Thanksgiving in (mostly) pictures

The beginning of our Thankful Turkey

Making apple turkeys at the Segos' house

Benjamin's turkey

Rhett getting ready to eat his turkey

Paul's turkey, of course.

Working hard

Cousin Breton and Benjamin

Heidi

Cute baby Will

Brothers: Will, Lane and Breton

Richland was snowy

Putting the turkey in the oven.  He was heavy.

Boys at the special "four-year-old table"

Rhett gobbled down his Thanksgiving meal

Good food and good company

Sledding in the back yard after dinner

Allie

Cara and Lane

The food:

rolls

not-quite-done turkey

sweet potatoes and green bean casserole

stuffing

Another Thanksgiving dinner finished

The little boys watch Allie play a game

Lane reads to Benjamin and Breton

Landon and Heidi, thanks for another great Thanksgiving visit!

First Snow and more

We had our first dusting of snow last week and temperatures have been freezing since then.  The boys enjoyed checking it out (Rhett for only a few minutes and Benjamin a bit longer).

 

 

Benjamin was quick to jump on the chance for some snow play.  Although not quite enough for a snowman, there was plenty of snow to work with for a good snow angel.

Our hot chocolate consumption has been on the rise.  And this evening we put our living room fireplace to work for the first time.  (Does anyone know how to get the most heat out of a fireplace?  Ours isn't warming the room like we'd hoped.)

 Finally, we'd like to point out the difference between the fireplace Benjamin is posing in front of and the one below.  The picture really doesn't do justice to the ugliness that was here when we moved in.  I seriously could not stand being in this room because the color scheme was so terrible.  Teal painted bricks, faux marble-painted mantle and hearth, "celery ice" walls (we know because we found the paint can in the garage), and some sort of royal green colored carpet.  Blech.  As we contemplated taking pictures of our Christmas decorations in this room, it became quickly clear that action needed to be taken.

 You can sort of see the results in the previous picture.  While we have a much classier vision of our fireplace for the future, for now we settled with painting over the ugly paint on the bricks and making them the color bricks should be.  The mantle and hearth took some trial and error, but we now have a stone gray for the hearth and some sort of wood color for the mantle.  And the walls are trusty beige.  The difference is huge and I actually like being in the room now.  Someday we'll add lights and furniture.

Football

 Paul has enjoyed attending some high school football games recently.  Our local team, the Meridian High School Trojans, have had an amazing (undefeated) season and Paul has had a lot of fun keeping up with them and talking sports with people in the ward who are also highly invested in Meridian sports.  Two of the star athletes are LDS, (the quarterback & a wide receiver).

Early in November we attended a game as a family (usually it's just Paul and Benjamin) and these are some camera phone pictures from that night.  Benjamin is the yellow blur.

The boys, especially Benjamin, like to cheer, "Go BYU!"

 

  

Meridian won this game (first round of playoffs) 55-0.  They won the next two playoff games, and are now on to the semifinals, (the final four).

Dreams

A little while after Paul and I were married I had a dream.  In the dream I saw in front of me a baby boy.  Then that child was replaced by a second baby boy.  At the end of the dream I found myself looking at a little girl.

I couldn't help thinking about the dream a lot over the years and wondering if it was foretelling our future family.  I would hardly presume to call myself prophetic, but it was certainly a pleasant thing when we were blessed with each of our two boys, and I felt a certain sort of affirmation that those two boys were meant to be with us.

A friend of mine, who dreamed she would have a boy but instead had a girl, once said to me that if your dream comes true people think you're prophetic, but if it doesn't they think you're just stupid.






Well, what do you think?

High Five!

Now, practically speaking, I could have gone either way on this one.  I was leaning toward girl because the genetic odds were really in favor of it and how likely would it be, really, for us to have three boys in a row?  (That's never been done in our families.)  But the possibility of another boy was pretty exciting.  We could keep them in the same room till they left on their missions!  (And I could keep my sewing room a while longer.)  Not to mention the abundance of baby boy items lining our closet shelves.

However, in all seriousness, while I don't consider myself to be a woman of visions, I do feel once more the affirmation that this child was and is meant to be in our family.  As I thought about that long-ago dream over the years and wondered about it, and as I tried to maintain an open mind as we approached each child's ultrasound, there was always something inside me that told me that the dream was given to me for a reason.  And I was never surprised by the gender of any of our children.

I was hesitant to post some of these things at first because I don't want to sound presumptuous about my entitlement to visionary dreams.  After all, people do have dreams about babies all the time that don't end up matching reality.  And I am not a spiritual giant.

But I do believe that I dreamed about those children because those are the children I would have.  And I'm not sure why there were only three because we certainly plan on having more than three kids.  I think time will tell.  For now, I feel glad to know that the Lord knows me and knows my family and for whatever reason chose to give me that glimpse into my future as a mother.

And we feel very happy about this little girl.

Duersch Baby #3

Arriving sometime in March 2011

(And no, my name is not Victiria, but pictures were printed and CD burned before we could change it.  Just in case anyone wondered.)

Halloween!

It has been a busy Halloween weekend at our house.  The church trunk-or-treat on Saturday night was a big hit and the boys had a lot of fun.

Here is our costumed duo:  Benjamin went as a fireman (red shirt made by me, most of the rest pieced together over time from Goodwill) and Rhett was the dalmatian (white shirt from Goodwill, pants, hat and spots made by me).

 

No pictures of the trunk-or-treat because it was so dark.  The costume pictures are both from afterwords. While Rhett looks happy, he put up a major fight when it came time to don his costume.  Even during the construction stage when I was trying to fit the white pants on him he acted as if it was major torture.  I finally got it on him, painted his nose black when he was strapped in his car seat, and when he refused to wear the hat I told him he couldn't have any candy unless he wore it.  Worked like a charm (much to my surprise).  While his costume wasn't difficult to put together, it had been too long a day, and I had spent too long sewing on spots to have people think he was a cow.  The ears were a must.  (And only one person asked if he was a cow, even with the ears on.)

For last year's trunk-or-treat Paul had a great time putting together a real door for kids to knock on at the back of the car.  This year he wanted to come up with something equally memorable.

Can you guess what it is?

It was definitely a project, but something that's we'll reuse year after year (we'd better).  I wish now that we had taken pictures of the process but at the time of assembly things were stressful enough that I didn't want to bother.

 Basically, it was made with a structure of PVC pipes shaped by pouring heated sand through the tubes until they bent freely.  (Try it sometime, it's pretty cool.)  Then we pieced together a few bedsheets (part thrifted and part from home) that had been spray painted orange (because dying them didn't work well enough) and taylored them to fit the pumpkin form.  Paul used some window screen material for the face so that he could see through while inside, which was the most fun part of the whole thing.  Inside the pumpkin Paul attached a hard hat at the top so he could wear it and walk around in it and hand candy through the nose.

 

He got some great reactions from people at the trunk-or-treat as he walked amongst the crowd.  I wish it hadn't been too dark for the camera.  Tonight he set it up on the front lawn with a light inside to attract trick-or-treaters since ours was the only of the four houses that wasn't dark and people weren't bothering to come down our street.

 Benjamin had fun opening the door for the trick-or-treaters and was even caught calling out to the empty street  for more trick-or-treaters to come to our house when we had a lull.  I found myself having increasingly thin patience for the teenagers that would come dressed as nothing and asking for candy.  To them went one piece each of the worst candy we had.

Finally, our Halloween dinner: chili in a pumpkin and pumpkin cornbread, finished off later with some pumpkin pie.  I decided last year during the holidays that we don't eat nearly enough pumpkin pie this time of year, so we decided to start early. 

And that was the Duersch family Halloween 2010!  (So glad it's done!)