Thanksgiving Weekend

Our Thanksgiving weekend was so much fun. Getting together with family is one of my favorite ways to spend free time, and this weekend there was lots of free time and lots of family to spend it with! It started Wednesday, when our director sent us all home at 2 and the kids and I headed to Grandma's to join the fun there. Aaron joined us after work and we bounced between home and Grandma's for the rest of the weekend. I got a lot of quilting done as we just hung out together and the kids had a blast playing with their cousins. 

Zeke loves snow and Christmas and has been so excited to put up the Christmas tree. We made him wait until Thanksgiving Day, although that was the first thing we did after we woke up in the morning. Nora and I made pumpkin pie while the boys hauled the decorations up from the basement.

Zeke helped unpack the tree, put on the lights, put on the ornaments, and arrange the train underneath. His excitement was contagious!

Our beautiful festive tree that evening. 

Then off to Grandma Loertscher's for dinner, and sewing projects, and cousins. Zeke loved playing with all of his cousins, from holding baby Alyssa to running around with the girls his age to sharing toys with the toddler girls. Grandma's house seemed a little bit small this time around with all the kids running through it. There was also a bit more drama than I remember happening before, probably because most of the grandkids are girls :). But, all in all, the giggles and hugs and kisses and fun times were more plentiful than the disagreements and tears. 

 Friday we did more decorating and more playing with cousins, plus some experimenting with which treats to put in our Christmas train. On Saturday, we all helped Grandma and Grandpa put up their tree and Christmas train.

Tonight we said our goodbyes to cousins we won't see in person until probably summer. It was so fun to have almost everyone here and to share our holiday with them.

Z is for Zeke

If you ask Zeke his name, he will tell you  it's 'Zeke! It starts with Z for Zebra and Zeke...' He feels a kinship with zebras I think. After all, what else are you going to put with Z in an alphabet board book? That's how he's starting to associate all his letters now, actually. As he reads a letter, he'll tell us what it's for. L is for lion, N is always for Nora, X is for xylophone, E is for elephant. K used to be for kangaroo, but now it is for Kyle. I have to admit that I've played around with writing a board book for the Loertscher family: A is for Aaron, Ashlynn, Alyssa, and Ashley. B is for Brielle.... 

Zeke also loves to write his name and have it written. In any medium. Last week he was writing his name in blocks and markers / colored pencils. It helps that his first name in all caps has no curves :)

She Speaks!

Nora's first word was 'bye-bye', directed at Zeke when he was running ahead of us down the sidewalk to the mailbox. This was at about 12.5 months, but it wasn't consistent. Then she started repeating words after we said them, and her mimicking vocabulary grew a bit. In the past week or so, she has started to really talk on her own. It's the cutest thing ever! Right now she says bye-bye, hi, shoes, cracker, and cheeeeeeeese (for the camera). And she is so very proud of herself too, which may be the cutest part.

Many foods are 'cracker' to Nora these days. Crackers, bread, noodles, cookies, Halloween candy.

A typical conversation goes like this:

Nora: Cracker?

Mom/Dad: No, that's a cookie. Cookie, Nora. Cookie.

Nora [super excited]: Cracker!

Although in the video below she is, in fact, holding a graham cracker.

She has been such a ham for the camera for a long time and now we have the 'cheeeeeese' to go with it. This is what she does whenever a camera (or phone) comes out and looks like it might be taking pictures. Even if it is completely directed away from her. :)

I love these learning moments. It's so much fun to watch these kids try and succeed. Also, as we've been so excited about Nora's milestones, it's also been fun to go back into our video files and re-watch Zeke's early walking and talking moments (he loves this one).

Halloween Partying

We're not the biggest dressing-up people around here, but we do try to come up with some sort of costume for the kids' Halloween adventures. This year Zeke was a dragon (specifically Toothless) and has had a blast running and jumping and 'flying' and eating goldfish crackers dragon-style. Nora used Zeke's Price is Right costume from a couple of years ago. Last year I had hopes that she would be a butterfly this year (and Zeke kept telling people she was going to be a ladybug) but I just know that wearing wings would not have been tolerated!

Ready to go to a party at the library.

Two of Nora's favorite things together, carrying her pumpkin and walking around outside.

Treats at Grandma L's house.

Halloween pumpkins thanks to Grandma C.

Halloween Flying

Aaron had paid time off to use, so he took Halloween off from work. We didn't get out of the house early enough to get to the club field before the wind picked up, so we took the micro planes to a local park. We hadn't been here before but it turned out to be great flying, and a beautiful day too.

Nora watching the flight.

Aaron flying (the plane is there too, if you look closely).

Retrieving the plane.

I want to come back again before the snow starts piling up.

So much fun.