November 29 It's Christopher's birthday!

Sunday:  After church this morning, Emma and I decided to go and find a "topper" for my tree. It has needed one for a very long time. It took us awhile, but we finally found this dear angel-girl! Emma attached it to the tree for me--doesn't she look pretty there?

 Yesterday morning, I had worked nearly three hours on designing a birthday card for Christopher's 17th birthday. I have a lot of photos of Chris when he was young ... but extremely few since about age 15. So I had to work with what I had. This is what his card kind of looked like:

Inside of card:

The back of the card is a drawing Christopher did TEN years ago! Isn't it the BEST?!?!?

Emma had arranged with Christopher and family a good time for us to drive over to deliver our cards and gifts. We went over at about 6:30 in the evening. We met Chris's girlfriend, Ella. She is a sophomore over at Sparta High. Matthew visited with us for awhile. Kaity came home with Diana about five minutes after we arrived. We ate some birthday cake and talked for awhile to everyone. Emma and I had prayed before going over that the Lord would help us do and say only what He would want us to do or say. The Lord was very kind to us and answered the cry of our hearts. 

Four days have gone by with Emma here with me. I finally took her to where she lives last night. I tried to tell her how much it meant to have her be here these days. She sure brought a lot of JOY into my days here. I hope her heart was happy to be here too.

November 28 Katie AND Emma!

Saturday:  Since it is a holiday weekend and Emma is off work, she has been ... staying here with me! I invited her because I love to spend time with her, PLUS I certainly didn't want her to be all alone in her "room" over at the other house, since she hasn't yet moved in with Jesse. It's been a very nice few days that we've had. We picked Kaity up at about 3:00 from Jesse. For the next almost-five hours, we played with a ton of stuff over here! It's amazing what Kaity can blow through in so many brief hours.

When Kaity knew that Emma was going to be playing with us today, she was very happy. Right away, she wanted to do a marble run with Emma--both of them building separately, to see which marble run was the highest and the best.

Emma is pretty much a master-builder at whatever she does ... AND she is almost ten years older than Kaity--so you can imagine whose run was higher and better--but I will say that Kaity shows high promise of being an excellent builder herself. She catches on quickly to mechanical things (both Emma and Kaity get this from Jesse) and I can tell she really enjoys building.

I love these pictures of the girls! But Kaity! You simply MUST stop sucking your thumb ...

We moved on to playing school with "Miss Kaitlynn" being the instructor. Liam, Lily, Trinity, and Paco were her students. Emma and I were relegated to a very menial position--we weren't even allowed to be co-teachers or student teachers ... nothing with the word "teacher" attached to it!

Kaity's students did a LOT of math ...

Every year the kiddos really enjoy my velcro nativity/advent calendar. They have never, naturally, put only one figure on for the corresponding day of Advent. They always just take every single piece and make the entire nativity scene all at once. 

THEN, Kaity wondered if we could play with the trains. YAY, I said! Emma was all for it too!

Everyone enjoyed building with the wooden trains. I'm so thankful I have these sets. The fun part about playing with trains is building the layout (at least in my opinion) ... the children like making a different one each time, and it is good for them to learn the spatial contraints of a layout.

Kaity got out the Magna-Tiles and built a train station to go with her trains ... nice job, Kaitlynn!

We also played a very fun game of UNO--I think Emma won, but I can't remember! We also played "Trouble" and ate a decent dinner. We thought we would have Kaity back to Jesse by 7PM, but it was closer to 8PM by the time we drove up his driveway. What a nice 5 hours to have these dear granddaughters play together!

November 27 Emma spends the day

Friday:  We slept in Friday morning--well, Emma slept in because I didn't wake her up--I was up at 7:30 doing my usual stuff very quietly. BUT we did have one goal for our day and that was to put up my Christmas tree. I usually do it all by myself, but it's so much nicer to do it with someone you love--don't you think? Plus, I am not at all "mechanical" and putting lights together with their strings and cords and everything is usually a struggle for me. With Emma, the entire thing was a breeze. I was so thankful.

I decided, kind of spur-of-the-moment, to replace the lights I had been using the last few years. Emma and I went to Lowe's and Meijer's looking for lights that blinked or did something other than just sit there--but they were sold out. Thankfully, Emma got on her phone and tracked down a place where they still had them--but I can't remember now if it was Target or ... where DID we get these lights?!? They are not terribly fancy, but they DO shimmer and some of them blink. They are very pretty and I am glad we got them.

Emma and I strung the lights together and were done in a JIF. And then, while I was heating up turkey leftovers, Emma completely decorated the tree!

We've also been making Origami frame ornaments for the tree ... we got enough made to hang one for each grandchild, but I'm going to make a lot more of them in the coming days.

We had a really nice day Friday and accomplished everything on our list. YAY! Oh, and the best thing was that Emma stayed over another night. She has become a temporary "roomate" ... 

November 26 With a thankful heart ...

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day:  I divided today between my two families with children. Since Kelly is more of a red-meat person, she cooked a fabulous roast beef dinner (with a little help from Costco) and veggies and pie, etc. I brought my already-made turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy for anybody who wanted a more traditional feel to the holiday meal. Shane was over at Dylan and Kelly's too, and I was very glad to see him. I didn't really take many pictures while I was with all of them. It was too busy with getting the food together on the table and eating and taking care of the children--but it was a good few hours.

I snapped this sequence of Erin and Aidan playing "Ana and Elsa" dancing with their blankets ... these two crack me up!

Baby Callaghan slept through the entire time I was there, so I missed out on seeing him. Brendan was with me part of the time, too, but I didn't have my camera in hand when he was. I left them at about 2:15 to go and pick Emma up and go over to Jesse's place for ... another dinner!

Jesse is now in his house, right next door to his best friend, Scott. They are still working on renovating the place, making a two-bedroom into a three-bedroom house. When the 3rd bedroom is finished, Emma will move in with her dad. We are hoping that will happen prior to Christmas.

Jesse cooked his very first turkey dinner and it was very yummy. We had enough good food for everyone and enjoyed spending time with Jesse. I was so full of turkey by 5:00 that I ended up falling asleep while sitting in Jesse's office chair ... I could NOT stay awake.

I invited Emma to spend the night instead of taking her back to her place and she accepted! YAY. So Emma and I left at about 7:00 and came here ... we didn't really DO much Thursday night except to watch a few episodes of "Once Upon a Time" but it was so nice to have Emma here ...
 

November 25 Thanksgiving prep

Wednesday:  I have no children today, so I am intent on cooking my turkey a day ahead so that I can get it all carved and ready for tomorrow. I decided to cook the turkey in a brown paper bag again this year. I like how it browns up so nicely this way and it is also very easy. The hardest thing is getting the dang bird in the bag!

This is a 12# turkey. I had to use TWO grocery bags, cutting the bottom off one bag and affixing it to the other via staples--that part was tricky too. Thankfully, I have a very nice stapler that did the job. The instructions involve greasing the turkey up with butter or Olive oil, putting an onion (cut up), carrot, lemon, and a few garlic cloves inside the bird, along with 1 cup of broth. Then you lift the greasy thing into the prepared bag (the inside of the bag has been greased too with butter) and ... somehow or other (I prayed!) you FINALLY get the bird inside the bag, fold the ends of the bag over and staple them shut, put the whole rigamarole into a foil lined pan and bake it on 375 degrees for the designated time (a few minutes shy of three hours for this size turkey).

And ... voila! A very nicely-browned turkey. The instructions said to let the turkey sit inside the closed bag for 15 minutes, then open the bag and let the turkey sit for another 45 minutes before carving it. I followed those instructions and then carved it all up (eating most of the two legs in the process). I also made the gravy, which was super delicious and very richly brown. 

My only negative about the turkey this year was ... not much flavor. It was moist. It was brown. But it was a bit bland. Kelly suggested that I marinate it for 24 hours before baking. I'm going to research that idea out before Christmas and see what I can find.

November 24 Tuesday's children

Tuesday:  This is the last week of my weight lifting restriction of 10#. YAY!! Next Tuesday, I can actually bring these kiddos over to MY house to play. It's been quite a few weeks since we've been able to do that. I can't wait! But for today, we were at their house where we stayed and played in the best way we could figure out to do. I didn't take many pictures at all. I was too consumed with cuddling and listening and playing to bother with my camera.

Dear Aidan is going through a delayed terrible two stage, which is tricky for his parents to maneuver since he (Aidan) has an IRON will! Oh my! I've never really seen the equal. But ... and this is KEY ... this little boy is very loved and both Dylan and Kelly try very hard to figure out the best way to handle the situations where Aidan struggles. SO ... aren't we all a work in progress? And little Erin is all cuddles and snuggles and love from head to toe. I could eat her up. She has a very tender heart. I love that about her. But I love 100 things about her!

And Brendan? I can't even put into words how much I love this dear person. Look at his precious face. I have a fierce love for this little boy. He loves to show me his video games and really loves it if I play them too--but I am terrible at video games! So I watch him play and I listen to him as he talks. I love to hear what he thinks about. I'd also like to cut his hair nicely or at least comb it--but that is out of my realm as a grandma, and I simply must leave it be. I love him no matter what I perceive his hair to look like! I could look at his little face forever and never get tired of it.

Next Tuesday we'll be at MY little house! YAY!
 

November 22 Emma designs a card

Sunday:  After church this week (which was an amazing service once again), we ate our lunch, and then we had only one goal in mind for the rest of the day--Emma wanted very badly to design a birthday card for Christopher. His birthday is one week from today!

The picture below is Emma trying to "fix" a paper cutter I had up in my cupboard that I "broke" a few weeks ago. Emma is very mechanical and really good at fixing stuff that I break. We also got out a bunch of card stock that I had to try to find the perfect one for the card Emma would make for Chris.

This is no exaggeration: we worked for nearly three hours on this card! It had to be JUST RIGHT! We looked through old pictures from this blog (!!!) as well as other pictures Emma had on her phone. This is the finished card. We printed it on white card stock, because that was our best option of the paper that I had available.

We loved this picture (above) because it's just so funny and pretty typical of the kiddos at that age. Chris is rolling his eyes at me for taking one more picture, Matthew is using his walking stick (that he picked up in the woods that afternoon) to do a bit of a dance, and Emma is completely confused about why we had stopped once again. She looks exhausted!

This is the inside of the card (above) with Emma's sweet message to her brother--isn't it so precious? Obviously from her heart and sincere. I love that. Below is the back of the card. Emma searched for this Scripture for quite awhile and decided it was the best one for Chris. I have loved this verse for many years because of the comfort it has often brought to my heart. Bowing before Jesus is the only pathway to peace, and He is SO worthy of our worship. I pray that Chris will surrender his life to Jesus, Who has overcome all of the trouble in this world.

We finally had gotten the card all situated, as far as the technical, computer image stuff, and it was time to print it, two-sided from my printer. We messed up three different times before we finally got the card to print how it was supposed to print! It was my fault, because I made a mistake about the pages I told the printer to print, so we kept getting the back and the front of the card printing upside-down where it wasn't supposed to be! 

Emma helped me figure it out. We spent a lot of time laughing and re-printing, and laughing some more. What a dear memory I will always have of this lovely afternoon with my dear, my much-loved Emma. She is so precious to me.