Crunching Leaves

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Happy Anniversary to us!

Keith and I love to read the newspaper to each other in the morning. I read one section, he reads another. When we moved to Utah we did not renew our subscription to the Wall Street Journal, but we both love the WSJ because it is a different perspective than we normally read. When we were in NC at my Dad's this summer, we enjoyed the WSJ so much again that I decided to get it for our anniversary. Our first issue serendipitously arrived today, our anniversary! We are both very, very happy.

Five years of marriage and nine years of togetherness. As my family always points out, I am very, very lucky to have found Keith.

Keith is working, Sam is building a massive fort (I told him two days ago that I would not vacuum until he was done playing in his fort, but it is getting out of hand now), and I am contracting up a storm.

We're going to dinner and a movie tonight.

 

Finally - A VIDEO POST

Thanks to Danielle's email! One issue - it still took FOREVER to load onto Youtube. Is that normal??

This is from when Jimmy was here in the middle of October, the day after snow.

The story with Sam's name on the pumpkin and Jerome Gnome: I had asked Keith to carve Sam's name into one of the growing pumpkins with a nail so that as the pumpkin grew, his name would sort of stretch across the face of the pumpkin. I didn't explain this completely to Keith though. He went out and did it with the nail, but thought that it didn't show up very well, so he took a melon baller and scooped out Sam's name. He didn't realize that he also carved it upside down.

Whooped Cream

For our after dinner entertainment, Aunt Elisa introduced Sam to canned "whooped cream." Of course, we had fresh whipped cream too, but who can beat having your entire mouth filled with sweetened cream instantaneously?
Sam loved this so much! I told him that he could count on this activity every Thanksgiving, if Auntie Elisa is around.

Pie Heaven

Rae, sorry I didn't take this picture before he ate his dinner...

Kathy's pumpking pie with fresh ginger, yum. Sam decorated the pies with oak leaves and little pumpkins...

Sam wanted a little pie with his "Whooped Cream."

Elisa's Amazing Pecan Pie.

Sam's Thanksgiving Treat

When Wall-E, the Pixar robot movie, opened last summer, we knew Sam would love it. He is such a little inventor, engineer.
We decided we would wait until it came out on DVD last week and in July I reserved it through Netflix. We have been talking about this movie for MONTHS. He finally got to watch it yesterday and he loved it.

Great Spread

Elisa, Carl, Kathy, and Cory cooked Thanksgiving. Cory did the turkey.
We had a very casual, late Thanksgiving that was just perfect. Thank you to all of you for the day off!!

Kathy made my favorite salad in the whole world - spinach, roasted sweet potatoes, cranberries, chevre, pecans with a dijon dressing.

Happy Turkey Day, Gorgeous Boy!

Beautiful Utah

Little Hiker

Can you find Madu?

Thanksgiving Morning

For the first Thanksgiving in a very long time, we weren't cooking! We decided to go for a short walk in Mill Creek Canyon. It was gorgeous!

Can you find Madu?

Morning Frost

I woke up on my first day off bed rest before 5 in the morning because of contractions. I knitted until Sam got up, got his milk and sent him to cuddle with Keith. By then the contractions were gone again, so I went outside to look at the frost.

Moravian Wafers

Keith loves ginger snaps. Sam and I made these today. They have black pepper and dry mustard to make them extra spicy!

Finger painting

I was amazed when Sam said that he wanted to actually finger paint with the finger paint. He detests getting his hands dirty.

He did get some paint on his elbow and dipped his elbow in the water.

Happy Birthday, Grammy!

Kathy had a great birthday party at Linda's with a vegetarian dinner (courtesy of Elisa and Carl) and almost her whole family present- including all three sons! Pam made Kathy traditional Albury/Farrington birthday bundt cake and a banana cake with cream cheese frosting. Emily brought frosted sugar cookies.

Sam made a card for Kathy.

BE made scarf for Kathy to go with her new coat.

Charlie's Chance: Betting is Closed

December 3 is most popular. This was Ellen Holimon's birthday and I think Cory Albury's birthday.


Joan Eldridge 27-Nov 4:23PM Kid wants sweet potatoes with marshmallows
Elizabeth Bertelsen 28-Nov 10:22am
Clint Gould 28-Nov 1:28am AFTER A BIG MEAL ON TXGIVING
Brad Bryan 30-Nov 11:30am Brad's birthday
Christy Holimon 30-Nov 7am
Tasha Hatton 2-Dec 7:48pm
Lynne Anderson 3-Dec 5:30am
Scott 3-Dec 2am
Lara Holimon 3-Dec 8am Mum's Birthday
Ann Lasiter 3-Dec 12:15pm
Janet Stone 3-Dec 639pm
Eva Barnes 3-Dec
Elisa Sims 4-Dec 2:13pm
Jimmy Holimon 4-Dec 12pm
Jim Holimon 4-Dec 707am Gramps' Birthday, BE's birth time
Paul Holimon 4-Dec 1240am
Bonnie Farrington 7-Dec 7am
Rae McCall 7-Dec 8am
Hannah Brenkert 9-Dec 320am
Christy Wing 9-Dec 9am
Leo Demski 9-Dec 4pm
Rachael Lauritzen 10-Dec 3:30
Mary Wynn 10-Dec 530 am
Thom Holimon 14-Dec 1pm BUCS AND FALCONS
Donita Pace 14-Dec 718am
Rae Spadero 20-Dec 12:20pm
Kari Ellingstad 2 20-Dec 830am Kari's birthday
Rick Hughes 23-Dec 653am

Check Out Zane's Chickens

I forgot to take a picture of the chicken farm we made for Zane's birthday, but I knew I could count on Danielle to post...

http://benjaminzane.blogspot.com/2008/11/zanes-new-chickens.html

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Today I am officially off bed rest. What will I do? Well, it will be a very big day! To the knitting store, of course! And also to the grocery store. Sam and I will make Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins for him and Ginger Snaps for Keith. That is the goal at least. Charlie is so low in my pelvis that I feel like I am walking with my feet a yard apart. I have a feeling that all the baking will not get done, but we have big dreams.


For Thanksgiving, Elisa (Carl's wife) has offered to stay in town (the rest of the family is at the ranch) to cook and hang out with us. So, it will be an Albury Thanksgiving with all three Albury brothers (Carl, Cory, Keith), Grammy, Sam, Elisa and me. We will certainly miss Thanksgiving with the McCalls, Nona and Paul, Danielle, and Zane! I think last year we even had Razie, her boyfriend, Leo, and Bill! But we are very excited to have Thanksgiving with all the Alburys for the very first time!


Also, Elisa will be our doula for the birth of Charlie. For us, this means that if labor is very long, she might relieve Keith, make phone calls to family, get Keith food, update him on a football score, etc. It will really be a big help. Thanks, Elisa!

Lingering Haiku

Dan Chapman, Christy Wing's father-in-law, wrote these last summer and I neglected to post them. Also, I will go back over all the Haiku from the summer and post the winner!!


A Hole-in-One Almost? (hope the judges are golfers)

From its lofty arc
it dips to the dewy green
and rests, lying one.

Dan Chapman June 16, 2008



The First Garden

What world would this be,
had they not chosen the fruit
that caused them to flee?

An earth soaked in love
you’d see, where God we could touch,
but never that tree.

Dan Chapman June 19, 2008

Take A Chance On Charlie

Friends and Family:

I’ve looked into the pregnancy betting pools online and they all require money. This Pregnancy Pool is just for fun; actually, it is strictly for my personal entertainment while I am on bed rest, so please indulge me.

The person who guesses closest to the Due Date and Time wins superb holiday satisfaction. Of course, we are still hoping that Charlie will remain in his cocoon for as long as possible, but since preterm labor has reared its ugly head again, it is fairly unpredictable. Fortunately, we have almost made it to 35 weeks of gestation (out of 40, for those not familiar with counting pregnancy by weeks).

Should we give all the doctors in the family a one day penalty? All the lawyers get a two day penalty. :)

INFORMATION YOU NEED:
-My actual due date is December 31.
-I’ve had “nonproductive” contractions for about a week and a half.
- I’m 3cm dilated now. It took 1-2 weeks to get to 2.5cm and another week to get to 3cm.
- I’m off bed rest on Wednesday and Dr. Watts specified NORMAL ACTIVITY. My normal activity means jumping on the trampoline and skydiving.
- Sam was born on the equivalent of November 29 (4.5 weeks early).
- My doctor let me know that he is the one on-call on Thanksgiving.

INFORMATION I NEED:

Your guess at the DUE DATE:
Your guess at the TIME:

Ouch Charlie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NijaGeIO18Y

How the heck do I embed videos? The link for "video" on blogger always freezes on me! Please, someone entlighten me!

Still Pregnant!

I cannot belive that I am still pregnant. I will be off bed rest on Wednesday. If I can make it another week, Charlie will be at the same gestational age as Sam was.

I am feeling a lot better today and finally a little rested. All in all, we have been to the hospital 5 times since last Saturday and to the OB once. I have another OB appointment on Monday.

Even though I am incredibly superstitious about being optimistic, well, I just erased what I wrote and knocked on wood. I'm too superstitious to put my hopes on the line.

I continue to have "unproductive" contractions around 1-6 minutes apart, but have been advised to not even bother counting them anymore. I am supposed to wait until I can't talk through them and then go to the hospital, even if they are 5 or 10 or even 15 minutes apart. It is still a little hard to walk with all the tightening, but that is not too much of a problem while Keith waits on me hand and foot.

Knitting is keeping me sane. Just think, the longer Charlie stays on the inside, the greater the chance is that some of you will get Christmas presents.

Guitar Hero

Sam loves playing the guitar. He also has invented a game in which he puts as many toys as he can on a couch, bed, or bean bag and it then becomes an airplane, train, or ocean liner. Then he becomes the captain, pilot or engineer and takes "all the people" to the "big city" in "South America." It's hillarious. He loads and unloads the luggage, keeps everyone safe, turns the seat belt light on and off - it goes on FOREVER.

Ready for Thanksgiving!

Aunt Rae Rae made Sam a fantastic placemat for Sam's Thanksgiving Feast. He immediately went to work in his kitchen to get Thanksgiving dinner ready!