After answering the daily question from Kaiya of when are Papa and Babka coming for Thanksgiving, we decided to make a paper chain so she could count off each day until their arrival. The only problem was once the chain was finished and hung she didn’t want to remove any of the rings so it never depicted the actual number of days and we continued to answer the daily question of how much longer. Nevertheless the days continued to go by and Papa and Babka soon arrived to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.

Unfortunately for them, when I welcomed them into our home late that Monday night before Thanksgiving, I welcomed them into the stomach flu.  Three days before they arrived, the nasty stomach bug hit us and hit us hard. It started with Tobi, then me, then Kaiya and lastly taking Andrej down. In fact, Andrej had been in bed all day when my parents arrived. I had spent the day disinfecting every surface, but wasn’t very optimistic when I opened the door and invited in my mom and dad.

Thankfully, we were able to enjoy a few good days of fun before the bug bit my mom. However, the downside was she got sick the night before Thanksgiving and she had already purchased everything to cook our Thanksgiving feast. Needless to say, as I am not much of a cook, we postponed our Thanksgiving dinner and ate sandwiches instead.

By Friday, my mom was feeling a little better and my dad had yet to show any symptoms so we went ahead with our plans to go to a local Christmas tree farm. It was so cold, but the kids had a blast riding the tractor and running through the rows of trees. Of course they ran in two different directions, so we had to split up just to keep an eye on them. I quickly found the perfect tree and with Kaiya supervising, my dad cut it down.

Kaiya had so much fun decorating the tree and kept commenting on how beautiful it was. Christmas really is so much more magical with children. Even the tiniest detail would have Kaiya joyfully gushing over it.

My mom worked hard all day Saturday and by 6:00 pm, a Thanksgiving feast was spread out before us. As we gobbled up the yummy food, we talked about all of the things we were thankful for.

After dinner, we dressed the kids in their Christmas jammies and tried without much success to get the perfect Christmas card picture. Let’s just say one of my two children was less than cooperative.

But we did get a few semi-cute ones

We also tried to make Christmas cookies, but got a little carried away and we learned what happens when you try to bake too many cookies on the same baking stone. They weren’t pretty, but they were sure tasty.

Unfortunately our time with Papa and Babka all too quickly came to an end and we sadly said goodbye and watched them drive away. Kaiya has such a hard time when they leave so it was nice to be able to remind her that we would be going down to visit them in just a few short weeks for Christmas. That of course started Kaiya’s daily question, “How much longer before we go to Papa and Babka’s for Christmas?” This time I just answered her questions already knowing a paper chain would be pointless. The rest of our pictures from Thanksgiving are located here.

Other noteworthy things from November:

Mid-November was our one year mark for using cloth diapers on Tobi. It has been an interesting year of trial and error as I learned which diapers work best, which detergent works best and which wash routine works best for our family. Overall, it has been way easier than I ever imagined and I’m really happy we made the switch, both for the environment and for how cute the diapers look on my boy. I am also excited to start purchasing teeny tiny newborn diapers for the baby. Tobi was five months old when we transitioned out of disposables, so I’ll need to add some newborn supplies to our stash.

Another really INCREDIBLE and LIFE CHANGING thing happened in November. Something that revolutionized my time spent in the kitchen. For this I will provide two pictures as evidence. The first picture (albeit not very good) was taken sometime early last year and the second from Thanksgiving 2008. Do you see the difference?

Yes, my friends, we are now the proud owners renters of a dishwasher. I am in love with this appliance. I was honestly at the point where I loathed doing the dishes. Andrej has terrible back problems and can’t stand over the sink for very long so dish duty was mine and mine alone. Now, it takes a fourth of the time to load the dishwasher and Andrej is able to help out as well. I could kick myself for not asking our Landlord for one sooner. The installation of the dishwasher was by far one of my highlights from the month.