Missed Us?

Missed Us?

Wondered where we have been?

Me too.

Here is a recap of the last month. Well, a recap of the fun stuff. There has been A LOT of other stuff thrown in there too. I won't show you pictures of that. 

We spent Thanksgiving together with all of the Eckerts. Can I just say that it was perfect? There were 23 of us together at the peak of the weekend. The only person missing was sweet Sierra, who is away at school at Swarthmore in Pennsylvania.  We certainly missed her.

We have been doing our fair share of "Christmas-ing." It is the most wonderful time of the year.

Here we are at the San Clemente Christmas Tree lighting. 

Yes, that's Rosie sledding down a snow covered hill... In San Clemente. 

Oh, Orange County. 

Sadie has taken an interest in the Christmas tree this year.
As a result, the ornaments start about 1/3 of the way up the tree, and I keep finding ornaments in the oddest places.... like in Sadie's crib.

Rosie had her Christmas chapel performance at school. I could not, for the life of me, get a good picture of her singing. Perhaps it's because I calmly put the camera down when she started picking her nose on stage before her song started.
Parenting can be so humbling! 

 Rosie also had her end of dance recital. We started out strong, but her love for ballet and tap definitely tapered off as the weeks went by. I think her face pretty much sums it all up. Now it's over and she's relieved. I'm proud of her because she was cooperative and followed directions even though she wasn't into it at all. 

 Ron and I snuck away for a long weekend in Napa with the Paschalls. It was practically perfect in every way. It gave me a chance to head into the magic and the chaos of Christmas with a little reserve to draw from. I'm so thankful for good friends. 

It was so fun to come home to the girls, who had been under the incredible care of our niece, Allison. I think the girls had just as much fun as we did. All of the Eckert girls cried when Allison's plane took off on Monday. 

 We visited Santa last night. Rosie was thrilled. Sadie was not.
No full blown tears, but we had some definite Santa anxiety.

 

Enjoy Every Bite

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. 

We are so thankful.

 Enjoy every bite.

Amen.

Star Rock Ministries

One of the many pieces of Ron's job includes being the Executive Director of Star Rock Ministries, a non- profit organization founded to help "give the gift of camp."

Want to see something amazing? Check out their latest promotional video:

http://vimeo.com/31400016

Halloween

We continued our annual tradition of trick or treating with the Paschalls and company in Tustin. Rosie chose to be a cat and Sadie, well, cooperated in being a butterfly. Needless to say, our mob made out like bandits. The highlight of the night for Ron and I was watching the girls walk up to the door in preparation to get their candy. "Come on, Sades, let's go get some candy," 

Rosie would say as she sometimes held Sadie's hand but mostly pulled her by the collar up to the door, Sadie staggering in a way that somehow reminded me of ET. Once the door opened, Rosie would say a robust, "Trick or Treat," to which Sadie would reply, "Happy 'ween," and walk inside the stranger's house. Ron and I had to fish her out of people's living rooms on more than one occasion. 

Another highlight was walking along with Sadie and suddenly hearing the crinkle of a chip bag. I looked down and realized that she was eating a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos. I choose to believe that someone ran out of candy and started getting creative, rather than that she picked up the bag off of the ground :)

Note: I realize that both of "highlights" make me sound a little like a negligent mother. I really was present. I promise. 

Back of the Bus

Rosie brought home this adorable 

school bus picture last week. 

She said, "That's YOU driving the bus, Mama! 

And, that's DAD riding in the back!"

Do you hear that, world? 

Finally.

Am I the only one that thinks "Ron" bears a striking resemblance to David Hasselhoff? 

Tanaka Farms

We ventured back, once again, to Tanaka Farms for CSA Day.

We fed some goats, took a hay ride, played some games, and picked some pumpkins. Never mind the fact that it was a nippy 89 degrees outside.

My dear husband with months of collected CSA boxes.

                                                  

The perfect pumpkins are found!

A Caleb Eckert in the making :)

Here we are at the loveliest organic farm, with amazing fresh produce, and my daughter is eating.... a Dorito. Sigh.

Home Help

I mentioned in our last post that we are rearranging the furniture in our living room. We have the blessing and curse of living in a bungalow in which the living room is basically also the family room, kitchen, dining room, laundry room, den, racetrack, and art room. Yes, a lot goes on in this space. We have lived here for 5 years and we've never been able to get this space to "work" for us. It's a journey in progress, to say the least. We took a big step in the right direction and said goodbye to our "beast" entertainment center and "baby beast" coffee table, but not before the girls put the empty space to good use.

 Can I just mention how grateful I am for the brawn of young men? I was so glad that Ron recruited some camp guys and I did not have to help move this thing. 

To quote my dad, "This thing is so heavy it makes me want to scream!"

So now we are slowly rearranging. I made all of these bold statements about not buying anything new...  using things that we can salvage or reuse. The next day I went out and bought a loveseat from Ikea.

 I digress.  

I do need your help with something. I found this little antique cart. I think this might have inspired my salvage decorating kick that lasted for a minute second. I had visions of blankets or games like I've seen on some of the blogs that I look at... but as of now, it looks like a homeless person dropped their belongings off here. That's not entirely bad! It's just not the look I was going for :)

So, what do I do? Erin mentioned keeping the contents monochromatic... Brieann mentioned painting it.. what do you think?