Joshua insisted that we watch the story of the first Thanksgiving. And Ollie had his first Thanksgiving. And I had my first Thanksgiving of my new life. A life in which I feel a hundredfold more grateful for everything with which I am blessed. A life in which I am learning to become a new me. The me that has collapsed into ashes and is rising again, even better than before.
We had a happy Thanksgiving week. We spent a lot of time with my family. My mom, my younger sister and her boyfriend flew into Portland to hang out with us and my two older sisters who live in Portland...and their families.
Some stuff we did:
Chinese Garden:
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| love, love, love the stonework in the garden |
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| Toby and Grandma |
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| it was cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. Record cold. |
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| The Flash will save us all! |
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry:
We had lots of fun with this crazy exhibit:
Brent?
Joshua
Oh that's just silly...I've never sat around with my family laughing for so long
That one on the left was a little difficult to deliver.
Toby
Auntie Heather
Grandma
Movies:
I dressed Ollie in his Christmas outfit...which also (unknowingly) happened to be the day of the BYU, University of Utah game. I guess Ollie was their good luck baby, eh?
But the adults went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1 (which I LOVED!), and Uncle Nate took the kids to see Megamind. (Thanks Uncle Nate!) I ended up taking Ollie with me and he did just fine. He never made a peep (hard to do that when you're eating :-).
Multnomah Falls:
Carlos and Heather
It gets dark really early around here these days...so I did my best dusk photography
(without the flash, because the flash lit up every water droplet in the air).
Hanging out:
We opened some Christmas gifts...since we won't all be together at Christmas time
(Heather and Carlos are going to Cancun to meet his family!)
OH JOY! Toby got his Rex.
Joshua LOVES books!
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| Nice! |
Carlos' hat and Heather's shirt
Someone likes the exersaucer SO much, he took a nap there!
It was a great time!
10. They're so cute and colorful! They're not our granny's cloth diapers.
9. Less waste, a LOT less
8. No harsh chemicals on my baby's skin
(seriously, have you smelled those 'sposies?)
7. Green. When I think about the energy that goes into manufacturing and transporting of each disposable diaper, it makes my head spin.
6. Laundry just happens to be my favorite household task.
5. The fabric is SO soft on my baby's skin.
4. No more emergency diaper runs
(at 11:50 on Saturday night).
3. Saves so much money
(in the long run). Not just on diapers, but on the cute outfit the next aisle over and the dvd's on sale for $5 at the checkout. Not to mention the gas to get to the store.
2. I can use them over and over each time I have a new baby.
1. Cloth diapers make me that much more self reliant. If a disaster happened and I couldn't get out to get to the store, I will not run out of diapers.
But seriously. ME, cloth diaper? When Joshua was a baby a friend asked me if I cloth diapered. She assumed that since I had unmedicated childbirth that I was a total hippie mama who would cloth diaper. Those two things were not related in my head. I never considered cloth diapering and I never would have. But the idea got in my head. And it stuck.
Then after Toby was born, our car died and we used our life savings to buy a new one. And since Brent was in school and only worked one day a week, we had no money. So my grandma gave us some money to help us get through that rough semester. It was just enough money to buy a stash of Fuzzi Bunz diapers. Joy!
I was actually impressed by how easy cloth diapering was. And so relieved that my garbage can was no longer over flowing every day. If you've wondered about trying it, I would say go ahead and buy one or two dipes and try them. If you don't like them they're easy to resell, or you can keep them as emergency backup. If you like them...well then you will be able to write your own top ten list.
I love snow days.
I love it when school or church gets canceled just because of snow.
I love the lazy feeling of hanging around the house together, reading books by the fire, sipping hot cocoa.
I love it especially when Brent has work off too. Nowhere to go. Just us. And snow.
If you can even call that snow.
But really, it's WICKED slippery. It's NOT like Utah snow.
What to do next?
Get bundled up and get outside! Snow hardly ever happens in Portland.
Can't miss out on it.
(We missed it all together last year).
