Adios, Noviembre

As usual, I have random photos that I'm going to post together.  

A few weeks ago, I started to try to trim the burning bushes along the border of our yard and the street.  What a project that was!  I worked for hours and really only did 2 bushes.  And, even those 2 need to be trimmed back a little more.  Those things were crazy overgrown!  I'm not looking forward to getting back out there to finish trimming.  The worst part, though, has to be the huge pile of brush it's creating.  I don't even know what I'm going to do about it.  I guess we have to burn it, but the whole idea of a brush fire scares me.  I don't want to do it!!

This is the "best" picture for seeing the before and after heights.  I think we actually need a chain saw to continue.  It would take forever to cut with a handsaw, and the tree pruner things are not getting through a lot of the branches that need to come down.   But the idea of a chain saw scares me almost as much as the idea of a brush fire so we'll see.

Here are two great pictures of Grumpy with James and Sebastian.  I'm not sure where Adrian was that he wasn't fighting to get on Grumpy's lap, too...

I took down the fall stickies and put up the Christmas ones.  I hate those damn things as an adult.  I loved putting them up as a kid, but I can't wait until the boys can take over.  How tedious!

Here's our sad Grinch/Mexican Christmas tree.  The tree itself has seen better days.  It's crooked, but I can't unbend it.

The huge light-up wreath was a $10 yard sale find.  Wish it had white lights instead, but for $10, I'm ok with it.  The boys call it "pretty" and Adrian likes to touch the apples and say "niiiiiice."

A student brought me those flowers in the mason jar on the island.  Thoughtful Thanksgiving present!

The boys now love Thomas the Tank Engine...they are obsessed.  They walk around with the DVD case for the one episode that we own (Thanks, Mini!) and hold their little wooden train Thomas cars all the time (Thanks, Natalie!).  They try to tell you the story of the episodes by saying, "Thomas, BOOM!  Crying..."  So funny how they try so hard to communicate now.

The boys love their racer from cousin "Kitchen."  Christian and my Auntie Carol *facetimed* the boys yesterday.  Boy was that a hit!!  What a great idea--I'm just sorry I didn't think of it sooner!  The boys loooooove Christian.

There in the background is one of the toy Thomas trains I was talking about.

Yesterday we set up the train track that Natalie brought to the boys.  They love it.

Carlos took some pictures of his own of the Christmas tree last night.  Here they are!

Unfortunately, he didn't think to take one of the whole house from outside...will have to get one tonight.

Today we went thrifting to see what the local stores had for the boys.  I can usually get great stuff used by going to a few choice places.  All the boys clothes are name-brand simply because I can get that stuff cheap.  I almost never pay more than $2 (and oftentimes less) for a shirt from Gap, Children's Place, or Gymboree because I get them at the local kids' thrift store (Keeping Pace with Multiple Miracles).  Today I found a lot of shirts, an awesome coat, and Christmas books.  Then, because we were on a roll, we went to the local Salvation Army.  I found a lot of great stuff there, too, and most was half off.  Got a Black Dog raincoat for $7, and that was the most expensive thing.  We also found some Thomas toys super cheap that we just washed and cleaned up, and they look like new.  I don't buy toys, but I don't mind so much when they are so cheap.  I felt like we scored big for the boys today!  The best part was that I used the boys' birthday money from Nana to pay for it all.  Nana will be very proud of our use of her money, I think!!  We got 10 times the amount of things that we could have purchased new.  I love that feeling!  Carlos just says I'm weird, but he enjoys a good thrift store find as much as I do--he is just reluctant to admit it!

Some of my scores today: