Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone has a fantastic day. God bless.

So, you think you can buy a house?

Buying a house has become a lot more difficult than we expected. It seems that everyone else wants to buy the same homes we like. We've been  out looking at different houses many times. I'm sure we've seen close to 30 houses. Out of those, we've really liked 3, and submitted offers on those. We were outbid on all of these. One of the houses we even put in for $34,000 over what they were asking and still we didn't get it. This definitely is going to take longer than the 2 months we were expecting.

 We thought we had found a wonderful house. It was a 4 bedroom with a huge lot. It had been vandalized but it wasn't anything that Adam can't fix. Someone had broken 3 windows, punched holes in all the interior doors andburned some of the carpeting. It really was a very nice house, just needed some fixing. The lot is what we were most excited about. Our bubble burst when we were told that lenders wont give mortgage loans on homes with broken windows. GRRRR! You've got to be kidding me. Adam could fix those windows for less than $1000 and we can't buy it. It was a little bothersome.

We will just keep looking. Obviously we haven't found the right place yet, or I'd be posting about us moving. The little place we're staying in, is quite cozy. It's a little cramped but we're used to it. Small houses make for closer families.

Rolling Right Along - Colored Pencil - Crayon Roll...

Making Christmas and birthday gifts has been my goal this year. Here is one easy gift I am making and the directions on how to make it.

Sweetie Pie: Rolling Right Along - Colored Pencil - Crayon Roll...:

Thanksgiving Decorations: Stuffed fabric pumpkins

I made some decorations for Thanksgiving this year. Here is the post link to my craft blog.

Sweetie Pie: Thanksgiving Decorations: Stuffed fabric pumpkins:

Big Weekend for the Big Twins

This weekend was all about the big twins. They had a weekend full of activities. Friday night they had the performance final for the public speaking class they have been taking. All of the kids in the class got to pick their best speech they had done over the course of the class and perform it in front of a real audience. They learned a lot and had fun. I think they both would like to continue in public speaking. They were both very good at it.

Kiley performed a Humorous Interpretation. This is an acting performance of a published piece it has to be acted out without props or other people. She chose a children's book called Olivia. She did a fantastic job and was very funny.

August performed her Expository Speech. This is a self written speech using a poster board and props. Her speech was called  Have Pity on a Kitty, it focused on the lost or abandoned cats in kittens in your neighborhood and how you can help save them from being put to sleep. I was very impressed with the speech she wrote. My cute little activist. She is definitely a true cat lover.

August and Kiley

Here is the entire class with their teacher.

Saturday was a very full day. They had their last soccer game of the season, immediately followed by the end of the year soccer party. This was nice, we went to the home of one of the girls on the team. She lives on a vineyard. It was beautiful there. Both Kiley and August received special awards for being the two best players on the team this year. We had a coach from another team call our coach trying to recruit them to play on his indoor soccer team. Our coach also is hoping for them to play on his indoor team. We're thinking about it. Indoor soccer is a little expensive. It would be great fun for them though. We were told that Kiley is such an excellent goalie she could play on an older or even adult team, if she was just a little bigger. ;)

At the end of each soccer season, the league has a final World Cup game. They choose the best players for the year, divide them up on teams and they play a championship game at night under the lights. Kiley was chosen to play goalie and forward, and August was chosen to play defender and halfback. They are very excited and proud of themselves. I loved soccer when I was a kid, I'm glad they do also.

We had to leave the soccer party early to go to their violin recital. They did a duet and had to memorize two songs. They played "Long, Long Ago" and "Allegro". This is their 4th year playing violin and their second year having private Suzuki lessons. I'm so glad they enjoy playing, I love the sound of the violin.

Kiley and August

Next weekend is their 12th birthday. They are growing up fast and becoming wonderful sweet young women. They are such lovely girls with beautiful hearts. I hope to be more like them when I grow up.

Twin Mix Up

The day before yesterday I put the little twins hair in sponge curlers. They wore it all day and all night and we took them out the next morning. Their curls were so absolutely cute. I took a picture of them.

I had it set in my head that the one on the left was Emily and the one on the right was Julia. Later in the day I showed Emily and pointed to the one on the left and said "look how cute your hair is all curly". She said giggling "That's Julia not me". I quickly replied "NOOO That's you"..... "Mom, I wore the pink monkey shirt". Yikes.

Usually they have very different expressions on their faces. Emily is right, that's her on the right, but she has a very Julia-ish smile going on.

I have to laugh at myself. People as me all the time "How do you tell them apart?". I guess it's not as easy as I say it is. They are identical after all. Any mother of twins who has done this will understand how very weird it feels to "love" one as if they were the other one.