Jer and Stef: 11/2015

Trying some of my cold weather maternity clothes...finally. I was pretty happy with this outfit...about 34 weeks along here.

A day trip to New Orleans.

Ashlyn was in charge of getting her own shoes for church. When we pulled in we discovered her choice. Not only are they two different shoes, but they are for the same foot. Luckily Ellia had left some flip flops in the car so that is what Ashlyn wore.

Quincy wanted to play in the rain.

Gillespie's came to visit and we were able to tackle one busy day of school activities. Laura and Addie went to have lunch with Ashlyn, then walked to the park to visit Ellia at her field trip. At the same time I was able to go with Quincy to her school Thanksgiving feast.

Another great reason to have the Gillespie's here...so Jer can start the tree house.

Ashlyn's Thanksgiving activity souvenirs.

It was pretty busy weekend. Quincy had a dance dress rehearsal and pictures. It took her awhile to get her smile warmed up, but man when she did it was stunning!

I've never seen her sit still as long as she did during the dress rehearsal. I think she was in awe of all the beautiful costumes.

Ellia had come with us and it was taking quite awhile so I had Grandma Laura take her a few doors down to get her first manicure.

We didn't get to stay for the entire rehearsal because we had a 1:00 departure on the Creole Queen. We had the best tour guide I've ever had on the tour and of course there were some great photo ops.

It was a little chilly but our guide was so entertaining it was hard to leave the front deck.

A fun dinner out together at Daisy Duke's Café.

It was nice that there was a project to work on at home...nice so I could get some rest!

We also decided that it was a good chance to have a Thanksgiving feast of our own. Ellia and Ashlyn were big helpers when it came to breaking bread for stuffing.

They also helped with turkey crafts for everyone. I took this day to do some last minute shopping for Christmas deals.

Ashlyn's napkin drawing.

Of course it wouldn't be a trip to Louisiana without a stop for beignets.

Happy (early) Thanksgiving.

Fishing in the neighborhood pond. From what I heard, Gunner caught a turtle.

Park play date.

Shopping at the oldest store in Covington, Smith H. J. and Sons. Addy posing with the Loup Garou.

it never hurts to visit the Abita Springs Mystery House either. Actually I think that may have been Jeremy's first time there.

Lunch at Cane's.

We were sad to see our company go, especially because there was a hold-up on the tree house so Jeremy won't have as much help to get it finished. A weekend walk to Boy Scout Road, where the girls attacked Jeremy!

Trying a new way to make sugar cookies.

Our own little Thanksgiving dinner. We decided to have ham as our main course this time since we'd been eating leftover turkey for a few days already. We did a thankful tree, and I tried a ham glaze that turned out pretty good. We also had green bean casserole for the first time and a new pumpkin pie recipe I got from Quincy's feast.

I warned Jeremy not to put the potato peels down the disposal, and then when he did anyway I told him to try the Tucks throw plunger. He didn't believe me on either account but both things ended up pretty much how I said. Finally when he couldn't get any more with the plunger I looked up a method online which he also doubted but it turned out to do the trick to get the clog out.

Jeremy took on another huge project this month. Restaining the front door. We had a few mishaps along the way. Number one, I went to the store for the stain and polyurethane. We had picked out the color together from a pamphlet and it had to be mixed but there were only gallon sizes. Well, I had them mix the gallon size (and they told me with this particular stain there was no need for polyurethane.) Then, the more I started thinking about it the more I realized we did NOT need a gallon worth of stain. I knew you couldn't return mixed stuff though. I started asking a more helpful person about polyurethane and he said a lot of people will use indoor stain with polyurethane instead of the outdoor stuff and it works fine. Well, there were a lot more choices for indoor and they came in the much cheaper quart size, so I found similar color, got the polyurethane and decided I just wouldn't buy the mixed stain.... Jeremy went back a few hours later and the gallon of mixed stain was still on the paint counter waiting for me. Oh well. Problem number two came because it was such a humid weekend. We couldn't get the polyurethane to dry enough to sand it. What was supposed to take one day (since after all, our front door ended up having to be removed) ended up taking two or three. We kept a tarp over the front door, but at night we had to put it back on with no doorknob. Finally we let it sit under the fan in the front room for several hours and got it to dry enough to finish it. Ah, the joys of DIY.