Thanksgiving/OCC Packaging Party

Our friends Lara and Lylah invited us to join them for a Thanksgiving Celebration today. We had so much fun making crafts, eating special treats, and spending time with friends. Here are some of the highlights from the party.

First, we made these adorable turkey hats.

Aren't these kids just so adorable?

Next, we ate our Thanksgiving themed snacks.
We had turkey cookies, pumpkin muffins,

fruit cornucopias, and...popcorn that was inside a paper bag turkey!
Lara made this paper bag turkey using one large paper bag and two lunch sized paper bags for the legs. She cut it open to reveal the popcorn surprise inside.

One reason we had our Thanksgiving party so early in the month was because of Operation Christmas Child. We decided it would be fun to incorporate a packaging party into the festivities since the collection week starts the 14th. So just like previous years, we filled our boxes with lots of goodies. (We will do a few more things with our boxes as a family in the next few days and then drop off our boxes.)Next up was a "Find the Feathers" game. The kids covered their eyes and then went to find feathers hidden in another room. They thought this was so fun!
Then we made Mayflower boats.
These are our new friends Emily and Bella.
Bella is Lylah's cousin and she is just adorable.Our last craft of the day was finger painting Indian corn. It was such a fun morning. We love parties and can't wait until the next one!

Silas: 3 Months Old

Silas is 3 months old today! He is growing so fast these days. He is almost too big for his 0-3 month clothes and he took his first vitamin drop this evening. He is such a content little fella and he just smiles and smiles if you look at him. He is a great sleeper. He can sleep between five and six hours at night before waking up to eat.

He loves watching his big brother and is starting to show interest in toys.

He still loves to bounce in the bouncy chair, but has decided that he hates the swing. He also makes some pretty funny faces.

About a month ago we lost our only pacifier. Since Silas didn't take it very often, we just didn't replace it. He doesn't seem to mind. He is so laid back and easy going. We are so thankful that Silas is part of our family.
We love our sweet baby boy!

Tillery Tot School- Numbers and Review Week(s)

For the last couple weeks we have been reviewing the letters S, E, T, and H as well as learning our numbers. (I forgot to take a picture of our Tot School Board before removing all the things this week.)
To help Seth learn his numbers we worked on our Magnatab. My brother got Seth this cool learning tool for his birthday. It just so happened that The Parent-Teacher Store here in BG sent me a birthday coupon and I was able to get the uppercase alphabet magnatab for half of the original price. We worked with it, too!
We played with a big foam dice (found at Mighty Dollar several years ago) for a while one day. Seth loved to throw it up over and over. He wasn't too interested in counting the dots but that's how it goes sometimes.
Seth has taken an interest in watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse lately so I picked up some Mickey Mouse number flashcards at the Dollar Tree recently. We practiced counting with them. I hid them around the house and then we would go find them and count to make sure we had numbers 1-5. We threw them up in the air and Seth would try to grab the number I would call out (that was very difficult for him). So we had lots of fun with this $1.00 set of flashcards.
My mom let us borrow this String Along Numbers book and we also read several other number books.

We even permanently added some foam numbers to our
Tot School board so that we could count them everyday.

Some of our fine motor activities included:
lacing using pipe insulating foam (similar to pool noodles) that I cut into pieces

and dropping water into a mini muffin tin using an old medicine dropper.

To review our letters we did some name activities. I made paper confetti and we traced over Seth's name with glue several times.

Then we sprinkled the entire paper with the confetti.

It was kind of messy but turned out cute. We used the mess to practice some sweeping.

We used our magnetic plastic letters.
We hunted for the S, E, T, and H and used them to spell his name.We also did some of the activities that we had previously done

here, here, here, and here.

So this week we are moving on to the Letter "I"!!

Tingling Feet

The tingling in my feet started one week ago. I first noticed it as we were eating at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Jackson. We had worked all day finding family heirlooms and we had settled down to enjoy some family time. I quietly leaned over to Bryan and whispered that my toes were tingling. I didn't want anybody else to know. I didn't want anyone to worry.
In the back of my mind, I knew this could happen, but I was really hoping losing most of the eyesight in my right eye would be it. I think I have been in denial about the reality of this disease. On Monday, it was just the front halves of both feet, but by Wednesday both feet were tingling on the verge of numbness. I haven't lost the ability to walk, it just feels funny when I do.
After being tested for a Urinary Tract Infection (which was negative), talking back and forth with lots of the MS clinic nurses on Tuesday and then again on Thursday, I decided that I would just ride out this flair-up without taking steroids. The steroids would only make any improvement I am going to have happen faster, they don't actually treat anything. I was going to have to stop breastfeeding the entire time I was on steroids plus another seven days. Since this flair-up is only sensory related right now and it is not affecting my balance or hurting my ability to walk, my doctor thought opting out of the steroids would be fine. It's a waiting game with flair-ups and it could be hours, days, weeks, or months before we see how it all turns out. I'm just praying that this time my body will be able to heal completely and the tingling will go away.

Family Heirlooms

My family has been sorting through all of my grandparent's belongings in order to sell their estate in the next few weeks. So last weekend we had the opportunity to go to Rutherford, TN to claim what we would like to keep. My Pepaw and Memaw had so many cool things. There were several items that I would have loved to have but I just didn't have any reason to keep them other than they were cool or slightly sentimental.
For instance, I loved this bicycle speedometer. It was my dad's when he was a little boy. I thought about keeping it for Seth and Silas but it was missing a clamp on the back and we weren't sure it it worked properly. Instead of keeping it, I decided that I would just snap a photo of it.

There were a few other things that I found interesting but I didn't keep like...

this 1937 Singer Sewing Machine.

I do love a vintage sewing machine.
There was also this cool oil can...

a handmade clown made by my Memaw...

an old butter churn...
(I thought it would be neat to hold umbrellas and stuff like that,
but Bryan didn't agree so we didn't take it.)

this cute tea kettle...

these two wooden people ...
(They have been at my grandparent's house on this wooden shelf for as long as I can remember,
so I'm glad I took a picture.)

and lots of large spools of thread.

So what DID we take with us?

This beautiful sewing machine/table...

which now resides in our living room.
It is one of the first things you see when you walk through the front door.
I feel so special to be able to call it mine now.

I also grabbed some small spools of thread.

One box even has wooden spools. I just love it!

This dainty little vase looks lovely in my windowsill.

I gathered up all the old skeleton keys I could find.

(My Pepaw was a locksmith after his sewing machine factory days.)

I picked up several kitchen items including some tiny Tupperware containers.

I found a few pieces of jewelry that I can't wait to wear.

I also found some crafty items. I have big plans for the Altoids containers.

I thought a few more embroidery hoops could be added to our wall.

One of my favorite items that we found thanks to my dad was this "new-to-us" 64 year old toaster. It was given to my grandparents as a wedding present by my great uncle Claude. It sure beats our burnt up toaster and makes the perfect piece of toast, by the way.

I picked up this wooden gavel and a wooden car that Pepaw made.
I just love how crafty both my grandparents were.

Bryan took several tools and there are a few other special things that might show up on the blog sooner or later. It was a special day to be able to go through all the things my grandparents owned. I hope to be able to pass some of these things on to our kids and grand kids one day.