Thanksgiving break

With our baby due on November 24, we decided not to make any plans during Thanksgiving break this year. However, since baby did not make his/her grand entrance last week, we had a very relaxing take-each-day-as-it-comes holiday. Richard chipped away at several odds and ends around the house and in the yard. We had fun family time and tried to soak up our last hours/days with Jane as our only child.

Thanksgiving day at Dede's

It was so warm that Jane even got to
wear her sandals, a real treat!

Thanksgiving staple number one: football

Staple number two: Black Friday advertisements

Staple number three: post-meal nap!

The day after Thanksgiving brought an unexpected cold snap, but Richard found a few ways to keep Jane warm while he worked in the yard.

On Saturday, my official due date, Baby was still tucked in, so I got to go out on a girl's night! I did not expect to be dressed up and going out at 40 weeks, so we decided to take a token belly shot to mark the occasion.

On Sunday, we cranked up the Christmas music and had a wonderful, lazy morning decorating our tree.

After such a relaxing gift of a break, I think we are officially ready to meet this baby!  (Three days past "due" as of now...)

Pumpkins and Halloween

October has been pretty great around here: crisp enough to feel like fall, yet warm enough to enjoy plenty of outdoor fun.  We kicked off the season with a trip to the pumpkin patch.

First ride on a tire swing;
holding on sooo tightly!

Hayride (actually, just a trailer, but still fun)

Troughs full of corn = hours of fun!

Picking our own pumpkin

This is the one Jane picked out for herself.
She was so proud, though I found it slightly
lacking in aesthetic appeal.

Mommy's growing a pumpkin, too!

"I wanna see the picture."

Next stop: carving the pumpkin!

Goopey, squishy pumpkin guts!

Jane's patience ran out before she (Richard) got past the
eyes and mouth.

The following weekend we went to a festival in our neighborhood called Music and Molasses. It was a fun walk into the "olden days" when it was common to see a donkey on a rope turning a mill to grind up sugar cane, which was then boiled over an old stone oven to make molasses. There were people pickin' blue grass tunes, and one musician even played music on a saw blade! 

My favorite quote from the day was when I pointed out a live turkey to Jane in the "petting zoo." She took one look at the unattractive creature and said, "I like turkey the food." I didn't have the heart to tell her it was the same thing.  

Adventurous enough to sit on Giant Smokey's foot,
but holding her ears just in case.

Eating a mini campfire made out of food
(grapes = rocks; pretzels = kindling; celery = logs; etc.)

Jane had two Halloween costumes this year. One was a firefighter, which she wore to a little pre-Halloween carnival. Jane has been very interested in fires, fire hydrants, fire safety, etc. lately. One day she asked me if fire comes out of fire hydrants. I thought that was a great assumption for someone who may not understand the etymology of the word hydrant yet.  ;)

The second costume was Tinkerbell. It cracks me up how much she loves Tinkerbell, because she only knows her from pictures on her underwear and spotting her on various toys at Target. "I'm Tink," she kept saying the whole time she was wearing her costume.

My favorite part was getting to put her hair in a little bun.

Jane got to wear Tink to school the day before Halloween for their "Pretend Parade." 

Gathering each class onto the stage was like herding cats.
The ratio of teachers to students in order to accomplish
this feat was about 1:2.

After Jane's class was in place, she spent her whole thirty
seconds of fame staring at the crying boy.

Last, but not least... Halloween night! This is the second year that we have hit the streets with several of our dear neighbor friends. We are determined to bring back Trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. Although our crew was pretty huge (with grown-ups possibly out numbering kids), we only saw one other trick-or-treater the whole night, ha!  But our candy to house average was about one in four, so not too bad.

The Barretts sported a Cowboys and Indian theme

Richard found enough stuff in our dress-up box to go as
a hippie of sorts.

And I rocked these leg warmers, since they were the only
previously owned costume that still fit me.

We let Jane open one piece of candy while
we were trick-or-treating. Somehow it took
her about three houses to eat one Reese's cup. 

Look at all this CANDY!!!!

Random from September 2012

Hello!
It's been a while, eh? Since returning from the beach, it has felt like we are a family of nomads. We have taken a few weekend trips just for fun, but mainly we've been moving in and out of our house every couple of weeks due to construction. Paint fumes one week, polyurethane the next, etc. Another factor in the craziness was the start of school for Richard. August and September are definitely his most hectic months. BUT I am happy to say that we are settling back into our house, Richard has been able to put his feet up (or work on a house project) a little more often when he is home, and Jane is in Mother's Day Out twice a week.  So, here I am blogging!

I promise to post pictures of our house soon, but for now it is just a random collection from the past month.

First, my favorite quote/conversation with Jane recently...

     Jane: I used two towels to dry my hands.
     Katie: Oh, why did you use two?
     Jane: Because I have two hands!

And now for a few pics...

Jane's "cheese!" face is improving;
kind of looks like a real smile now!

Putting ALL her crayons in the pocket
of her art smock.

Helping Daddy paint...
just for a minute before escaping the fumes with Mom.

Heels and sunglasses from her dress up box.
"Don't me look pretty?" she asks.  

The Adventure Science Center has been a great indoor activity as we tried to escape the heat this summer, and we look forward to it this winter! It is pretty loud, though. Jane often covers her ears around loud noises, or overstimulating situations, or sometimes just new surroundings in general. So you can imagine that she looks like this most of the time we are there.

Her favorite part is the star room, which is a quiet, pitch black room in which you are surrounded by thousands of little pin pricks of light. When we entered this refuge Jane said, "Oh, Mommy, I like it in here. I'm so happy!"

Learning to be gentle with Nickel,
with whom Jane is kind of obsessed.

Still flaps those hands when she is excited.

First day of school.
She even got to give Daddy a hug!

After her first day, her teachers wrote to say that they were going to hang up family pictures for each of the kids. "What a great idea," I thought. "I'll just scroll through our recent photos and send one in." It turns out we had not taken one since last Christmas! I thought that was too outdated, but it ended up being the one I sent anyway because this is as good as we could get trying to take a recent one...

And now a video for extreme Jane fans only. It's about five minutes of really random "conversation" after dinner one night, but it captures her little personality pretty well.