First Friday of Advent

1. So Jen took last Friday off and so did I because ever since my parents arrived on November 20th, we have been running around like crazy people. We celebrated Thanksgiving at Marshall's sister's house and enjoyed a wonderful family time, giving thanks for Marshall's mom's recovery from heart surgery and that we could all be together again. Then on Sunday night we celebrated Alex & Miranda's birthdays late (their birthdays are October 4 and 30 respectively) so that both sets of Grandparents could be here to sing our kids into their new years. You can see pictures here.

2. I have been promising a new progress picture of my cross stitch for weeks and finally have one for you. I finished page 7 and started page 8.

I continue to be impressed with how beautifully the pattern turns into art.

3. My mother is still here but my father has been in Toronto since Monday night. So we decided to put the tree up on Sunday night, after the birthday party, since the children were still jazzed up from playing with their cousins (and dark chocolate cupcakes) and both children, for the first time, helped to decorate the tree. Now, this means all the nice and breakable ornaments are still safely in their boxes in the closet, but the tree is still beautiful. You can see pictures of that here.

4. Last Friday we left both kids at Aunt Leah's house and the four of us adults went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. We went to the 10 am showing, first of the day, and then Marshall and my father continued to work on the living room remodel. The room is inhabitable, including new furniture, but the bookshelves are still in the process of being built. Life keeps intervening in my husband's project; for example, right now he's home in bed with a bad chest cold. Still, our life is not boring.

5. Last week we had our conference with Miranda's teacher and yesterday I met with Alex's to learn that both children are doing well. Miranda has come so far in speech therapy that we now have to teach her when NOT to talk. Alex continues to excel academically but still has behavioral quirks to get under control. They both need to work on reading comprehension, but we can do that together.

6. Alex is completely enamoured of Brian and Leah's new puppy, Ruby. His favorite thing to say about her is "She likes to lick me."

She is a very sweet tempered dog; I enjoy her company as well.

7. Now I understand why Jen does these posts every Friday. Trying to sum up two weeks of events is difficult.

Bonus 8. My mother did her first large group event to introduce her book to my women's Bible study group on Wednesday morning and it was just awesome to hear her speak about Bathsheba, reference the scriptures from 2nd Samuel, and share her writing process with my friends.


If you haven't already ordered a copy for yourself, do so now! You can find it available here. I still have 10 copies available for sale leftover from her talk on Wednesday. If you're local, let me know if you are interested.

And here's Jen.