Happy American Thanksgiving!

This is the weekend of American Thanksgiving. I have been here for five years now and it is still hard to get used to how late it is. For some reason, this year I haven't been thinking as much about Christmas until now. In previous years I have been playing Christmas music all through the month of November and getting excited for Christmas, but this year I have been less excited. I guess there has been a lot going on, so I have been keeping myself busy with other things. Greg and Amanda, my brother and his wife, came to visit during the week of November 11th. I have been making large amounts of apple butter and canning them for a fundraiser for a friend. I have also been quilting a little bit, just for fun.

Despite all the busyness, I am now getting into the Christmas spirit and playing Christmas music and David has been cleaning out the garage in order to get it organized and to get our Christmas lights out of storage so that he can put them up. One of my favorite things about the Christmas season is the romance of Christmas lights.

Okay, first things first. Our visit with Greg and Amanda was wonderful. I can't be certain, but I kind of think it was Amanda's idea to come all the way out here. I love that they came. It was great to get to know Amanda better and to spend time with Greg again. We didn't do much, but I did take them to one of the first things a person who comes to Seattle has to see - Pike Place Market. We ordered drinks from the very first Starbucks and got a picture or two there and we we saw some fishermen tossing huge fish or crabs to each other. Dave and his company have moved into a new office building, so we showed them the office (even though it's still a bit messy from getting settled into it) before going out to lunch. On the last weekend that they were here we went to Bellevue for some shopping and to stay overnight at one of the hotels there. I think it was a pretty relaxing week for them (even with a 13 month old running around) and we had a great time hanging out together.

The apple butter that I am making is for a little fundraiser entitled "Jam for Sam". We know a family through the home group Dave and I are a part of who have a 4 year old boy with an immune deficiency and has had to undergo 2 bone marrow transplant surgeries. Another couple in the home group has come up with the idea of Jam for Sam and started selling different types of jam at his workplace. I wanted to help out, so she put me in charge of making the apple butter. For one thing, it reminds me of Ontario because of the Wellesley Apple Butter and Cheese Festival. I have never canned before, but I am enjoying it. Plus, it's a great cause and it's nice to be able to help out a friend.

For Thanksgiving, we went to David's sister's house. We had dinner there and actually stayed overnight. We were going to go with Micah's cousins in the morning to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in downtown Seattle, but Micah didn't sleep much during the night, so consequentially, neither did we. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious, as always. Mike and Danielle had ordered a smoked turkey and only had to reheat it for a couple hours. It was definitely a different taste, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. I wish I had taken a picture of Micah and his cousins because they all had brown and blue sweaters on and looked so cute. Sorry!

Fun Times

Pumpkin patches and farms. Halloween dress-ups. Falling asleep in comfy Target shopping carts. Walking on cold but sunny fall days. Playing with birthday toys. Micah has had a fun couple of weeks. I was able to get my tulip bulbs planted! I am excited to see what will happen in the spring! I imagine it will be like a $20 bill in my jacket pocket that I had put away for the summer and then taken out again in the fall. How exciting! "Ooh, the flowers are popping up and I forgot I even planted them!"

We had fun at the Pumpkin Patch. It has been so nice here for the past couple weeks. The weather has definitely turned cooler, but the sun has been shining and the leaves have been turning beautiful colors. I simply love this time of year.





Micah was an astronaut by day on October 31st and a Fireman by night. He was both the cutest little astronaut and fireman I have ever seen! We went to our church for a Harvest Party after handing out some candy at our house. I bought so much candy that I was afraid we were going to have a ton of it left in our house (especially with Dave's candy-nazi method of handing out candy - "take only ONE!" I grab a handfuls and fill each kid's sack with it. That would be why we ran out so quickly last year, but this year I was prepared with LOTS of candy, even though we don't stay here all night.). However, we did not have any left over because when we left to go to our church, we set it out in a box with a note: Trick or Treat! Please take ONE! I wish we had a hidden video camera on our front porch to see if that many kids came, or if the older ones just dumped it all in their bags. Well, it's fine because if we had any left over, we all know who would be eating that.... and we all know who does not NEED it. Ahem.



I have been running lately. A friend of mine from the home group that we are in ran a half marathon a couple months ago and she wants to keep in shape, so she invited me to go with her one morning. I met her at her house and we ran the loop she normally does. No. We ran PART of the loop she normally does because it is ALL HILLS and I hadn't done anything for a couple weeks, so I was DYING with the hills. But, since then, we've met and ran around my neighborhood and I've been able to do 3 miles with her. My neighborhood is completely flat. One of these days I'll attempt her dreaded, hilly neighborhood again.



Back to the Harvest Party. I liked Micah's costume the best because all the other boys were either animals of some kind, or cowboys or indians. His costume was borrowed from his cousins. With him being so little still, there weren't any games that he could do, but he did have fun in the Toddler Playroom with all the balls. He even tried coloring a little - and by that I mean tapping the crayon on the paper. I'm glad he's still too young to understand that he has a choice on what he could eat and that Halloween means CANDY and that it is yummy and delicious and horribly bad for you. I'm glad that he doesn't demand to eat only candy or nothing at all and I hope that he is never like that. I do cherish this time, because he is open to eating anything, and likes everything. Especially veggies like broccoli. And tofu. One day he will not be so open. However, as Dave says, he IS a Wolfrom, and if you've seen Papa Wolfrom's belly, you'll understand that a Wolfrom will eat anything. :)