An angry Isaac left us this note this morning:

"I love you Dad and why did you throw away all the candy. I love candy so much. I really wanted to finish all the candy. Please don't do that next year. To: Mom and Dad. From: Isaac."

In Steve's defense, the only candy remaining in our Halloween stash was a couple of pixie stix and some generic bubble gum.

Turkey Day

(Turkey drawing by Lincoln.)

Bright and early, we gather to the kitchen...

Before:
And after:

But the highlight of the meal was the Thanksgiving Jar. For a week prior to the meal, we all wrote on little slips of paper the things for which we were most thankful.

Then at dinner, we read them outloud while we were eating. All ten thousand of them. It took five hours (slight exaggeration). Laura submitted the most. Here's here pile:

I submitted, like, ten, and felt "unthankful" by comparison. But who has time to be thankful when one is making a thousand side dishes, you know? Okay, here are our favorite submissions:

1. My picturesque mother who had eye surgery this week and therefore did not figure into our photos: Shade, red roses and date nights.

2. Steve: competant junior residents, rigid fixation, and citizenship

3. Jenn: Redbox, diaper wipes, ibuprofen

4. Laura: land, rugs, and the English language (It was hard to narrow her list down, I tell you!)

5. Lincoln: Thursday, windows and monkeys

6. Isaac: Me (as in, himself), Katelyn (?), and guns (???)

Noelle took a nap the entire time.

Here's the pumpkin pie I made when I should have been filling out "thankful" slips. Also, here's a picture of Isaac wearing his favorite shirt. Right before the meal, he told Grandma he was hot. She advised him to take off his sweatshirt, but he told her he wore it for "fashion reasons" because it made him "look cool". Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving!

Nothing makes Laura's day like an award...

This morning around 7 AM she was saying something to the effect of "I'm having a miserable day already!!!" after Isaac hit her, or she hit him, or somebody hit somebody, I'm not sure of the specifics, but there were tears involved. She didn't think there was any way the day could be redeemed, but I knew better. Here she is sitting on the back row of the school gymnasium next to her best friend Faith (with the red hair) waiting for them to announce student of the month.
Getting called out of the audience:
Standing beside the other fifth-grader chosen from the other class:
Congrats, my sweetie! Hope this sets the tone for the rest of your day...at least until after school when no doubt Isaac will get under your skin for some other reason.

Sunday morning (by Grandma, which is why they are smiling).

A Morning in the Life of a Fletcher

I'm terrible at blogging lately. Our lives are boring, and the truth is, now that we've been blogging for over a year, I realized we've already blogged about everything we do. Everything. I guess every year we just repeat over again all the things we did the year before. Every Halloween we do the same things as the year before. Every Thanksgiving. Every Christmas. Every birthday. Every outing--to the park, or the lake, or the mall. So I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over again when I blog. However, the kids look different every year. And I hate to go a whole month without blogging much because then we can't look back later and remember what we did that month. So I had to find something I could blog about, even though nothing new has happened. At all. So I just pulled out my camera this morning and documented our morning. It doesn't get much more boring that that.

5:45--Steve and Jenn wake up and do their stuff. (I hadn't thought of the camera yet, so no pictures. Luckily for you. I am super scary-looking in the morning. And my breath is bad, too, but camera's don't pick that up anyway. Hmm, I wonder if they will in the future...)

6:20--Noelle comes downstairs. In a hysterical voice, "I'm hungry, Momma, hungry..."

6:30--Kids get up and do jobs (get dressed, make bed, read scriptures, practice piano).

If the kids finish their jobs before 7:30, then they can watch this show:

7:20--I found Isaac doing just that.

Except his bed still looked like this, so I had to spend five minutes threatening him to get back on track:

7:25--Laura finishes getting ready in the bathroom.

7:25--The great magnet in our home wielding it's power...

...for everyone but Laura.

7:30--Breakfast.

8:00--Okay, now this is when the problems always start. It drives me crazy. They know what to do. We've done it a thousand time. Brush teeth, get on shoes, get on jacket. Brush teeth, get on shoes, get on jacket. Why oh why for the love of Curious George can't they do it independently??? Why must the last fifteen minutes of our time together be a constant fight. "Lincoln, put your shoes on. Lincoln, put your shoes on. Lincoln, PUT YOUR SHOES ON!!! Isaac, get your jacket on. Isaac, your jacket, please. Isaac, YOUR JACKET!!!" And Laura starts hyperventilating, "You're going to make me late!!!" I swear, if I left my boys alone, they would sit in their underwear all day and stare at the ceiling thinking of Star Wars. At what point are they going to be capable of doing these things on their own? At what age should I be able to say, "Get your shoes on," and they do it right away? Or, heck, what about just plain old putting their shoes on without any prompting at all because they know they are leaving the house and can't go out in socks? Am I going to have to go with my boys to work when they are in their forties and follow them around saying, "Now staple your proposal. Staple it. Staple it. Come on, now, that's it. Now hand it to your boss. That way. Go on. That's it. Good boy. You earned your hour of video games this week." Geez.

8:17.

8:20--I dropped Laura and Lincoln off at the crosswalk closest to their lines.

8:23--I dropped Isaac off at the front of the school...or as close to it as I could get. But he was angry with me because he thought I dropped him off too far away.

I submit the proof that it was the closest I could get:

8:27--Once again spotting the cop for the fourth time that morning while dropping my kids off. Carefully checking my speedometer and then taking a picture. (Wondering if I could get in trouble taking a picture of a cop the way I got in trouble taking a picture at customs at the border in Canada). Then back home for the really interesting part of my day. Sorry, no pictures and running commentary. (You're all relieved, admit it.)

Making dinner from scratch: How to determine when the effort is not worth the savings.

To all you women out there who read this blog (all three of you, and I'm not sure any of you fall into this catagory) who enjoy cooking and have a high tolerance for working in a hot kitchen, chopping and stirring and kneading and rolling and scrubbing and whatever, I just wanted to say to you...

You have a gift.

And you should not take it for granted.

This stupid pot pie nearly did me in. Just one course. No sides. But it was made completely from scratch (which means that a can of Campbell's cream of chicken soup was not on the list of ingredients) and it was like seventy degrees outside (in November--unheard of) and that meant it was eighty-five degrees in my kitchen and my baby kept pooping in random locations in my house and my kids were all cranky, which all factor into my decision to never make this again!



Yeah, and the carrots didn't even cook all the way through. They were a little crunchy.

The surprise of the night: Noelle liked it. So did Laura (though she did not feel picture-ready).
So did Steve. Or so he said. Though he was the one who tipped me off on the carrots.
The boys wanted me to take their pictures, but they didn't deserve to have their pictures taken. They thought the pot pie was foul. Which begs the question: Is it worth it to make a meal--even if it is cheap, even if it is wholesome--when only half of the family will eat it? And another question: Why can't Steve just get on board with the whole "peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches for dinner every night" idea?

It's really hot today, even though it's November.

I put my arms around my messy, sticky child to give her a hug this evening and her hair was damp. "Noelle, are you sweaty?"

"No. I'm a princess."

This week she has discovered the joys of dressing herself. We've been engaged in heavy-duty potty training (only one accident in the last three days!) and she's been much too comfortable running around in her princess underwear and taking it on and off and on and off, and with that comes the inevitable taking off of her other clothes and putting them back on in odd combinations.

Her personal favorite: Her swimsuit. On backwards. She especially likes to check herself out in the "mirror" which also doubles as the oven door.

She really thinks she's hot in this little number. Still the backwards swimsuit top, but now combined with the turtleneck she's pulled down around her waist. Nice.

My vote goes to the PJ's, which only stayed on until 6:30 in the morning, and only then because she was temporarily distracted by some fresh flowers.