The enormous tree cage getting a coat of primer

Wooooooo, y'all, only 4 days (really 3 1/2) days until Thanksgiving!!!! I cannot wait! I did my big grocery shopping trip this weekend to get all my ingredients, and I currently have over three pounds of cream cheese in my refrigerator. I'll be cooking something every day between now and Thursday. Tonight Mason and I are baking the cutest turkey cookies for his class. They're sugar cookies decorated to look like turkeys, and I think it will be a really fun Mommy and Mason project. Tomorrow I'm going to do the cranberry sauce for Thursday. Wednesday is the big baking day- I'm doing pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and these crazy-good streusel-topped apple cheesecake bars. I'll also make the sundried tomato/pesto/cream cheese appetizer. (so with those things alone, we're looking at two pounds of cream cheese!) Thursday morning I'll do the squash casserole before we go to my mom's for more family fun and food than you can shake a stick at!! But the fun doesn't end there. Oh no, it's only beginning. That night I'll come home and make a pumpkin cream pie (more cream cheese!!) for Thanksmas.


What is Thanksmas, you may ask. Well, Thanksmas is a holiday of my own creation that takes place the following day. Matt's mom will come over with a big ol' turkey that she made. After we go to the tree farm and get our gorgeous Frazer fir, we'll come home and eat Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches (turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce all piled on white bread- YUMMMMMM) followed by the aforementioned pie. The rest of the afternoon will be spent decking the halls. Matt's mom generally has to work at the hospital on Thanksgiving, and she is the unchallenged queen of Christmas decorating, so out of this, Thanksmas was born!


Keeping a Christmas tree safe from my wily twins was a big challenge this year, but I think my dad and I solved that problem! I came up with a design for a kind of "decorative fence" around the tree and enlisted my dad's help in bringing my vision to life. We started Saturday morning at Lowes, and $125 worth of lumber and 8 hours of labor later, we have a tree cage that is a sight to behold!! I'm still working on getting that sucker painted, but I swear, ain't nobody gettin past this thing! It is a veritable Fort Knox of tree enclosures! It consists of two sections of railing that bolt together, then bolt to a 4x4 plywood platform that slides into the corner of the living room. It's designed to break down into three large, but flat pieces for storage, and should withstand years, decades, perhaps centuries of use!!! The plan is to thwart the attempts of babies trying to get to the Christmas tree for generations to come. Plus, my dad and I had a good time building it together. We had a few mishaps. We used decking posts and spindles, and realized just in the nick of time that if we didn't cut this thing down some, we were going to have an enormous deck around the tree rather than a fence! I measured one piece of lumber wrong, and we underestimated the number of spindles we'd need, but that only resulted in one additional trip to Lowes. We were quite sore the next day, but it was totally worth it to get to spend a fun and memorable day with my dad!

Here's classy no-pants Will climbing out of the cabinet

Peek-a-boo!

Mmmmm, cottage cheese and peaches.......

Just checking in since there hasn't been too much going on. But I imagine we'll be getting busy soon. Can y'all believe there's less than two weeks until Thanksgiving? I can't wait!! That's my absolute favorite holiday. Any day that centers around food, family, and being grateful for your blessings- sign me up! Plus, I get to cook tons of food, and y'all know I like to cook. I honestly like the day before almost as much because I get to spend the whole day in the kitchen. I also love the fact that Thanksgiving sort off kicks off the Christmas season. Once the lights come on on the Rich's great tree (I know it's now Macy's, but it will always be Rich's to me!) the Christmas season is officially on. I won't put up anything Christmas-y before, but the day after, we deck the halls! Even though I haven't started decorating, I have started shopping. I went last weekend and got a good chunk of the kids' stuff done. The twins are almost done, but I have to get a few more things for Mason. I try to spread it out so it's easier money-wise. Toys are expensive!!

This week we spent most of our time in the backyard, enjoying the beautiful weather. It rained all day on Tuesday, and that made for a loooooooong day. I'm not even going to lie- I busted into the Chardonnay around 4:30. It was that or kill them, and hey, it's always 5:00 somewhere, right?

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous- sunny and mid-70's, so Matt and I took the kids to the big park in Athens. They had a ball! Mason's been before, but it's been a couple of years. This was the twins first time, and they loved it. Will went tearing off to the nearest climbing structure the minute he walked in the gates! Hays was a bit more cautious, but it didn't take him long to start exploring. The poor little guy managed to trip over something and incur a rather impressive looking head injury, but after a hug and some juice he was okay. Mason found a cute little girl to play with and they all had a great afternoon. Mason was asking when we could come back before we even left!

Sunday was haircut day for all four of my guys. Everyone was shaggy- especially Matt. So we took them to get shorn and de-mulleted. They were a handsome looking crew afterwards! My mom and I did a little shopping that afternoon and I got the most fabulous pair of red glitter ballet flats. They're so awesome, Dorothy would be jealous! They came from the little girls' department of Old Navy. What can I say, I may be grown, but I will never outgrow my love of sparkly shoes!

One other funny thing from this week is the twins' new favorite game. They love to climb into one of the kitchen cabinets that has doors that open on either side of the counter. They stick their heads out of both doors so it looks like some giant, two-headed baby monster! They also like to stick their heads out, then grab the door and pull it shut- like cabinet peek-a-boo! Crazy monkeys.

I was watching the boys play in the backyard this afternoon and wishing I could freeze time. There's something about the late-afternoon sun shining through the fall leaves, the way it silhouettes them and creates a glowing nimbus around their hair. In that moment they are so sweet and so beautiful and so perfect. But it's so bittersweet, because even as I'm cherishing that moment, I'm mourning the fact that they won't always be these precious little boys. Mason is already out in the world, having his own life outside of our family. My sweet babies aren't really babies at all anymore. Each step takes them closer to being little boys, and I can barely stand it. I just want to tell time to slow down, don't make them grow up so fast, let me hold them just a little longer.

Trick-or-treat!



Why is this little monkey so sad?




He got those monkey ears off two seconds
later and refused to put them back on!


My pumpkin


Matt's pumpkin

Well, since someone forgot to tell the twins how the time change thing works, we're up bright and early to post Halloween pictures! We had a really fun Hallowwen. We were worried about the rain, but it didn't interfere too much. We took all the kids downtown in the afternoon to trick-or-treat at all the stores on Main Street. Well, Mason was trick-or-treating, the twins were just there to look cute in their stroller! But we had lots of fun seeing all the great costumes. Our kiddos were awfully cute, even though Hays refused to wear his monkey ears and just looked like a kid in a brown suit!

After dinner I took Mason over to my parents' neighborhood for round two of trick-or-treating. When we set out, it was misting a bit, but not really raining. Unfortunately, it progressed to drizzling, and then into rain. Luckily we had time to hit several houses and he got plenty of candy. The walk back in the rain wasn't so much fun, but none of us melted! We headed back home and Mason gorged himself on candy. But we still managed to get him to bed at a reasonable hour and a frightfully fun Halloween was had by all!