Sent home

Well, Charli turned 4 and has started wanting nothing to do with her parents. Here is poor, dejected Brian, home early after being sent home from Kelly's school. Previously when Charli and Brian would go to Kelly's preschool, Brian would stay there. This time, he was instructed (by Charli) to just drop her off and go home. *sigh* Soon it's going to be "just drop me off at the corner" and no kussies...

fd&c something or other

Happy birthday Kate! We loved the ice cream cake (especially the green icing)!

a thanksgiving change

This year we had Thanksgiving at Brian's grandmother's place, instead of Naomi coming to Jerry and Donna's as she usually does. She might be moving to a smaller apartment, so she wanted to have us all over while she still had the room for us! It was cozy, but definitely enjoyable, and Charli and Buster had a fine time.

Buster uses the walker

Charli decorates a cake with Kelly and Katy

Buster has a little nap

Big hug for Grandma when we leave

On Friday we went to the farm to cut down our Christmas tree

and here we all are, Christmas tree cut down and happy as clams!

big four

Charli turns 4! 4 4 4!

awesome cake baked and decorated by Kelly

Charli loved playing this with Grandpa. Not so much with Mom, who makes her follow the rules.

Charli Lawler scooted!

christmas tree day!

Yay! Today was Charli's first Christmas Tree Day!

For those of you who don't know, every year the day after Thanksgiving we head out to the Heritage Valley Tree Farm with everyone we can gather together and cut down Christmas trees. Then we go back home and eat tremendous amounts of Christmas tree soup. This year we are having a longer visit, so we had Christmas Tree Day the day AFTER the day after Thanksgiving. So we bundled Charli up and went hunting the wily Christmas tree. The trees actually were not that wily this year, despite the fact that there were more people at the tree farm than we had ever seen at one time. We had a relatively quick yet successful hunt, and brought back a couple of lovely specimens.

After we get the trees, Christmas Tree Day is not over, though! Usually there is some tossing around of the football, but this year the football was flat, so instead Charli practiced her new trick, which is giving her mother a kiss (no one else!). She started blowing some kisses, though, and she is much less discriminating about that.

Then we go get the trees shooken (technical term) and bagged and paid for, and the tree farm sells us hot chocolate and hot apple cider and lots of homemade cookies. Charli likes cookies! And then we take lots of family and friend pictures, and we feel very convivial and holiday spirited and sure that the Christmas season has truly started. Happy holidays, everyone!


After pictures, it actually is time to leave the farm, so that we can go back to the house and eat Christmas tree soup! Christmas tree soup does not have Christmas trees in it, like how stone soup has a stone in it. It has ground beef and lots of vegetables, and it cooks all day long while we're out getting the trees and is totally awesome. Charli loved it and ate a ton. That's my girl!

After dinner Charli practiced another important trick, several times and very noisily:

happy turkey day!

Well, here it is, Charli's first Thanksgiving dinner (look, there's the back of her head)! Of course, Charli has been through one Thanksgiving already, but I'm not sure if that one actually counted - it definitely didn't involve any dinner, or even any turkey. This time it counts, there is no doubt!

We had a delicious deep fried turkey, as is customary and proper. It turned out beautifully (customary and proper), and we also had a delicious smoked turkey breast that chef-in-training Pete made. We also had some other food, too. Not too much, of course, we don't want to get fat or anything. Just a pile of mashed potatoes, yummy stuffing, boatloads of gravy, cranberry marshmallow goodness, corn souffle, sweet potatoes and green beans, etc., etc...

We basically hung out all afternoon with the family, watching Charli play with a thousand toys she's never seen before. Everyone built block towers and waited for her to come knock them down, which she did with fervor. The Schweisses have a hip hop Easter bunny dealio that sings and hops and is tremendously annoying, but Charli likes to dance to it, so it must be ok. She also liked the train, the shape ball, the turtle thing, the spinny bell ringy thing, the noisy car... she wasn't very fond of the weeble wobble chicken, though. Peter and Katy and John were all great with Charli, although Katy did try to steal Charli's bib.

After dinner we had much celebration - today is Katy's 17th birthday! Happy birthday, Katy! It's also my dad's birthday, which I'm sure is being celebrated back in Colorado even as I write this blog post. Happy birthday, Dad! And we had some more Charli birthday celebration, too. Charli was fascinated by the candles once again, and tried to grab them. Fortunately, Katy's got fast reflexes. Charli enjoyed the frosting and overall it was another great day.

And oh ya - Charli gave me 2 kisses! People saw it! And later she gave me another! It's so rewarding. That makes the day REALLY great. Of course after that, she would only give Daddy kisses - I would say "give me a kiss!" and she would pucker up and lean way over to give Brian a kiss. After a couple of those I had to send Brian away and put Charli to bed.

We are so fortunate and grateful to be able to spend this time with our wonderful family and friends. Can we say "thanks", Charli? Thanks!