…to yours, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving.
We are so grateful for family and friends like you.
Love to you all.

On this eve of Thanksgiving I have quite a list of “Thankfuls:”

• I’m thankful to wake up each and every day next to the man I love.
• I’m thankful to have the very best job of “Mommy” to two amazing girls.
• I’m thankful for our families (all of you – no matter where you are tomorrow) and their continued health.
• I’m thankful to have a house of “all our own” this year to celebrate Thanksgiving in.
• I’m thankful for the food that will be on our table tomorrow, especially this, and this, and this!
• I’m thankful to not have to go anywhere on Black Friday – except for maybe Disneyland.
• I’m thankful my Christmas cards are completed and on my dining room table.
• I’m thankful that Elfette (formerly known as Elfie) returns to our house tomorrow night.
• I’m thankful for each sunrise and sunset – each new day I get to spend on this Earth.

I hope you all have a very thankful Thanksgiving tomorrow and are feeling as blessed as we are.

Happy Thanksgiving.

My crafting has become a bit of a joke over here. I’m sorry to let you down yet again this week. I have been sewing away on the little purses and even took some photos thinking I might do a little tutorial for you – but it has not all been downloaded, edited, translated and decoded into a pretty little tutorial as of yet. Don’t give up hope on me…I might just surprise you with my extra time this week!

The girls are home this week and if you are a FB friend you already know how we spent day one of our vacation…painting ceilings and getting a few teeth (Em’s) yanked. Not. Crafting. In other words.

And I didn’t get a great photo of the ceiling because I finished as J. was walking in the door and it was already very, very dark. (Cursed daylight savings.) Now, I don’t generally like to toot my own horn, but….beep, beep. Our ceiling looks beautiful, if I do say so myself. I had some painter tape mishaps and need to touch up tomorrow, but behold, a shiny, clean, white ceiling and…no hole!

I’ll get a better pic in the daylight tomorrow. And other than ceilings and teeth, we have just been desperately trying to wrap up the ‘ol soccer seasons. We succeeded with Addie’s, complete with party.

And are so, so close with Em. Rain cancelled our second playoff game on Sunday, but we had a end-of-regular season party anyhow. More cupcakes.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled program of trying to get some Christmas gifts made! Please share what you are up to. Desperately searching inspiration over here. (Ah, who am I kidding…we have plenty of inspiration, just need a few more hours in the day!)

Well, as you can tell by the amount of (or rather lack of)  posts around here…we have been just limping along and trying to get through each day. I have so many projects on the list it isn’t funny, but not many are getting done. We have had company for the last few weeks, so I’m making November the month of getting stuff done! (How did it get to be November again??)

As far as craftiness this week…we have been stealing a lot of other people’s ideas. Stole this one for our Halloween treats to hand out at school. (Addie did the google-eyes for me. 🙂

They were a hit, but much like the cakepops…I think the second batch is going to be much better. We learned a few things along the way.

And if you make nothing else out of pumpkin this fall…you must try this Pumpkin Roll.

It might not look as pretty as the picture in the recipe, but it got a big thumbs-up from everyone around here.

This year was the first in year I haven’t had to make any Halloween costumes. It was liberating, but a little sad too. I did fix a bunch of costumes to sell in our Costume Show at the Carnival, so I got my fill I guess.

Addison wanted to be the “fancy, sparkly, pink Batgirl.” She held up the costume at Target and asked “Can you make me this, Mama?”

I told her no, but I could buy it for $19. I can’t even buy the fabric for that price. So she was done.

Emma came home and told me that she and Audrey were going to be minions. Had to look that one up, too. Apparently they are these little creatures from the movie Despicable Me. I did not see the movie, still haven’t but Mommy Jamie and I fashioned the heads for these guys and I dyed some overalls and “voila!” – they were on their merry little way, too.

And that was Halloween around here. The girls didn’t have school, but since it was a school night our Halloween traffic was lighter than last year. Still, it was fun and I’m happy to take the spiderwebs down for another year. (Yes, MOST of those spiderwebs were decorations…)

Oh boy…I have a bunch of stuff going on here, all kinds of crafty business BUT unfortunately I haven’t even had a few free minutes to photograph any of our crafty goodness…so you get poorly lit iphone photos instead.

First up, we had to make some Terrible Teal towels for our terribly awesome soccer team. A little back story – when we found out the girls’ color we were joking that they should be the Terrible Teals so we could make them some Terrible Towels ala the Pittsburg Steelers’ towel. We may or may not have a few Steelers fans on the team. So we made rally towels for the team.

Of course I also had to make some sort of mascot, so meet our Terrible Teal…isn’t she cute?

Next up, Emma was asked by her teacher to teach the class to sew since they were reading a story about sewing in literature circle. So we prepped pieces for everyone in her class and she taught her fellow students to sew a mini monster pillow modeled after the version she made at her birthday party.

She did terrific and all of the kids were so excited with their creations.

Thankfully I had two other moms help with the threading of 30 different needles. Yes, it was two afternoons of exercises in patience, but it was fun in the end.

And then we went from that straight to making t-shirts for the 30 Girl Scouts. Yeah…all of this the same week as our major Carnival. It was an exhausting week. But in the end it was all good. The tees turned out cute, too.

Each girl has a t-shirt with their name in the middle of the trefoil and the troop number on the sleeve. So now we all match.

And that is it for last week. This week we concentrate on all things Halloween. Hopefully we will see you before next Tuesday, though!

We have not fallen into the Pacific over here. Just unbelievably busy.

I mean…we’ve been designing soccer plays for cats for goodness sake!

This pic cracks me up every time I look at it. This was ALL Addie. (Even the spelling on her “Socer Bol!”)

Promise, promise, promise to be back soon and fill you in on all our chaos.

Our house was obviously shook up by the news of Steve Jobs passing away last week. We are a completely Apple-driven house; are long-time admirers of pretty much everything Apple produces; and every member of the family has a well-loved favorite Pixar movie (I think it is a different film for each of us, too!). The loss of such an innovative man, well it is just that…a true loss to the world.

J. made me watch the commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave in 2005 to Stanford graduates. If you have a few minutes, give it a watch. It is incredibly moving and inspirational. (If you can’t watch the video, but want to read the speech you can do so here.)

Kinda makes me want to be like Steve when I grow up.

And then today in church, during his homily Father Gary quoted Steve Job – from that speech.

“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. ..Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

I’ve said goodbye to two friends in the past two months. It is fascinating to me that both of them did exactly what Steve Jobs advised – they didn’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Another not-so-gentle reminder, perhaps.

RIP Steve Jobs.

We’ve decided that rainy days do not deserve to be lumped in with Mondays.
They are such a novelty around here that they definitely don’t get us down.
Although it is always an interesting exercise trying to hobble together rain gear for
everyone that still fits,  and I’ve totally given up hope on getting them to match.

…but we have Fishin’! That is kind of crafty, in a way, sort of, right? Nah…well, it is the excuse I have for no finished projects again this weekend. We traveled to Denver for J.’s cousin’s wedding.

The girls were amazing troopers since we got up at 4:30am on Saturday morning to catch a flight. Spent all of Saturday exploring Boulder and having dinner with family and were back up and on our way to Estes Park for the wedding by 9am on Sunday.

(Yes, we had to do a little creative double-buckling to fit us all in the car! Shhh…you didn’t see that!)

Anyhoo, Colorado is so beautiful. I think I could totally live there someday.

And the wedding was incredibly beautiful, too.

But it was in a bit of a fishbowl, so it was really windy. Uncle Jeff had to loan Addie a hoodie…

And Daddy found a jacket for Em….

After the wedding we had a few hours to kill and we found this little trout farm and the girls really wanted to learn to fish. So Daddy and Uncle Jeff, in their wedding attire, helped the girls experience fishing for the first time.

Em got really good at casting…

And got close to the worms…

But Addie landed the first fish (with a lot of help from Uncle Jeff!)…

How big was your fish, Ad?…

Exaggerated like a true fisherman, it was a bit smaller….

Finally Gracie snagged one, too…

She was less enamored with the fish once they were on dry land…

And then…I expected some tears when they started cleaning them. I heard Addie say to the guy at the fish counter, “Don’t hurt the fish!”

But neither of them budged while they conked the fish on the head and gutted them. And we haven’t had any nightmares, so I guess my city girls still have a little country blood in them.

After our tough day of fishing, we bellied up to the bar and swapped fishin’ stories…

Stopped by the rest of the party…

Tried for one family photo documenting us all dressed up – and this is what I got at the end of long weekend, on our way back to the airport…

And that is how you do Colorado, a wedding, a fishing expedition, and a reception in 48 hours. In case you were wondering.

Yes, yes…I know! I’ve been berated by my two most faithful (maybe only 2 at this point!) readers – apparently I have been far too absent on ye olde blog as of late.

I don’t really have any excuse other than…life happens. And it is happening at warp-speed around here and I’m just barely trying to keep up.

Soccer season has begun. And this year we are doing soccer season x two.

I thought it would be difficult to help coach Em’s team this year with double practice and game schedules, and thought it might be a good time for Daddy to step up, so I “volunteered” him to assist Daddy Alain with coaching the “Terrible Teals.” (Of course I didn’t volunteer him without asking him first…I just strongly suggested that it might be a good idea!)

But then Addie’s team was kind of limping along and her division doesn’t have very many girls, so for awhile they were trying to get me to head coach one of the teams. As I was vehemently declining I said something to the effect of “I cannot commit to head coaching – I have two in soccer this year! Maybe I could help assist if someone needed it…”

Yes. You see where this is going? A head coach (from the team that Addie was temporarily on) heard that…and made sure that Addie stayed on his team so that he got an assistant coach as well. Soooo…Mama is helping with the Purple Ponies. It will for sure make Soccer Saturdays interesting. Already on Friday nights we go in completely opposite directions for practices. Addie and I go one way and Emma and Daddy hop across the street. But so far, everyone is happy and excited for the season, although we all have to miss tomorrow’s first game as we head to Denver for a wedding!

The girls are settling into school nicely. There seems to be a lot more going on over in homework land this year, but I’m happy with the progress both of them have made in just a few short weeks. Addie was star of the week this week in her class, so she got to share her prized possessions every day this week. She brought in her cat collection every single day – including Tiger this morning.

All of the kids in class write about the star of the week and then Mrs. K. puts a book together for each student with the writings from their friends. I was peeking at some of the pages when I was in there this week working and every single kid started out with, “Addie loves cats.” A few of them said, “Addie really, really, really loves cats!” To their defense, she didn’t give them much more than cats to work with! I am pleasantly surprised and happy to report that the reading is finally clicking with her, though. And I am hardly getting any push back at all on her reading to me at night, instead of the other way around! So that is real progress, my friends.

Em is in a 3rd/4th combo class, I think I mentioned before – NOT with her BFF in the whole wide world, Audrey. There were a few rough days there, and since Em ends up lumped in with the 4th graders, she doesn’t have recess or a full lunch with Audrey, but they are managing just fine. We are trying to find time for them to hang out – and they have soccer together…so there is still plenty of bff-ness going on.

Her class seems very challenging, which I am grateful for. She is the type of kid who will rise to the challenge if it is put out there by a teacher and she seems to handle it all beautifully. If it is put out there by Mom, however…not so much of a chance. And that is reason #562 that I could absolutely never homeschool. Her new teacher is really able to motivate the kids, and Em is again with a great group of 3rd graders, so I’m very happy so far.

Oh, let’s see. What else? That hardly seems like enough to fill our days around here. The girls have both joined the choir at church. Both are taking piano still – Emma is rocking it, Addie is still struggling. In fact…they are working on a little duet piece…it’s pretty sweet. They are working the kinks out still, but getting close!! This was from a few weeks ago, the piece is much better now. But just to see all this sweetness on one piano bench makes me smile…

The Duet from carrie voris on Vimeo.

Em is still swimming on the swim team, although with soccer she can’t do much, so we are just swimming once a week to keep her spot on the team until soccer is over. And Addie is sticking with ballet for another year. Her idol (Audrey’s older sister) Yvette just went en pointe this year…so now Addie has something to shoot for. She REALLY wants to get pointe shoes. Granted it is another 6-7 years of ballet…so we’ll see how that works itself out.

Yeah…that is pretty much it. My days fly by and another week is gone. I seem to be incredibly busy but feel many days like I got absolutely nothing accomplished. It is just life, I guess.

I’m off to pack us up for the weekend, we’ll see you back here next week!