Thanksgiving review

December is here! What has happened since I last wrote? Every day I think I will sit down and put something up on the blog, and then the day disappears.  Part of this is because Baby no longer takes a good long nap. She only napped 2 days this week.  I really, really, really don't want naptime to go away.

We also had the excitement of having the cousins here for the long Thanksgiving weekend. The kids had the whole week off, but I can't really remember that we did much of anything, other than hang out. We had one fun day with friends, and another day of shopping, but we spent a good deal of time at home reading or cleaning or watching movies. On Wednesday, my brother-in-law and his girls came down (my sister-in-law is in Bali), and we went swimming in our pool and to the beach. We also went to the store about 8 times between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon.  We ate a lot of food on Thursday.  Our retired priest friend came over to bless the house and had the kids sing a Perry Como song - "Bless this House, O Lord."  It was very sweet, but I wanted to pinch all the kids for giggling when Fr. read from Colossians about forgiving your brother and obeying your parents.

After dinner we joined some friends for a pie party, and another friend came by in the evening because she and her kids couldn't come for dinner because they had a prior invite. We sat around sipping Sambuca, my favorite after dinner drink.  So it was a social day, but not a huge crowd day.  I had to suppress a comment when a friend from my exercise group was talking about the logistics of feeding nine. That's normal for us. Ten felt like a small group.

On Friday we went to a famous surf beach, San Onofre, also known as Trestles. We camped at the Marine Corps Base campground that is right on the beach.  I am not a huge fan of seaside camping, but I did finally have the opportunity to just sit and read and watch the sunset since the toddler played happily with her cousins.  We spent a good part of the day there and returned home in time to start laundry and eat leftovers, another wonderful part of the Thanksgiving weekend. Love my husband's turkey pot pie!

The second turkey the brothers fixed - they made a practice turkey Wednesday night. It disappeared in minutes. 

Cheers! Time to eat!

An activity for children waiting to eat. Not Instagrammable.

Beach portraits

This is looking toward the San Onofre Surf Club - you can't really tell from this picture how many people are in the water. A lot. Down by the palm tree are a few little picnic shelters and shower heads nestled in bamboo "rooms"

A flat day

My niece salutes the sky.

Not the prettiest campground, but people love it. This is California camping: RV's on the beach.

They are coming!

Beach ball in the sunset

Good night, sunshine.

Surfing day 2: Grey skies full of rain, but bigger waves

Oops! Some dishes were left in the dishwasher and grew a beard!

For your listening pleasure - to practice for the Epiphany house blessing:

Sweet Fun from Youtube

A friend shared this link.  My belly is definitely not this cute, but this video is too sweet not to share.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ7-v7xVm3I

Pretty amazing what the body is capable of. I don't think my stomach skin can stretch any more, but we'll see! Still waiting for our own little sweetpea.  38 weeks plus 2.  My mother, labor and delivery nurse extraordinaire, arrives here next week. Oldest son is off to LA for a robotics competition for three days, while my husband's brother is here for 3 days, so I'm hoping for this bambina to stay put for one more week, but not much more! I wonder if I should be practicing breathing exercises or stretching or something to get ready for labor and delivery but just getting through what needs to get done seems to take most of the day lately.  Hard to train for an event when it is impossible to predict what labor will be like.  One of the Navy wives is an acupuncturist and at our book club earlier in the week, she pointed out a spot on the little toe to press in order to induce contractions. And the castor oil trick "worked" twice for us - and once it didn't. So in a little over a week, if no baby is here yet, maybe I'll make a stop at the drug store. Mixed with orange juice and vanilla ice cream, you can't really notice the taste!

Everyone around here is excited to meet this baby.  Love is in the air.

Play Like a Champion Today!

Here's what we're watching tonight - getting excited for the big game tomorrow!

We're even pulling our kids out of school to watch Notre Dame beat Alabama. (It's on at lunchtime in Guam.)

I really am this kind of football fan:

Here come the Irish (stage dress could be better, don't you think?):

It really is magical:

Trumpets under the dome: 

Why, yes, I do want my kids to go to Notre Dame: 

The Irish Guard do the Victory Clog:

Regis conducts the Victory March at Carnegie:

And finally, the glee club sings the alma mater in Williamsburg:

Song for lifting hearts

A moment of happiness:

Reading Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan and looking up the youtube video of her performance.

Another good picture book biography we read recently:
For the Birds, The Life of Roger Tory Peterson by Peggy Thomas.

What Would You Fight For?

Go Fighting Irish!
Their commercials might be better than the football team...

I admit partiality.... Dr. Fallon was one of the professors I studied with -- but that classroom is a lot nicer than the ones we used.

An antidote

Happy Dancing! (I may be late in stumbling on this from Melanie at Wine Dark Sea, via another blog on her 9/25 post.)