NOW it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Thanksgiving has come and gone for another year. We had a great time. Thanksgiving was spent in Burlingame with my parents, and Shana, Lindsey and Anthony (a.k.a. "Uncle Tony"). It was very relaxing and food-filled. Just how like it.

Here are some new photos taken with Andy's (early) bday gift, a 35 mm digital camera (it has a more complicated name than that, but I don't remember it). He has wanted this camera for awhile. He's going to take the Christmas card photos w/ it. He will not put it down! He loves it. The photos of Gus and his friends were taken at Eloise's 1st birthday party at Jim and Hannah's house. Gus and Cleo had so much fun with Ash, Ebi and Ollie. It is so fun to really see them interact now that they are getting older.

This month is going to be crazy and packed. This week Andy does not travel, which is wonderful. I'm meeting up with long, lost high school friends on Monday for dinner in Lawrence. I hung out w/ these girls for years in high school and after I went to KU and they went to Baker, we just lost touch, for the most part. It should be great to see them again. I cannot say that for everyone I went to hs with (not to be a bioootch about it, but it's true), but these gals are keepers. (Thank you, Facebook). I'm supposed to see New Moon with friends sometime this week, too (yay!), and Andy's company holiday party is Friday night in KC. Saturday night we're going out to dinner with Tom and Marisa to this place in Lawrence called Krause's (sp?). It's a restaurant that's not really a restaurant, held in a couple's old house in Lawrence. They are chefs and they prepare a 6-course dinner or something crazy like that for people, all fabulously delicious, I hear. They are closing it down in January to open a restaurant downtown Lawrence, so we had to get in before it closed. Should be awesome! Date nights are great.

This past weekend Andy put up the lights on our house, and we've already gone out around the neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights. It's somewhat early, but we love doing that, and Gus LOVES pointing out the lights! Cleo just oooooh's and aahhhh's. We're getting our tree next weekend, mostly b/c we ran out of time this weekend to do it.

Next up...Christmas card photos, finishing up with Christmas gifts (I'm almost done!)and listening to a heavy rotation of Sufjan Stevens' Christmas songs. After Thanksgiving, he's pretty much always in our cd player.

Running update: I'm on the final week of my running podcast!! I can now somewhat comfortably run 28-30 minutes, some days better than others. I *think* I'm running about 3 miles at 30 minutes, but I haven't tracked it fully yet. Now that I'm pretty much done with the Couch to 5k podcast, I've put together a running mix of songs on my iPod and plan to keep up with the 30 minutes until it becomes comfortable, so I can run my first 5k in the spring. I'm super proud of myself. Never thought I could come this far. And for me, running 30 minutes is nothing short of a miracle. And I feel awesome. I've lost a little weight (not sure how much, really, but I fit into a size of jeans that I didn't think I'd get back into!) and I just feel more energetic. Loving it. And a co-worker is doing the same podcast now, so we joined the KU rec center (the new one--Ambler--it's awesome), and run on the elevated track. I love that track, it has spoiled me. I tried to run outside Friday and it just wasn't the same...

More to come!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas???

I heard Christmas songs today on a Kansas City radio station. Come on...it's too early! It's only November 2. Give us another month, and let us enjoy Thanksgiving. I just cannot get into the Christmas mood until later in November. Plus, it's 60+ degrees outside and lovely as can be, so it's not Christmas weather right now. I hate that the consumer machine rushes us on all our holidays. We're rushed enough as it is, let's not rush the holidaze.

Here are some fun photos from Halloween weekend. It was a blast, and time flew by. Gus loved all the candy and Cleo had no idea what was going on, but she loved every minute of it, too. She just goes along for the ride, pretty much.

New developments:
-Gus can spell both "Gus" and "August" out loud, but we haven't started on how to write his name yet. He can count to 100 by himself, too. He LOVES counting. It's his favorite thing in the world right now.
-Cleo says new things every single day. Over the past few days she has said "Ouch" and "Ussy!" (Gussy) and "Ears!" and "Eyes!" (she points to them but often mixes them up).
-Gus will say "Where's my little sister at? I love my little sister so much, Mom." It's pretty delicious.
-Gus also loves to say the following at least twice a day: "Mom, Keee-o is a little girl, and she can't climb trees yet because she is too little. But I am a big boy, so I can climb trees. Right, Mom?" He says this but to my knowledge he's never climbed a tree. He seems to want to learn, though, so perhaps we'll do that this week. Oh, and I always tell him "You're right!" but I'm always thinking that with the rate that Miss Cleo climbs these days, she will learn how to climb a tree before Gus. I would not be terribly surprised (see first photo above).

A new poem by one of my favorite poets is posted above.

That's all for now. TTFN...