My Christmas list... so far.

Happiness is...

...making pumpkin pasties with my husband.

...eating them over a game of Catan (which I won without realizing until Forrest said, OK, let's put the game away!)

...getting to sleep with the window open in November. (only got down to the 50's!)

...a little sleepy girl with moist, messy hair and sparkly eyes.

I finished The Goblet of Fire, and it was good. Definitely better than the movie, and kept me on the edge of my seat about 100 pages in, which is something since it's 734 pages long.
I made Noelle a coat last week...pictures below.















Noelle with her sweet aunt Esther and superhero brothers.





































Asleep in her new jeans, which are adorable on her.
















Daddy made the boys a fort.
















Sunday night she fell asleep on the floor.

ATTENTION CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS! "Tucker Family" has a wishlist on Amazon, and even if you don't buy the items there, you can look to see what we'd like. There are family gift ideas and individual kids' gift ideas on it. Forrest and I each have wishlists also. ;-)

The corn maze at Siemer's, at Greenbluff. Saturday before last.

















It was a lot of fun.
















At Siemer's they have this little log cabin...here are the kids inside it.
















And Noelle, sitting at the little table in it.

















Matthew and several of the Stapps, waiting for hot cider.

















Sunday before last, we went to the arboretum. It was gorgeous.

















Timothy and Nathan in a tree.

















We found this plant that had giant leaves...here's David with one of them.

















Timothy, almost buried in leaves.

















And in another tree.

















Noelle really liked the leaves...mostly to try to eat them.

















Esther, David and Timothy make "leaf angels".



















Noelle again. You can see a little bruise on her forehead...the falling-and-bonking-a-bunch stage has begun.

















He looks like he's trying to be Canadian or something.

















Kids sprawled in the leaves.




















More cute girlyness in the sunshine.

We got a new mouse.

It's an optical mouse...which we didn't have before.

Oh. I made two cheesecakes the other day...one Mocha, and one Pumpkin. I have a plain cheesecake recipe that I've made before (following techniques I got from Forrest's Uncle Jerry, and overheard ingredients from his secret recipe...sneakysneaky) so I used that as kind of the base...telling me how much of the cream cheese and eggs, and for the pumpkin one I found a recipe online for a pumpkin one that took the same amount of cream cheese and eggs, and altered it slightly. For the mocha one, I could not find a recipe online that was satisfactory so I made it up. Both cheesecakes turned out great, if I do say so myself. Maybe I'll let it become like my specialty item.

Oh, and speaking of good food...Forrest and I made really good spaghetti sauce & meatballs (we also had noodles of course) yesterday. Forrest put together the sauce...I spiced it a bit, then he spiced it more, and it was just right; and it had a lot of mushrooms in it. I had never made just plain meatballs before but they turned out good. And "Barilla Plus" pasta is, we found out, pretty good. It tastes pretty much like regular pasta.

I keep having dreams that Noelle is walking. I don't think it'll be long. She's starting to let go of whatever she held onto to bring herself to standing, and a few times she's just stood there without help for several seconds. She's starting to learn how to lower herself down slowly to the floor too. AND, she learned last week at Grandma's how to climb an entire staircase (I was right behind her) and so now she's been doing it on our stairs. This, if I recall correctly, is earlier than the boys, who learned the stairs somewhere between nine and ten months. I need to teach her how to safely come down soon, but for now usually just get her off. Forrest & I need to get a gate.

I could not get pictures to load. I'll try one more time, on a new post, but if it doesn't work, sorry. I'll try later.

Random

Using the computer without a mouse is a little challenging, if you're not used to it. Our mouse suddenly went kaput earlier...while Forrest was using the computer, it all of a sudden stopped working...and doesn't even show up in the control panel under "mouse". Also, now our computer isn't making that "rrrrrn" loud groan/buzz that it used to make. Could it somehow be related? Seems unlikely, but what do I know?

Forrest & I have colds. Blah.

Forrest is gone to run a work errand & stop at the library; the kids are all napping, and I thought I'd take this opportunity since it was knocking. If I can figure out how to mouselessly post pictures, I will, as long as Noelle doesn't wake up first.

Noelle got her sixth tooth last week, and is now making words like "Ah-oh" (which I think can mean "hello" but doesn't mean "uh-oh" yet) and "Aow!" (which I think really means "ow" sometimes, like when she shouts it as she grabs at the boys' faces or hair). She's very vocal. On Sunday evening we were watching a movie at my parents', and she kept just saying "Aaaaaah" very loudly, and we couldn't hear the movie. Cute but annoying.

I'm now very addicted to Harry Potter books--on the fourth one presently, and reading it every time I put Noelle down for a nap. (Have to have a nightlight in our room when she goes to bed, for that reason.) I've seen all the movies, so I should know how certain stuff turns out, and I remember vaguely some of the stuff, but it's riveting knowing just a little and reading the book, which has a few tons more details than the movie anyway. Part of what got me reading them was the fact that Forrest, Lynné, and Youssef all have read all the books, so I can't discuss it with them. I guess I'm in for some really big stuff in the next couple of books.

(I keep reaching for the mouse. Durr.)

And then there was a Hungarian Horntail dragon. The end.