The most wonderful Thanksgiving Part 1

My family "adopted" Jenny a number of years ago.(you may remember I attended her wedding last summer). She's really more of a member of the family than a friend. She's spent Thanksgiving with the whole Coleman gang a number of years now and she's also been inviting all of us to spend Thanksgiving at her house, in South Dakota, for a few years now.  So this year William and I and my mom and dad decided, whether she meant it or not, we'd take her up on her offer. And off to South Dakota we flew.

Luckily William and I still had frequent flyer miles we collected while flying back an forth from China. This trip was our last gift from China.

We used the tickets well.

This was also Rosie's first time to have her own seat. She's over two now so can no long fly free as a lap child. She was very proud to have her own seat.

She is such a good traveler. She especially enjoyed the toys in both the Nashville and Dallas airports and she enjoyed looking out the window on the airplane.

We did so many fun things with Ross and Jenny.  The first night we were there Ross's family generously included us in a family birthday celebration and took us bowling. This was Rosie's first time Bowling and William and I haven't been since the Halloween before we were married... 7 years ago.

Rosie LOVED bowling and got a better score than I did. Actually I was so bad I just let her play most of my turns. She giggled and danced and cheered for every one all night long.

 Rosie also really loved playing Jenny's piano. Jenny is a wonderful musician and sings and plays amazingly well. I've always loved listening to her. This trip she had her Christmas song book out and would stop and play something almost every time she walked passed the piano.

Rosie thought this was splendid and loved playing the piano too. We may have to get her one.

My favorite part of the trip was our girl's shopping day. Jenny is wonderful to shop with. She's so much fun.
While the boys played on Ross's ridiculously large farm equipment we girls when to town, got Starbucks, and went shopping.

Jenny took us to Sephora and taught us how to shop there. I've always been completely intimidated by that store and have never gone with any one my own age, gender, and color. (the Sephora in Shanghai had nothing that would match my skin tone. Everything was too yellow or too pink.)

I've never had so much fun in that store before and now I feel much more confident about going back. Rosie also loved shopping in Sephora. She loves make up and loves colors and walked around and looked at everything with Jenny while I got a make up consultation.

In the end we came away with a little black and while bag that Rosie was very proud of and they even gave her some of her very own samples. She was so proud of them she wouldn't let them go the whole time we walked around the mall.  She is such a good little adorable shopper.

After some very productive shoe shopping it was time to meet up with "the boys". We'd left it to Ross and William to pick up my dad from the airport and then we headed to Falls Park, on the Big Sioux River. (that's where the city if Sioux Falls gets its name).

 We went there because it was magically decorated for Christmas and Jenny knew we would love it.

ALL the trees were covered in lights. It was so fun and magical I kind of forgot how cold it was.

We then ended our wonderful day with Gluten Free Pizza and hot tea.
Doesn't Rosie look so grown up with her own cup of tea?

Last Day with Auntie Julie

 On our last day with Auntie Julie we decided to take her into Nashville and show her a bit of the "city life" in this area.

We ended up in the Franklin's Historic District where there is a Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream shop. Julie bought baby her very first, very own, cup of ice cream.  Bonnie Rose was very happy about it.

Then Auntie Julie took Rosie's mama to the Mellow Mushroom for Gluten Free pizza. Julie likes to spoil us.

After a nice walk around the old houses of Franklin, 

in the rain...

 and visiting a few shops...

Rosie drove us to the airport,

 where we played tag for a while and then said good-bye to Auntie Julie.

It was so nice to have Julie come visit us. I love seeing how much Rosie loves to be with her Godmother and I'm so thankful that Julie is a part of our family. 

I feel grateful to Julie for being such a good and loving Godmother to my baby girl and her devotion really touches my heart. Julie even got a tattoo in honor of Baby Rosie. It's one of my favorite tattoos ever.

Julie's Tattoo, on her right wrist and hand

I know that my baby is perfect and wonderful but it just makes me happy when other people think so too. And I'm so thankful for how many people surround my little Angel with love.

Busy Summer Days

I was talking to a friend of mine online the other day and I mentioned we've been really busy lately. She laughed at me. You see, she works full time and has to be clever all day, then she goes home to her toddler and nurses her and plays with her. During the week she goes to preschool performances. She spends every minute she can with her baby, but she also has to go to work all day. She is a busy Mama.
My busy days are not quite the same... but are still busy. My friend says it's "the best kind of busy" and think she's very right.

Baby Girl and I wake up every day and go outside right away. Some days I can get Rosie to eat breakfast first, but other days I feed it to her on the porch. We walk out to the goat pen and hang out with the goats.

Rosie walks around and says hello to all the goats. We check and make sure everyone is healthy, make sure they have food and walk and we bottle feed one of the babies.

Rosie stays very busy climbing on the logs and rocks with the baby goats.




When Baby Girl doesn't want to go for a walk outside, she wants to be pushed in her stroller. She loves her stroller. She can climb up in it all by her self, and then she asks to be pushed around the house or out side. Some times we just go around in circles and  sometimes we even chase William around the kitchen with the stroller. Baby Girl always loves that and laughs and laughs.

We take walks at sunset and admire the wonderful sunlight, walk down to the mail box and chase each other up the hill.

Sometimes we chase the cats too.

At dusk I like to go out and watch the fireflies dance. They look like fairies sparkling up from the lawn. Actually I just call them fairies when I show them to Baby Girl.

In my ideal world I would never live in a place that didn't have fireflies. They are so magical.

Despite how it sounds we do spend some of our day in the house.  Especially if it gets really hot outside. Rosie doesn't like to be hot.  We come inside and count the rocks in her rock collection, read books, stack blocks and of course have dance time.

Rosie is so creative and sometimes I just like to sit and watch her imagination work.

Of course there are normal life things that have to be done, like laundry and cooking dinner. Sometimes I even manage to clean the house a little.

By the end of the day we are all exhausted. We watch some Doctor Who (Rosie loves SciFi) and Shawn the Sheep (Rosie calls them goats) to wind down and then we all fall into bed.

We do have to convince Rosie that she is indeed tired. She fights it so hard and we usually end up running circles in the house and playing chase in the evenings. I am definitely more tired than she is.

So at the end of the day I can't always tell you what we've done or how productive we've been. But we are busy. I agree with my friend Diana. It's the best kind of busy and I'm so thankful for it. I wouldn't give it up for anything.

It is the best kind of Busy.

Water Baby 137/365

With temperatures now in the 90s (32C) I thought it was time to pull out the kiddy pool.  Baby Girl and I spent our day sitting outside in the pool.

I'm so thankful to live in a place where we can do this outside (with no neighbors to see us) and in a place where the water is safe for baby to drink. She LOVES drinking the pool water. I'm so happy not to have to stress about the safety of the tap water here.


Other Summer activities include spending the whole day naked or in her diaper and trying on everyone's shoes...

And then there's post bath time family tag through the house and then cuddle time.

Life with Baby is never dull.

Birthday Celebrations, Day 2 116/365

Double Cream Brie, Cranberries, and Gluten Free Crackers.

Quilting Show

A quilt of Generations.

For generations different family members have added patches and their names to this quilt.

Old Timers Day Band

Ms. Old Timer Pageant

Baby Girl made friends

And played in the park. She followed the other kids around.

Then we had lobster for dinner...

And it was amazing.

Sweet Birthday Fun 115/365

I am very loved and very spoiled. I got lots of wonderful gifts today...

A giant cupcake pan, a cupcake making book, a tea pot from England with my favorite rose pattern on it with matching sugar bowl and creamer, my favorite movie and little gold plated tea spoons to match my tea set.  The handles on the spoons are little roses!

I spent most of the day working on my giant cupcake birthday cake. I like baking and I would really like to get better at decorating cakes so I was really looking forward to making my own cake.

It had two layers, the top one yellow and the bottom one rich chocolate with chocolate chips and I made Boston Cream custard for the filling.

It was a very heavy cake and since it was Gluten Free it wasn't as strong... and it kind of didn't make it...

At least my normal sized cup cakes turned out pretty well. I had fun playing with my frosting bag.

Well the cake didn't turn out looking the way I wanted it to, but it was still fun to make and to eat. I learned something about what not to do and now I just need to practice a few more times. Any one want to come over and eat all the cakes and cupcakes I'd like to try out?

Thank you every one for all the love and phone calls. It was a wonderful birthday.

Cards and Stumps 113/365

I got birthday cards today. They made me so happy. I got one from my Gramma and Grampa, who never forget anyone's birthday and always send a card on time, and one from my dear friend Julie, who knows me better and longer than anyone (outside my family) and loves me anyway... no matter how terrible I am at keeping in touch. (And I am terrible at keeping in touch with my family and friends).

These are the first birthday cards I've gotten in years. Thank you making me feel loved.

Baby and I spent most of our day out side, again, in the back pasture with the goats and the dogs. This is Baby's favorite stump to play on.

It has a hollowed out hole in it that she likes to put sticks and rocks in.

But mostly she just likes to sit on it and talk to her dog-dog and watch the goats.

I'm so thankful that we are in a place where she can run around and play in the dirt and get muddy and spend lots of time with animals.  I'm so thankful for blue skies, and big fluffy clouds, for clean air, for clean rain and lots of safe places to run and laugh.

And I'm thankful for my little angel who loves to blow kisses.