Ney happenings

This week flew by so quickly. Shaylah and the boys have been part of a math club through school (actually, Shaylah was the teachers aide) and Monday was their last day. They have thoroughly enjoyed this. The boys have been able to learn math while having tons of fun.

Duane and his friend Art were able to get away and go fishing on Monday also. Duane caught a Striper and brought it home, much to Shaylah's delight. She LOVES fish! No one else around here does. She looked up a recipe and cooked it up herself while the rest of us enjoyed chilli and cornbread.

I have been doing a bit of sewing these last couple of weeks. I found a great site that showed how to make some simple skirts for little girls without a pattern. I've made Poppet and Lolly each a couple. I am also working on a little dress for each of them. When I get done with those I already have material for some new curtains for my kitchen windows. I'm hoping to get a lot accomplished this week while Duane is still home. When he goes back to work I'm sure the sewing machine will get put away for a while.










Shyloh got a new kitten last week so all the children have been enjoying her. She is a fuzzy little ball of gray fluff and very spunky. She doesn't have a permanent name yet. They are thinking of Sophia, Sophie, or Tiggy. Lolly calls cats tiggies. This little thing is so very cute. Poppet just loves holding her and cuddling her. Shyloh gets a bit fussy about everyone holding her cat because her kitties loyalties are now divided. I told her she shouldn't have brought a kitten into a house with 8 other children and expect them to not play with it. The kitten loves all the kids!













Shylie is already 5 weeks old! I just can't believe time has gone this fast. She has always smiled quite a bit but now you can tell her smiles are getting more controled. She is also starting to lose her hair. We have loved her fluffy little head and we are sad she is going to lose that. All my babies lose all their hair by 4 months but since she had so much more hair we thought maybe she would keep it but it doesn't look like that will happen. I guess we will have to enjoy it while it lasts.

Tuesday we started our prep for Thanksgiving. I knew that I would have my hands full this year so we started a day earlier preparing. On Tuesday Shelbie, Shaylah, and I made up some casseroles so all they needed was to be baked on Thanksgiving. We made brocolli casserole, sweet potato casserole, and a green bean casserole. On Wednesday we made all the dinner rolls, Shelbie made a pumpkin pie, and Shaylah made a apple crisp.

We had quite the house full on Thanksgiving. Shyloh was spending the day with Jeff's family so it was really nice to have lots of people around to distract us from missing her so much. We had our sweet friends the Silvas over with six of their children, we also had my sister in laws mom and three of her brothers with their families over. There were 19 children here! The food was yummy and the fellowship was so wonderful! We started out being a bit sad because we missed Shyloh but it ended up being the best Thanksgiving ever.

Friday night we went up to Sonora for their Christmas parade. The parade itself wasn't anything to great but it was still fun to be out in the chilly air and just enjoy the Christmas atmosphere. There was a church that was serving hot apple cider and cookies in the park. After the parade we walked around a bit.

Usually we set up our tree and hang up our lights the day after Thanksgiving but that just didn't happen this year. We did get our tree up tonight and plan on hanging lights tomorrow. The house feels so cozy with the tree set up in the corner! We also watched our first Christmas movie of the season tonight and had popcorn and eggnog.

Duane has one more week off and then it is back to real life. We have so enjoyed having him home to hang out with us these last five weeks. The kids have loved having him here in the morning to do devotions with them and having him up at night to read to them when they go to bed. When he works he leaves in the morning by 4:15 and that means that he is usually so tired at night that he is in bed by 7:30 or 8:00. Duane and I have enjoyed being able to hang out and read together at night and actually go to bed at the same time! We are all going to be sad when December 8th gets here and he goes back to work.