on of stubborn shoes.
Friday is also the day I tend to pick my head up and look around, taking stock of things.
Here's how the morning went.
In an act of daring I blew everyone's minds at the breakfast table by not serving the standard breakfast order (toast, scrambled eggs, fruit).
I made ancient grains bread (from a box, relax), doled out bananas, and sprinkled cheerios on plates and trays for guaranteed smiles.

We have been spinning Dumbo most mornings, so we munched, sang Baby of Mine, and Greta play acted the whole thing.
Here is where she is simultaneously eating breakfast as Greta Girl, and Dreaming about Pink Elephants as Dumbo.

Playing out the record was a hit, so we did it twice. Because it's a two slipper day, and this mama is just in it for the smiles.
Also the online shopping.
I am on a pace (4 people away) to being finished with our Christmas Shopping! My fists are pumping the air...are yours?
Because combining that, with outfitting the children (who continue to grow against my best wishes) for cold weather, and preparing for Thanksgiving at our house next week, I have spent heap big amounts of time on amazon and the like, and I'm sure our UPS man is getting tired of the all too familiar trek to our front door.
But can we rewind a little, and just swim in this knowledge a bit.
Christmas shopping (and 4 birthdays)... tantalizingly close to completion.
I want to mention it because remember last year? 
December is so huge for us. I was crying for exhaustion just about daily last year. Seriously, it was an advent of tears.
So ever since October I have made this a serious mission of mine, to do every single thing I can to front load the work and spending of December, so that I can rest and enjoy the season while it is upon us.
So Christmas outfits...planned and purchased. (Except for the boys, because they aint care.)
Christmas tree theme...planned purchased (shhhh, I like a theme.)
Christmas wrapping...planned and purchased.
Greta Girls 5th Birthday Party...planned, purchased, and outsourced to a bouncy place.
I'm calling it Operation Sanity, and I hope, I hope, I hope it means December is nothing but jolly.
Time will tell, but for now it's back to the grind!

Cast of Characters

Today was a one slipper day.  I'm calling it that because I am currently writing you a total mess and  wearing only one slipper.
Several times today, (as a matter of fact it was each and every time I walked and realized I was limping)  I thought "maybe just put on the other slipper?" but I continued to remind myself that as I had clearly given up on the day around 9:00am, who cares? It was an outward sign of the madness within.
And there was no good reason for this rotten day, so let's not go any deeper than necessary. But on days like these, where I feel like not one tangible thing was accomplished, I like to put in a blog post.
I get an amazing sense of satisfaction from putting up a post. Kind of like what you feel when you have invested in something for the future. I really look at this blog that way, something I will want to read, remember, cherish in the future. The good and the bad. (But let's be honest, I don't write about 80% of the bad...or good. Just a little glimpse every now and then.)
So here are a few notables.
Oliver is the Potato Czar.
One of his favorite things right now is the russet potato in the corner cupboard*. That potato and him really know how to play.
It's a lot of holding, and snuggling it up to his face, talking on it like a phone, and then ultimately tossing it and laaaaaaughing, tossing it and laaaaaaughing, tossing it and laaaaughing. Distributing potato dust all over the cushions.
So everyday there's the potato, add the blousy white shirt, stretch pants, and black ugg-like boots (which the male contingent of the house has deemed extremely unmanly, but I'm like what's manlier than a czar?) and you have the Potato Czar.

Greta is The Little Mermaid.
Pretty self explanatory for a 4 year old girl. Ariel is everything, to be happy is to be singing "Part of Your World" under the dining room table, and monologing the movie on the toilet for 30 minute stretches. She is often not a part of our world.

I'm The Mess with One Slipper, whose tattoo sleeve from Halloween still lingers all sad and splotchy, but I ain't care. 
Kent rounds out this cast of characters as Beloved and Benevolent Diseased Man. (We can joke now.)
Who comes home to us every day, bless him.
And that's it, that's the full cast.
Tomorrow my dad will be coming for a visit, to add that special laid back spice of his to the mix.
It should be a good weekend with this crew.


*The contents of which get more play time than anything in the toy basket. Boy loves to bring out the pantry items and spruce up the place.