Our TransOhio Thanksgiving.

We loaded up the sleigh on Wednesday and set out for Cleveland and Grandma and Grandpa Taller's house. En route, we experienced traditional Thanksgiving traffic. Between Columbus and Cleveland, it took us 3 hours to go 100 miles. We finally got there and had a fun Thanksgiving feast with Grandma and Grandpa and Great Grandpa and Great Grandma Koch.While the Turkey was roasting, Jim and Evie constucted this airplane out of tinker toys.

On Friday, we went to an outdoor light display just west of Westlake in Lorrain County.It wasn't one of those sissy drive your car though types. You had to walk. It was probably about a half mile of Christmas themed scenes. Annalise even walked most of the way.

Here's one of the great Christmas houses on the path.

Then we decided to ride the tram (a lawnmower that looked like a train with passenger cars). While waiting in line, this strange snowman danced and sang to us. Annalise wouldn't go near it.

Just before we left, we posed with a pretty church scene.

It was late when we returned. Someone fell asleep and had to be carried into the house.

Then on Saturday, we headed to NW Ohio for our favorite Natalie's birthday party.

The house was packed with cousins and there were enough babies for everyone to hold. Annalise woke up from her nap feeling sick. This happens every time we go to Ohio lately. Aunt Elizabeth said she could stay as long as she didn't breathe on Tessa.

We celebrated Natalie's 4th birthday, Henry's 3rd birthday and Oliver's 2nd birthday. Somewhere during all this Evie got upset because she didn't get to blow a candle out.

She did get to partake in the traditional birthday car wash. She bugged Uncle Kevin all day to put up streamers to celebrate.

All the kiddos ran through and amazingly, no one bonked heads.

Juner even tried to crawl through and eat the streamers. She was pretty fun to play with and we tried to steal her, but she protested because she would be without her BFF.

All in all, a good trip. We are glad to be home and sleeping in our own beds tonight. And going to bed early too!

School Program

Today was the annual Thanksgiving feast at the girls' preschool. It's a chance for the kids to preform for all the parents and all the parents see how cute all the kids are.

This is Evie's class getting ready to perform the poem "Alberque Turkey" Here's a better shot of her (back row) with most of her classmates.

Annalise's class also got up in front of everyone. They really didn't do much. One kid cried but most managed not to pick their noses.

Here's Annalise's class. This is the one where the kid cries. Surprisingly, she kept it together and did the motions to whatever song the teacher was singing.

Evie's class had it together much more than Annalise's class. They did a great job. I can't believe that she will be in kindergarten soon!

Turkey Cookies

This post is in no way to make Aunt Becky feel guilty about not putting some candy corn on her kid's cupcakes to make them look like turkeys for his Thanksgiving party tomorrow. Nope, we are not going to make her feel bad about sprinkles and frosting. Don't you want Henry to be cool and liked by all the kids in the class??? It's bad enough that his mom drops him off at school without a full face of makeup. Her sweatpants probably don't even match her shirt. Our Thanksgiving tradition is to make cookies look like turkeys just like in the Pilsbury ad. Oh, Doughboy, what we would do without you? Evie is an old pro at making these. This is her third year.
Annalise has her first shot at decorating cookies. I had to remind her several times not to eat all the feathers. A couple of times, she took the feather out of her mouth and put it on the cookie. I set all of her cookies aside.

Here are some of Annalise's cookies. A little abstract, but she was heading down the right path. The eyeballs are in the right place...mostly.

Annalise with her finished product. She said she is going to take one to school to Miss Bethany tomorrow.

And Evie's finished cookies. We are going to bring them to Grandma Taller's house for Thanksgiving...if they last that long!

Deck the Halls!

Sunday morning always starts out with Church. You never know how that is going to go, even with the bribe of donuts afterwards. Fortunately, today went well. We only had 2 bathroom breaks and one wrestling match. Not bad, so we got some donuts. Then mom mentioned something about getting the Christmas decorations out.
Evie was a little floppy after church. Getting up early will do that to you, even though its no earlier than any other day of the week.

Here's the Christmas decoration stash hauled up from the basement. This doesn't count the 6 diaper boxes of lights for the outside!

Evie worked really hard on decorating the tree.

Annalise also put up her share of ornaments. They each have their own box of special ornaments that have been given to them over the years. It is fun to see them go through them and hear the questions that Evie has about the ornaments.

Evie shows Annalise the proper technique. This time last year, Annalise was only just beginning to walk and didn't get to participate in decorating.

Annalise was in charge of the stale candy canes found in the back of the cubboard. Don't eat any of those! We'll get some fresh SPANGLER ones to snack on.

Evie needed to reach high up on the tree so she used her kitchen stool. (sorry about the rotation)

Then, I was overcome with the Christmas spirit. It was a mild, sunny day outside. Jim was cleaning out the gutters with his humungous extension ladder. I climbed into the attic and pulled out the 6 diaper boxes of lights and the 10 strands that were hanging coiled from the rafters. I forgot about a lot of the things I bought last year on clearance. It was like Christmas for us to discover that we have candy cane lights and twinkling snowflakes!

Here's what we have done so far. We still have about 10 more strands we can hang. Not to be outdone, our neighbors across the street put up an inflatable light up penguin. Christmas has come to our street even if the rest of the neighbors don't like it.

Because we were busy outside trying to get everything up before sunset, no one had time to make dinner. So we did what all Seiberts do on Sunday night. Order a pizza.

Our cheeseball. She was so wound up this evening with all the Christmas stuff up. It's going to be a fun month.

Peyton Manning stopped by to join us for dinner before his game tonight.

Christmas comes to Carmel

The grand tradition of turning the lights on in Carmel occured on Saturday and for the second year in a row, we were there to see it go down.

Jim hold up Annalise so she can see the dancers perform the Nutcracker. They looked cold. Annalise on the other hand, was pretty warm because we forced her into a coat, hat and mittens.Evie was also engrossed in the ballerinas.

Then, after a ginger bread cookie and some hot chocolate, the lights came on!

Here we are by the big fountain. They look warm. When we left the house, we thought that the snowpants may be overkill, but they kept the girls nice and toasty. We saw plenty of people not dressed for the 32 degree weather. They were clearly not of Minnesota lineage.
Evie checks out the fountain. Probably the last time we will see it running for a while because there was already ice gathering around the edges.

Mom and Annalise check it out too. This girl does not like the cold or being dressed for it.

Go Buckeyes!

It's the greatest day of the college football year. We are getting all charged up for this afternoon's big game. The flag is flying and we have on our OSU clothing. Go Buckeyes! The Happiest Buckeyes on the block.
They practiced all their cheers (see below).

Something tells me that this is the end of the outfit on the right.

What a goof ball. I could have stuck her in anything as long as she gets to wear a skirt and tights.

The future cheerleaders. They need to get their moves down.

It's going to be a Christmas to Remember

As all mothers do at this time of the year, I started thinking about what my kids are going to wear for all the Christmas celebrations. Ideally, it should be matching or at least coordinating. Fortunately, Evie is still game with doing the twin thing. While I was shopping, I stumbled across these cute dresses.Here's the preview. Hopefully they can eventually put their arms down when I let them finally wear the dresses. And if that's not enough, Aunt Becky and I schemed up an idea to get all the Seibert cousins to wear matching outfits. Natalie, Tessa and Juner have their own plaid dresses coming. Not to be left out, the boys have matching plaid shirts. I'm so glad they are little because it will probably be pretty embarassing.

When I picked up the girls from school today, Evie came trotting out with a stuffed animal. Great, what can this mean?
She got to bring home Mo the Monkey for the weekend. We get to document what we do with Mo and then add some pictures to Mo's travel log. Cute idea until she wanted us to take a picture of Mo eating, reading books, going down the slide, etc. Tonight, Mo put on a pair of panties, an undershirt and a set of Stinker's Pajammers. S/He was then tucked into a custom made sleeping bag in Evie's room. It's going to be a long weekend with Mo.

Our visit from our WBL friends

Last Thursday night, our friends, Michele, Laura, and Nate rolled into town for a visit. It was the first visit of friends from MN since we moved down to IN.I had lots of projects planned to keep the girls busy and quiet while the littleones slept at naptime. Here they are making cookies that look like turkeys.
At some some point during the decorating, I caught both girls sucking frosting out of the plastic bag. After that, the grownups pretty much avoided eating any cookies.
Then we were treated to a "show" that involved singing, dancing and jokes.
Even Annalise takes part in the show.

While Nate was here, he tried to eat us out of house and home. Ithink he ate just as much as the three girls combined.
We took all the kids to church on Saturday evening. Sunday morning, Jim and Annalise went on the donut run (pretty early by all standards). Guess what flavor Annalise had?

And one last pic of all the kiddos together. It was a great vacation and judging by the complete exhaustion by the kiddos tonight (lots of screaming and gnashing of teeth), it was a successful trip. We wish them a safe journey home.

.

Potty Training update: Annalise is doing great! She is wearing and keeping her panties dry when we go out. (we do visit a lot of public restrooms). She even stayed dry when we went to "old McDonalds" today. She sucked down a chocolate milk and played in the playplace with no incident.

And yes, we know we lost the bet on the Minnesota/Wisconsin game. What can we say? Old habits of MN losing die hard. Anyway, we are expecting Juner to show up on our doorstep any minute. I will also post "on Wisconsin"-the taller version, when I get some cooperative performers. And, for those of you still wondering about the meaning of Ski-U-Ma:

In the fall of 1884, the Minnesota football coach, newly arrived from Princeton, often divided his players into two competing squads for practices and yelled, "Sis-Boom-Ah. Princeton!" when the squad he favored scored a touchdown.John W. Adams, UM class of 1886, and his roommate, "Win" Sargent, decided to try to get even by making up a cheer characteristic of Minnesota. They came up with "Ski-OO," which Adams recalled as an expression of success Sioux Indians called out after victory in a canoe race and other athletic events. Adams added "Mah" to rhyme with rah and Minnesota.As first written, emphasis was put on the second syllable in each of three lines. The cheer was "Rah. RAH. Rah." Then, "Ski! OO! Mah!" And finally, with a syllable omitted, "Minn-SO-ta!" By 1885, the phrase appeared in a university publication called "Ariel" as Ski-U-Mah.