A Post in Pictures

There's been a case of no pictures around this blog lately so I'm going to post a few now to satisfy the grandparents that might frequent this site.

Here is the semi-decent picture I got of the three kids in their Thanksgiving clothes.  Lucy had lost her tights by this point by who's counting?  Katherine looks like she's still sceptical that these two rascals are supposed to be her siblings.

This was the kid's table at Brian's parent's house.  This picture is four short.  There are 10 grandchildren on the Nash side now and currently no one is pregnant.  But I wouldn't hold my breath on that status for long!  Nashes like to procreate.  It's what we do best. 

This is what our adult Thanksgiving table looked like complete with Brian's Scotch glass making a cameo.  Wouldn't it be fun if every one posted a picture of their Thanksgiving tables?  On my side we have to use folding banquet tables and a basement to hold everyone.  On Brian's side, his mom whips out her best linens and China and we sit in the formal dining room that gets used a handful of times a year.  It's all so different and all so special at the same time.

We have reached a victorious milestone when traveling to Brian's parent's house for holidays.  More than half of the grandchildren are now old enough to sleep on mattresses in the basement ALL BY THEMSELVES!  The days of having four kids under the age of two were not that long ago and we used to dream about being able to do this.  Now the pre-grandchildren days of the adults staying up too late and drinking too much have returned!

Love this picture of Papa reading to his Lizzy and his Lucy!  Brian's dad is going through chemo and radiation treatments right now so pictures of him that don't have sickness written all over his face are a happy sight to behold.

Nothing of note in this picture.  Just my little p'kin with a too-big bow snuggled up with her Daddy in coordinating Christmas colors.

These two. **Sigh** They're so hot and cold right now.  One minute they're arch enemies, the next they're BFFs.  On my cleaning day I caught them in the middle of some fantastical pretend play that required them to hide under this table.  The next minute they were hopping from coffee table to pillow to sofa trying to escape a menacing shark.  After that Lucy was a princess trapped in a tower on the top of their bunk beds.  When things are good, they're really good.  But when they're bad...well, you know.  Note to self: try to capture more of the good times.  Maybe then they'll forget about their mom who screamed at them during all the bad times.

These next few pictures I shot from my phone so forgive the quality.

Oh baby Kaf-rine!  Maybe she'll hate me for this one day but I had to show you just how bad her baby acne had gotten.  And I can only show you this now after it has (mostly) cleared up.

Ahh...that's better.  And yay for sisters-in-law who spent money on cute newborn clothes and then passed them down to me!

Katherine is smiling all the time now.  I've never had a baby who smiles this easily.  She wakes up, she smiles.  She eats, she smiles.  You talk to her, she smiles.  You sing to her, she smiles.  Of course the tough part is capturing a picture of it because by the time I get the camera focused she becomes too entranced by the red of the flash charge light.  But here I caught her at the tail end of a giant grin.

We've been having a lot of fires lately.  They're so cozy and they really warm up our living room and it gives our boiler and radiators a break.  I think this year we're going to pay for regular wood delivery so that we stop wasting our bucks on the gas station bundles that are very low quality.  Who knew there was a quality factor when it came to firewood?

But fire or no fire the real reason I posted this picture is because every time I walk past our fireplace I can't get over the fact that there are three stockings hanging there.  I guess it's not the number that gets me.  Three isn't all that many.  I'm the eldest of three.  Three is manageable.  It's that there's ALREADY three stockings.  I remember being six years old and having a new baby brother.  But my mom seemed old.  Sorry, mom!  But you know what I mean.  My mom was also 30 when she had her third and now here I am in the exact same place.  All these milestones -- marriage, first baby, second baby, third baby -- seem to have happened in a blink.  Three kids.  Three kids!  THREE KIDS! Holy crap!  We have three kids!  It never ceases to astound me.