Thankful Times Ten

On Thanksgiving Day we were thankful for many things but one of the things we were most thankful for was our ten month old Benny who is a happy healthy boy. Here's his happy smiling face as he's walking towards the camera. Yes, I know the hair is getting a little out of hand again but I like it. I promise I'll cut it before it becomes an exact replica of David Bowie's hair from Labyrinth.





Followed by Kenzie's happy ten month face - she was not walking at this point. She didn't walk until shortly before she was eleven months. Shocking!


We had quite a busy weekend, on Thursday we went to the Durdy family Thanksgiving at Aunt Kacey and Uncle Eric's. There were 32 people this year. That's not a new record but it was a tight squeeze. Here's the table before dinner.


And during dinner!


On Friday morning I took the kids over for a quick visit at Aunt Renee's house to see how the remodel was coming. It's looking pretty good. That afternoon we took the kids to Mountlake Terrace indoor playground for some exercise. They sure needed it!

Saturday Grandma and Grandpa C came over and watched the kiddos and Matt and I went to watch the Apple Cup. It was a sad game. We actually wished we had gone to dinner and a movie instead since we don't get much time away and the game was so bad. Here's Auntie Anne and Matt at the game.



On Sunday we went out to Grandma and Grandpa Z's house for a second Thanksgiving dinner. Matt and I spent a lot of time chasing the kids around while they checked out all of Grandma and Grandpa Z's things. Here's McKenzie with one of her favorite things at the G's house...the kitty. She loves to pet that little cat.


Next weekend is Christmas tree and fruitcake party. Let the fun begin!!

And He's Off!

I'm a little behind with some breaking news...Ben has actually been taking unassisted steps on his own since October 30th but I was waiting for him to actually realize he was walking to share. Of course then I wanted to get a video of him walking. Then I ran out of time since he could move a lot faster now that he walks. You get the picture. I had predicted he'd be walking by Halloween and he was!

Here's our man on the move!

For those who get this in email and don't visit the blog please go to http://thezarembas.blogspot.com/ or check out the action in person.

The next video I'll take of Ben will be his dare devil antics as this boy can really climb. Twice now I've caught him three shelves up the book case. I'll have gray hair before he's one. Speaking of turning one, time has really flown by and I can't believe it's Thanksgiving again already, next thing I know it will be Christmas and then New Years and then Ben's first birthday. Yikes it's a bit overwhelming to think about.

We're ready for the holidays the tablecloth is finished and over at Kacey's waiting to be put on the table. Thanks again to all the Aunts and Grammy who worked on it back in April. That work party in Chelan made all the difference in the world. Let's make a new tradition of sewing it together in April. I only had to do six in the last week to finish up!

Looking forward to seeing everyone and having some great food. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and remember to tell those you love how thankful you are they are in your life.

Catching Up With The Past!

This past weekend was a blur of pictures, papers and progress on my ever growing hobby of scrap booking. This was my first scrapbook retreat that I have been to and boy, have I been missing out! We started on Friday night and did nothing but scrap, eat and sleep until Sunday. The retreat group was coordinated by Grandma Z who had been to a scrap weekend at Camp Huston before. I love Camp Huston having been there many times as a kid with my 4-H group.

Before I left for the weekend I was packing up all my scrap booking stuff and Matt asked to see all the pages I had made so far. I told him that's all of them there in McKenize's book...13 pages filled with lots of love and learning. In one fun filled weekend I managed to make more than double my total pages. I completed 15 pages during the retreat! I am still amazed! I do need to go back through and add little touches here and there and do some journaling on some of the entries. I have been going back and forth between typed journal entries and hand written and I have finally decided on handwritten because with the way the world is going this may be the only place my kids have a sample of my writing. So now to perfect my journal techniques. So far I haven't been happy with the things I've tried but I'll figure it out.

So enjoy this trip down memory lane. There is so much more to do to catch up but it's a big start. While I was enjoying my weekend away the kids were enjoying some quality time with Daddy. A good time seems to be had by all especially me who came home to two happy kids and a clean house. I wish I had taken a picture when I got home. Matt even had all of McKenzie's dolls lined up.

Here are those happy kids!



Still working on my photo techniques for the scrapbook pages but I wanted to get them out here.

Karma...

I think perhaps I have acquired some bad online shopping karma or maybe it's bad shipping karma. Either way it is frustrating and darn right annoying. This was my last year that I could really control the Halloween costume selection for both kids. So I decided to have them be matching boy and girl yard gnomes! I was so excited about these costumes for the kids. I planned in advance and ordered them on October 12th... on a normal looking costume site, which was recommended by eBates. My credit card was charged on the 13th, on the 15th I emailed because I hadn't received any shipping info, on the 18th I called, on the 19th I emailed again, on the 22nd I received an email from them telling me my order had shipped! And on Halloween I had no costumes for the kids. Sad. Now my only recourse is to wait until the 13th which is 30 days after my credit card was charged and dispute the transaction. No one rips me off and ruins my Halloween plans and gets away with it.

How cute would those kids have been as yard gnomes? Too cute.

We made the best of it and hauled the kids out to the costumed store on Halloween, quite a sorry site, lots of picked over unwanted costumes but we finally settled on Snow White and Spider Man. McKenzie was Snow White for a little while but then wanted the dress off and so she changed into a spider costume we had from when Nathan was little. We ended up having a great Halloween. McKenzie was very excited to go to the neighbors houses to get yummys and say "Trick or Treat." We had Aunt Jennifer, Uncle Chris, Cousin Claire with us for Trick or Treating and then Grandma and Grandpa Z showed up once the kids were all crazy on candy.

Here's our Spider and Spider Man!


McKenzie with her haul and also with the candy we were giving out! She figured why not just take it all!


Here's cousin Claire the Bumble Bee!




Not quite the look I was planning but it worked. After last Christmas' shipping fiasco and now this I'm almost afraid to order online for the Holidays. I got to figure out how to improve my online karma.

McKenzie and I also had some fun making M&M cookies recently. Unfortunately McKenzie while she loved the dough and M&M's she was not satisfied with the end product. She couldn't believe there was cookie on her yummys and had to pick it all off before she could eat the M&M's.



More posts are coming soon. I was out of town part of last week for a work trip and have been consumed with scrap planning for my upcoming scrap weekend. I can hardly stand the wait. I'll have lots of pages to show off after this coming weekend.