Thanksgiving

We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving in Castle Rock, CO with Chris' family! We pulled the kids out of school for a couple of days and arrived at Grandma's and Grandpa's Monday night. I have to insert here that the drive across KS and Eastern CO has to be THE MOST BORING DRIVE EVER! (If you've ever driven it, you know what I mean, but I will admit that driving across Wyoming and Nebraska come in at a close second.) The only sanity-savers are the giant wind turbines and stopping in Salina at Braum's for cheeseburgers and shakes. I did read all of "One," (Andre Aggasi's autobiography), on the way there, which I enjoyed, and Chris and I had a grand time planning out our March trip to Europe on the way back, but I digress...
So we arrived Monday night and spent some time with Wendy and family. On Tues. we were able to do a temple session with Wendy and Scott and Grandma (thanks, guys!) and Grandpa checked our temple recommends on the way in. I can't think of anything better than being in the temple surrounded by family!

Wendy and Scott left for UT on Wed., and Craig, Jenny and family were arriving Wed. afternoon, so we spent a relaxing morning with Grandma before everyone arrived. At lunchtime we went to Nordstrom's for their yummy tomato soup. Tasty!
Unfortunately Chris contracted some kind of nasty bug (it was so nasty I'm not going to describe it) and spent all of Wed. in bed. It was awful.

The other KS Stapleys arrived in the afternoon and Kiersten was thrilled to play the cello while Emily played the violin.

After a little practice, Emily on the violin (who is really good), Kiersten on the cello, and Abbie on the piano, played "Ode to Joy" for everyone.

While they practiced, we had a great time with Craig and Jenny and Tristan and Grandma and Grandpa.

Jenny flew out Thursday morning for her brother's wedding.Everyone else got Thanksgiving dinner ready. Everyone except Chris, that is. He didn't dare touch any food just in case he was contagious. He just watched from the sides, which about killed him. He was itching to roll some pie crust and carve that turkey! Instead, Craig did the honors.

The cousins and Kierst and Abs waiting for the turkey to be finished.

Lisi with her frozen fruit salad--a Stapley family tradition.

Thanksgiving night the girls opened letters and a package containing Christmas pjs from Santa. The letter talks about what good things they've done throughout the year and offers advice on things they can work on. A friend of mine introduced me to this tradition and I think it's great.

Not sure what Kierst was thinking after reading her letter--I think she was a little surprised this year at what Santa knows...

Abs wrote back a letter to Santa thanking him for the pjs and asking questions about his elves.

Lisi was thoroughly exhausted after dinner and snuck downstairs while the rest of us cleaned up. We found her fast asleep on the hide-a-bed.

Thursday night Chris and I hit the outlet by his parent's house for a midnight madness sale. By the time we got there, there must have been at least 3,000 people--Chris puts the number at more like 5-10,000 people--it was packed. We couldn't believe the crowd. We only went to a few stores, but we scored Columbia jackets for 80% off and some great Calphalon cookware for a fraction of the price. Thanksgiving isn't really Thanksgiving for me unless I get up before dawn and hit black Friday sales, so you know where I was at 4 a.m. I never really buy very much on black Friday, but for some strange reason I love the whole craziness--standing in line, half asleep, holding that one item you went early to get (knowing it would be gone in an hour--like itunes cards at Target), sympathizing with strangers about how crazy we all are to be up at this insane hour and standing in this insane line and how tired we'll be later on. Love it.

Kierst came down with the nasty bug on Friday (could this be any worse?--yes, Grandpa and Emily had it by Sat., the rest of us escaped-knock on wood). Everyone else cut open rocks and polished them and decorated Grandma's house for Christmas.

Thanks for all the fun, Stapleys and Hesses! And Tristan, we hope the next time we see you you'll be sporting a racoon cap...

Pleasantly Surprised

Sometimes I wonder if anything I'm saying or working on with my kids has any impact on them. I often feel like my words sound like the teacher on Charlie Brown--or that the kids are just tuning them out. But sometimes I am pleasantly surprised by the results.

Take yesterday for example. I was working with the kids on their weekly chores. Abbie was distracted as usual, but as long as you stay on top of her she'll get the job done and do it well. Kiersten is my complainer when it comes to chores. This is nothing new to me. It happens every week, about the same way.

Yesterday Kiersten hadn't even started and was sitting on her bed complaining about how terrible it was to have to do chores. You have to know that at the time she was working on cleaning her room and bathroom. And you also have to know that her bedroom was picked up all week so all she had to do was straighten, dust and vacuum and thoroughly clean the bathroom. You would have thought I had thrown her into a child labor factory. "But it's too hard." Is it really? This from the child to whom I just explained the concept of compound interest and ESAs and taxes and how much she will have if she starts saving her money now (her eyes got pretty wide when she saw the end amount and a lightbulb went on over her head--she immediately went upstairs and split up her money into different saving piles and asked when she could open up accounts).

But we finally got through the bedroom list, except vacuuming (I like that saved until everything else is done). Moved onto the bathroom. Halfway through I heard, "Mom, I don't want to do anymore." Me: "But doesn't it feel good to have a clean bathroom?" Kierst: "Yes, but it's not worth it. It's too much work just to have it clean. And it takes too long" Me: "In the time that you have complained about it you could already be done." This kind of exchange went on for the next 10 minutes until she broke down and finished the shower.

Then it was time to vacuum her room. "But the vacuum is too heavy and I just vacuumed last week." By that time I couldn't take it anymore. I'll admit that I lost it. I launched into a tirade of Bill Cosby Show phrases like, "When you move out your house can be a pigsty but while you are living in my house your room will be cleaned to my standards," and "Every member of this house helps out--if you don't like it you can live in the garage." And if you've ever pulled out these kind of phrases, you can probably fill in a few of your own.

She did vacuum her room, and of course, like always, was amazed at the amount of dirt the vacuum picked up.

Flash forward past her basketball practice and Chris meeting me for dinner after work to me kissing her goodnight. Our conversation went something like this: Me: "Wow, your room looks so nice. Doesn't it feel good to have a clean room?" Kierst: "Yes it does. And you know Mom, it was worth the work."

I smiled one of my biggest smiles at her. It wasn't any kind of magical phrase that I had used, but I knew that after all these days, weeks, months, of lectures it had just clicked in her head. I know that it may not last, that next week I might be in for the same battle. But for a brief moment I was floating on Cloud 9, just enjoying the ride.

Found on the Camera

Last night I took a pic of Kierst as she was heading out the door for her first b-ball practice of the season. She was sooo excited to go.

As she and I looked at the photo I realized that there were quite a few other things on the camera that I hadn't taken...

On Wed. when Lisi had a friend over during babysitting co-op she had gotten a hold of my camera and was taking pics. Of course, when I realized she had it I took it away, but I hadn't realized the full extent of her forray into photography. It reminded us of what Kierst used to do when she was little.

Here's a sampling of the 77 pics I found on the camera last night--unedited (which means that some of them are really bright, as she was pretty close to the flash)--for your viewing pleasure.

First, there was a series of self-portraits.
I have to insert here, that as I'm downloading these photos this morning, Lisi is sitting on my lap, as proud as can be about what she took. She said, "Don't forget the one of my eyeball!"
Apparently, she took the camera with her to the basement. Here, she handed it off to her friend. A series of Analise poses came next.
This one is actually pretty good--and you can tell Lisi likes her pic taken, quote, "'cause I said cheese to Kaitlyn":)This was followed by a selection of "things around the basement." Lisi's comment here was, "Oooh, Kaitlyn took that one."

Lisi had taken the camera back by this point as those are her feet. Then she took a few pics of her friend.
She rounded out the rest with self-portraits.

Bangs

A lot of people have been asking me the story about Abs' bangs (her teacher even asked at parent/teacher conferences)...here's the scoop...

Abs had decided that she was tired of hair getting in her face. She had given herself a little trim a couple of months ago, but it had been growing out nicely. Apparently it hadn't grown out enough for her and she wasn't patient enough to wait any longer so she just whacked the offending hairs off.

You can see in this picture (note the Madden-like circle), that her hair is pretty short up front--and this was two weeks after she handed me a fistful of hair, so you know it was pretty short before. I thought I'd just let the hair grow out because I'm not into bangs (I think I got turned off after the late 80s), but Chris thought we should do something about how shabby she was looking. He took her in and got bangs cut to cover up the other bangs.

Abs really likes having bangs--although she's promised to NEVER cut her hair again:)

Halloween

This week was full of Halloween fun. It started on Wednesday with our ward's trunk-or-treat. Lisi's costume is a dress Chris bought in the Czech Republic while he was on his mission. It's beautiful.

Class parties were Friday at school. The kids paraded through the hallways.
I'm the co-room mom for Kierst's class, but I ran over to Abs' party for a little while.

Doing the mummy wrap in Kierst's class.
Kierst and Abs have been taking piano lessons for about 8 months (I think it's been that long, I really can't remember). Their teacher arranged for all of her students to join a recital at a nursing home on Halloween. I liked that this was on Halloween and not Christmas--it seems like everyone visits nursing homes and hospitals only on Christmas. Here's some video of the kids playing. Abs had a hard time because the keys on this particular piano were hard to press. She knew the piece really well--we do too because we heard her play it so many times!

We carved pumpkins in the afternoon.

Lisi refused to get her hands "icky" on pumpkin guts and when everyone else was eeewing, she kept saying how clean her hands were. It was hilarious.
Here are the girls ready to go. Kierst did her own makeup and she looked rather scary. We could barely get her to smile because she was trying hard to stay in character.
For her preschool party and friend's birthday party earlier in the week Lisi was a black cat. She really likes cats and she refused to be anything else after that.Our neighbors had a chili feed (yum!) and then we headed over to the neighborhood parade around the lake.


Like I said, we could barely get Kierst to smile--she's quite the actress.After the parade we trick-or-treated with friends. Our kids have targeted one house by us in particular that gives out large candy bars--they even started talking about this house before Halloween. Loaded down with candy after trick-or-treating, we stopped for a rest (and some candy trading/consuming) at a friend's and then home. Our neighbors kept their fire pits burning and we joined them for a while once the kids were in bed. Love this tradition!

While we were gone, Tiffanie passed candy out at the house. We hope she didn't scare too many kids!