Right now it is 26 degrees, the wind is 30mph, and it's trying to snow. By trying I mean a few tiny flakes are flying around in the air, and if you look really hard in the low places of the ground you can see a little white. It's pretty miserable out there. Yesterday was in the 70's! It is not unusual for there to be a big difference in the temperature from day to day here, but I don't remember an almost 50 degree difference!! That's crazy. For those of you that don't live where the weather is crazy like this, I'm sure you can imagine! It is a bit of a shock. At least the cold is making it feel a little more like Christmas time. It was hard to get in the spirit with the 60 degree weather we had been having. My parents and sister live where it is still in the 70's and 80's, so they are really having a hard time!!
Thanksgiving was a great time. Most of the food turned out pretty good! In an attempt to fit all that we needed to in the oven at once, and trying to get it to all cook a little faster, a couple of the casseroles got a little dry, and the jello salad froze in the extra fridge that we were storing it in. Surprisingly the Jello turned out fine when it thawed! We ate it all anyway, and had a great time! My first time cooking Thanksgiving was not a disaster, and I learned some things for next time. I plan to redo some of the dishes that didn't turn out so great when everybody is here for Christmas.
Gabbie took her first steps a day or so after Thanksgiving!! She now walks about 50% of the time. She gets so excited when she does, and she always tries walking first, before she crawls. She can walk for a long way before she falls, and when she does fall, she can stand back up all by herself. She can walk while carrying a toy as well! I think she will be walking 100% by Christmas. I can't believe she started walking at 10 months. I can hardly remember her being a tiny baby. I don't know if it is because I had such a hard time recovering after she was born and I didn't get to enjoy it like I wanted to, or because she has grown up so fast! I told Tony that I can still call her a baby until her birthday, even though she is "toddling"!
Natalie is really getting into being a big sister, sometimes a little too much. Gabbie was messing with the DVD player the other day and Natalie tried to put her in time out and talk to her about what she did, like we do with her! I had to tell her that only Mommy and Daddy can get onto Gabbie. Natalie does pretty good at trying to keep Gabbie out of stuff too. Gabbie was getting into the cabinet with the pots and pans, and Natalie went over to her and said "No,no Gabbie. Can't touch it." Then she put them all back in the cabinet and came and told me what Gabbie was doing! Like I said, I think sometimes she may be a little TOO helpful!
The other day Natalie was talking to herself. I wasn't really listening, until I heard her count to 7...in Spanish!!! I guess Dora gets most of the credit for that one, we really haven't been working on that yet!
Natalie loves to do things by herself, especially getting dressed. She can even button her own shirt. Cooking is one of her new favorite things too. I was hoping that if she cooked the food, she would want to eat more of it. I was wrong. The last two days she has wanted to cook something, so we did, then I asked her if she wanted to eat some of it and she said "No!" and ran away! So much for that plan! She has slowed down eating again, after she was doing do good and gained some weight. I am hoping that she doesn't lose all that she has gained now! I guess we will see.
I have almost all of my Christmas shopping done! I have 3 more to buy for some family members, and a few stocking stuffers for the girls and that is it! I do have a couple of homemade gifts that I need to finish, but I don't have to do any shopping for those. I really want to wrap some and put them under the tree, but I don't think that would be a very good idea. I don't think they would last very long!! I guess I will just have to wrap them and put them back in the closet for now. I even have Christmas cards ready to go in the mail tomorrow. I don't think I have ever really done cards before, so I feel like I am really on top of it this year!!
For now anyway! I know better than to be too proud of myself. I managed to get the girls' Christmas pictures done the other day. That was no small feat let me tell you!! That was all I got done that day and I was not in a very good mood by the time I got finished! I didn't really get any good ones of the two of them together. I decided that it is pretty much impossible to get the two of them still at the same time! I did get some that are pretty good of them separately so I guess those will have to do.
I can't believe that Christmas is just two weeks away!!! Wow! It sure is coming fast. I need to get organized and plan what Christmas cooking I am going to do. Things are going to be crazy this year as Kaleena is getting married on Jan 3rd. We will have family in town for over a week, from Christmas until then, so I probably won't do too much fun stuff since I will be feeding a bunch of extra people.
I need to get back to the house work. I have had projects going on all week and I haven't gotten the normal daily stuff done, so I am a bit behind.
