Thanksgiving and Cecily's Baptism

We planned on having Mike's dad, brother Jason, and his wife Joanna at our place for Thanksgiving this year. Unfortunately, a bad stomach virus arrived in Casper and took out nearly everyone in town for a few days. It hit us the weekend before Thanksgiving. We had a similar illness last Christmas when Jason and Joanna came to see us in Tennessee, and we really didn't want a repeat of what happened then, with everyone being so sick and miserable. So, we decided we had to cancel our Thanksgiving and just spend the holiday on our own. Our friends, the Tituses, who have generously adopted our lonely little family, invited us over to their house on Thanksgiving day since we had all survived the stomach bug and decided we were all immune. I wish we had more pictures of the Titus family, but here are a few pics of the lovely evening, plus some of Alayna's school Thanksgiving party.

Tulip Titus, or as Alayna calls her, Grandma Tulip, has us over for lunch at her house every Thursday. Her granddaughters, Ava and Maya, are Alayna and Cecily's best friends, and they love to play together. We have all been enjoying getting to know each other. Tulip has been so kind to adopt us and is such a beautiful and spiritual person, so we asked her to be Cecily's godmother. We had Cecily baptized on December 4th. We hoped to have her godfather, her Uncle Jason, present, but since we had to cancel their visit, we were luck to have Grandpa Terry stand in as proxy.

 

Halloween 2011

We had a very happy Halloween this year, but first I have to show you some pictures of Cecily. On 10/26, 4 months old, she rolled over back to front and started eating solid foods. She's growing up so quickly! 

 

We had lots of fun decorating the pumpkins we got at the pumpkin patch this year. Alayna said she was a princess and princesses don't touch yucky things, so she refused to help me clean out any of the pumpkin guts! But I let her decide how we would carve each of the pumpkins and she said she wanted a happy pumpkin, a scared one, and a ghost one. I, of course, did the carving, while she decorated her littlest pumpkin with markers. She did a really good job of drawing a face on it. And she helped me put these little spiders on our small scared pumpkin. 

 

Halloween is Alayna's most favorite holiday because she loves dressing up and she loves all of the scary things - she doesn't get scared one bit. She was a "good witch" and was going around everywhere saying "hee hee hee!" and Cecily was a sweet little flower. We went trick-or-treating downtown at all of the little shops, which was a madhouse, super cold & windy, but fun. We also went around our neighborhood on Halloween night.

 

Fall Fun: Hay Ride & Pumpkin Patch

A couple of weekends ago, Alayna's school invited us to a great hay ride/hay maze/chili & hot dog dinner at a nearby ranch. We didn't take many pictures, but we had a wonderful time visiting with Alayna's teachers, fellow classmates, and their parents. Alayna was so excited to see the farm/ranch, complete with barn, tractors, animals, and farmers! :)

Here we are hanging around the bonfire.



Here we are on the hay ride which took us to a nice little maze made out of hay bales.




Then last weekend, we went to a pumpkin patch to pick out some jack-o-lantern pumpkins. Here are some pictures of us goofing around the pumpkin patch.




We have been reading "The Littlest Pumpkin" by R.A. Herman, so Alayna decided she wanted to find the littlest pumpkin in the whole patch.



We also got a medium-sized pumpkin and one nice big one to make jack-o-lanterns out of, and Alayna was delighted to get to ride with the big pumpkin to the car in this little wagon. Pictures of our jack-o-lanterns will be coming soon!

Craft Monday: A new look for an old toy box

This Craft Monday has ended up turning into a full craft month, as this was a big project and we have been very busy with Fall and Halloween activities, but we are happy with the results!

I have this old toy box that my dad put together when I was little and, well, let's just say it's seen much better days. Because of its rough condition, I didn't want to keep toys in it, so we've been using it as storage for winter hats, scarves, and gloves, but when we found a great deal on a new storage bench, I decided it was time to move the winter stuff into the new bench and fix up the old toy box.

Here's what it looked like before the renovation.


I took the lid off, filled in the holes & cracks with wood putty and got some nice new hinges.



Alayna had lots of fun helping me paint the box (and herself) with white semigloss latex paint. It needed at least three good coats.




I found this cute bird fabric on sale at the fabric store and decided to use the small birds to cover some foam to make a cushion on the box lid. And I cut out the large birds to decoupage onto the box.



I got this bird-themed scrapbook paper and used it to cut out flower petals and leaves.



Then, I echoed the pattern on the bird fabric by painting similar tree branches onto the box with acryllic paint.




I broke out the good old Mod Podge and decoupaged the fabric birds and paper flowers and leaves onto the box. I put a couple of extra coats of Mod Podge on as well as sprayed it with a clear acryllic sealer to make sure it well protected.



Finally, I replaced the cushioned lid, screwed on some lid supports so it won't crash down on little fingers, and here is the final product!

We filled it up with toys and moved it into Alayna and Cecily's room.