At Home

I feel the most "at home" when my hands are cold and the skies are gray. Clay gives me some greif from time to time for being such an Oregonian....and who can blame him? It is taking all my willpower to keep me from marching back to TJ Max right now to buy the $10 diaper bag made from recycled water bottles that we saw the other night. Oh the frugal tree-hugger inside of me is about to go crazy just thinking about it. Even I can see that is something to make fun of! Back to my original thought though. I am in my element right now, sitting here freezing in the 50-something degree breeze steadily drifting through the window. Sipping hot tea of course. I actually had to get up mid-sentence and get myself a blanket to drape around my shoulders. Oh I love this time of year!

After a short conversation about how "cheated" we felt out of the Holiday season last year (it just flew by!), Clay and I decided to embrace all things festive early this year. So for the last week, we've been diving head first into Christmas movies and music. Bella is probably wondering what is wrong with her parents because we're giddy like children. And it's not even Thanksgiving Day yet. The list of everything we want to do "for Bella" (ha ha!) this year is practically endless. Speaking of things "for Bella," I marched to the store to buy our daughter a Christmas present - her first Cabbage Patch doll. I've been nearly obsessed with getting her one of these 25th anniversary dolls because they look like the 1983 dolls, which means they look like my sweet doll named Cabby, God rest her little doll soul. You see I loved my Cabbage Patch kid when I was younger. She had dark brown hair and brown eyes, and I thought she had dark-ish skin. But Mom later informed me that she was just dirty to the point that the washing machine could no longer help her. I had plenty of dolls as I kid, but Cabby was the only one I truly loved. I sort of forgot about her until I recently discovered these 25th anniversary dolls and now Bella must have one...before they stop selling them of course. Nevermind that she is barely one year old. I'm pretty sure she wants one. Well...fine. Clay is good at keeping me honest with myself. And if I were honest with myself, I would say that I not-so-secretly want a Cabbage Patch doll so I bought one for my daughter instead. :-) Only hers has dark brown hair and BLUE eyes. And I must say her dress is the wrong style and color, but I don't think Bella will notice, do you? ;-)

While the Holidays are on my mind, I have to share about our weekend. I think we watched a grand total of three Christmas movies, put up a couple of shelves in the den (part of our den renovation project), went to church, played a couple games of Yatzee, made cookies, held baby Katie (our new niece) for the first time, and did a little bit of window shopping (my very favorite type of shopping, oddly enough). It was exceedingly fun - the best weekend I have had in a very long time I think.

Well this is getting long pretty quickly. Bella is taking a much-need nap right now. Poor thing. She seems to have contracted some sort of virus and is battling it out with quite the fever for such a little girl. :-( I feel terrible for her even though I have to say that I cherish cuddling her when she is sick. Sweet thing seems to catch colds and such so easily.

Oh yeah, here are a few pictures of our recent trip to Hawaii! Enjoy.