by the way...

It's snowing here.

A new aunt!

Rebekah and Annabelle have a new aunt and we have a new sister-in-law! We went to Derek and Melissa's wedding last weekend at Southwestern Seminary in Ft. Worth. It was quite a trip. We had a wonderful time, and everything was beautiful. We are excited to welcome Melissa into the rapidly expanding Peters family. Rebekah handed out programs with her cousin Drake and acted very grown up while she did her important job. Annabelle was a different story. She is at a fun but difficult age. She loves to run and climb and talk and yell all the time, and I spend the whole weekend chasing, catching, and restraining her. But I achieved my goal: keeping her from ruining the wedding! The poor thing had to miss her nap, which made my job even harder, but she soon caught up on her sleep at the reception.

These are literally the only two pictures I have from the wedding. I didn't even get a shot of the bride and groom! As much as I love to take pictures, my hands were full! I guess I'll have to buy some pictures from this wedding. And if anyone has pictures they'd like to share, send them my way.

Thanksgiving preparations

We've officially started planning for Thanksgiving with a marathon shopping trip. I've been hosting Thanksgiving at our house with my parents and brother since we moved here, and I really enjoy it. The cooking goes on for days, and I've started already making some apple butter in my slow cooker for breakfast.

The Thanksgiving menu looks like this:

• Smoked peppered turkey from New Braunfels Smokehouse (Dad ordered that for us and it will be delivered in a few days)
• Cornbread dressing (baked in muffin tins so everyone gets some of the crusty edges)
• Sweet potato casserole (mashed with eggnog and topped with marshmallows)
• Chunky sweet potatoes roasted with orange juice, brown sugar, and pecans
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• Purple hull peas
• Sweet green peas (some plain and some covered in white sauce)
• Rolls Mom is picking up at the Mennonite bakery
• Pecan Pie
• Italian Cream Cake
• 
  

Mean Kitty

Annabelle's new favorite game is "Mean Kitty." A couple of weeks ago, she started crawling around the house saying "Meow" all the time. I mean all the time. It's the first thing she does when she wakes up and the last thing she does before she goes to bed. But she is not a sweet little kitten. She scratches. So now most of our interaction with Annabelle involves teaching her how to be a nice kitty and not scratch people. We actually don't see Annabelle too much anymore--just Mean Kitty. (I blame Shannon--one of his favorite games to play with the kids is "Mean Dog." You can imagine how that goes.)

Halloween fun

We had great fun with Halloween. Annabelle wasn't sure about her costume at first, but as soon as we started trick-or-treating she perked up. She tried to go in and stay at the first house we went to--I guess she thought these people were pretty nice for giving her candy. They both had just as much fun handing candy out at our house as they did trick-or-treating themselves.

Pumpkin patch

Last weekend, we all went to the Aggie Habitat Pumpkin Patch, which benefits Habitat for Humanity. We like to go every year to pick out our pumpkins and take pictures. This photo will give you an idea of the size of the pumpkin patch--this shows about half of it. If you look closely you can make out Annabelle in the pink shirt, Rebekah in brown pants, and Shannon in a red shirt in the back.

While we were there, the volunteers were emptying boxes of little pumpkins to put out for sale. When they were finished, Annabelle, whose favorite game is putting things in boxes, helped out by running with a tiny pumpkin in each hand to put them back in the boxes. She would not be dissuaded from her task and probably put twenty pumpkins away before we finally distracted her.
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Stay tuned for pictures of our pumpkin artwork!

the bit about the ketchup...

On the suggestion of my friend Rochelle, here's the rest of the story. After Rebekah was traumatized by this cartoon, I went to watch it myself to see what upset her so badly. The cartoon is set in a hunting lodge, and at the end a gun goes off and Pluto faints. Then Chip and Dale pour ketchup on him, so when Mickey Mouse comes back, he thinks Pluto has been shot (don't you miss the days when even Mickey Mouse cartoons were good and violent?). Oh! That must be it! She thinks that Chip and Dale killed Pluto! I went back to Rebekah and asked her, "Did you think that Pluto was bleeding?" Tearing up again, she replied, "No. It was ketchup. They dropped a broom on him (she thought the rifle was a broom) and then poured ketchup on him and it is SO MEAN to pour ketchup on people!" And then more crying.

too soft-hearted

Poor Rebekah. She's just too soft-hearted for her own good. She frequently breaks down in tears over the slightest hurt feelings, hers or someone else's. Even though we are careful about the television shows and movies that she watches, we are often surprised by what upsets her. Yesterday, I found some old Mickey Mouse cartoons for her to watch. She was happy at first and giggled like, well, a little girl, but suddenly she ran away from the screen crying. When she calmed down enough to talk, she cried, "Chip and Dale are being so mean to Pluto!" Her distress led to a good half hour of crying, during which she was inconsolable despite her insistence that she knew that Pluto was not real, just pretend. "I'm still just so worried about Pluto," she said. We love that she has such empathy, but we also hope that we can help her learn to cope with her feelings a little better.

Ike has passed us

The winds have peaked and are on the way down. The gusts are at about 35 mph now, and the rain is not bad at all. Our town tends to flood, but hopefully it won't be bad. Shannon and Rebekah just went out to "survey the damage," of which there was little. Rebekah never passes up a chance to put on rain boots, so she helped Dad check things out.

Hurricane update

The storm is here, and we still have power so far. The wind woke me up at 6:00 a.m., but I don't think it will get any worse. We've got 40 mph winds with 60 mph gusts, and it will probably be like that all day long. It's possible that the winds will cause us to lose power later, but maybe we'll get lucky. We're perfectly safe at home and we are not leaving the house until tomorrow. I can't keep Shannon inside--he keeps going out on the porch to watch the storm. Annabelle peeked out the door behind him and said "Whoa!" I know that the news reports are showing that we are in the hurricane, so I just wanted to let everyone know exactly what we're experiencing so you won't worry.

storm watching

We just wanted to let everyone know that we're prepared for Hurricane Ike, and you shouldn't worry about us. We're far enough from Houston that we're not in danger. We'll probably have some wind and rain and maybe some power outages. We've got all the water and batteries we need, and we're moving all our outdoor stuff into the garage. After that it's just a matter of waiting it out. There's no reason to worry about us--we'll just be stir crazy by Sunday morning. Keep those who live on the coast in your prayers.

check ups and pictures

The girls had their latest check-ups and shots and they are both healthy and still really tall for their ages. We're trying to pack as much fun into the summer as we can, with baseball games, water fun, and birthday parties galore. This morning we went to the gardens at the George Bush Presidential Library to take pictures of them together before they outgrew their matching Easter dresses. It was a challenge but we did get some great shots. Here are a few, and I've put all of them up on my Flickr site if you want to see them.

Rebekah's birthday party

Rebekah's birthday party Saturday was a big success. She had lots of friends there, and they played in the water and ate massive amounts of cake and watermelon until they were all exhausted. Rebekah got so many new art supplies that we're going to have to get some sort of cart to store them all in. I'll have to start posting her artwork on the blog for you to enjoy. She has already produced a tribute to Jackson Pollack as well as a family portrait. She has also kept us entertained for the past few days with intricate dramas involving dinosaurs and My Little Ponies. All my party pictures have other people's children in them, so I don't want to post them on the internet. But here's a shot of Annabelle dripping in watermelon juice.

Biking in style

Happy Birthday Rebekah!

Rebekah is four years old today. We gave her a basket and bell for her bicycle, some pencils with her name on them, and some storybooks in Spanish. And I painted this shirt for her:

We'll have pictures of the birthday girl trying out her new bike accessories soon.

Wilderness vacation

We just got back from our big wilderness vacation at Toledo Bend Lake--I don't think we can call it a real camping trip, since we stayed in an air-conditioned cabin followed by a golf resort. But we were in the woods and there was some outdoor fun.

We started on Tuesday with a group of 22--12 adults and 10 children. No, that wasn't the family reunion. That's just Shannon's brothers and sisters and their spouses and kids. The kids were ages 8, two almost 5, one almost 4, two 3, three 1, and one 8 weeks. We stayed in a large cabin that was just made for us. It had five bedrooms with eleven beds, so we could all be together but not on top of each other. The kids played all over the place and made as much noise as they wanted and the adults enjoyed talking and watching the kids play and napping. The perfect vacation, I say. Rebekah was thrilled to be with her cousins. Annabelle was less thrilled, I think, mostly because she seemed to suspect that every time another toddler approached her it was with the intent to take her toy/book/food/sippy cup. But the toddlers got along fine, as did the big kids. And we got to meet baby Kalyn for the first time.



Rebekah went fishing and caught her first fish. Make that her first FIVE fishes! She wasn't afraid to touch it and she threw several back in the water herself. All the big kids caught fish, and of course, the grown-up kids did, too. Kyra, Grace, and Annabelle kept trying to jump in the lake while their older siblings fished.


On Friday, we all moved to the Cypress Bend Golf Resort for the family reunion. That was quite a change from the cabin, so we got two vacations in one. Shannon and his brothers went golfing Friday afternoon and then we went to see a less-than-spectacular fireworks show. But it was Rebekah's first time to see fireworks, so she was happy with it.

On Saturday Rebekah and I walked on their nature trail so that she could collect things in her pouch. She came home with a few sticks, some rocks, some hickory nuts, a tiny pine cone, and two snail shells, with the help of her new favorite person, Aunt Betty. (Rebekah says, "That Miss Betty sure is a sweet lady" And that little Rebekah sure has mastered the Southern vernacular in her short life.)



Saturday evening we met met at the lake for a picnic, and then all converged on the hotel swimming pool. Rebekah discovered "Safety Floats," which we always called Water Wings, and she was happy to be able to swim all over the pool without feeling scared. Annabelle is afraid of nothing, and she jumped into the pool at least a dozen times before eating her weight in watermelon, seeds included. After swimming, we put the kids to bed and those adults who weren't watching sleeping children when to the hotel lounge for Karaoke. By the end of the night, even Shannon got up to sing the theme song to "Smokey and the Bandit."

Annabelle's first hairdo

I know you must be anxiously awaiting an update on the state of the jungle gym. It's fully assembled and getting daily use. Rebekah loves love to climb to the top and then hang in the middle. Annabelle loves to stand under it and watch Rebekah climb. I took pictures, but I decided not to post them on the blog because I don't want pictures of the outside of our house on the internet.

So here's a picture of Annabelle's first hairdo. She has been trying to participate in the daily ritual of fixing hair and even tried to put a ponytail holder in Rebekah's hair this week. So the next day, I let her have her very own ponytail.

Monkey Bars: Before

UPS brought a big box yesterday. It claims to be monkey bars (or what we call a jungle gym). Shannon sends Dad his earnest gratitude for the gift. :)

Happy Mother's Day

I had a nice Mother's Day and I hope all of the mothers out there did, too.

We finally had Annabelle's baby dedication at church yesterday. She and Rebekah wore matching pink rose dresses with pink sashes--they were beautiful. Annabelle did very well when the pastor held her, and Rebekah stood beside us and spoke when the pastor asked her about her sister. We were proud of them. After church we had lunch with our friends Courtney and Tom and their girls Eliza and Hannah, who had come to church with us.

Rebekah signed her own name on the card that she picked out herself. I also got wine, chocolate, and flowers. Instead of buying a pre-made bouquet, Shannon and Rebekah chose the flowers individually to create a bouquet just for me. They had fun on their pre-Mother's Day outing.

For Rebekah and Annabelle's grandmothers and great-grandmothers I made a CD of Rebekah singing (we got Annabelle on there a little, too). She made up most of the songs herself, and I know it will have them laughing.

the nose

Yesterday Rebekah and two other children collided on the playground, and Rebekah's nose absorbed most of the force. Much crying and screaming and bleeding. We took her to the doctor and she said is wasn't broken. Turns out it is very unlikely for a child her age to break her nose because it is still almost completely cartilage. After the first major gush, which lasted quite a while, her nose continued to bleed a little bit all day long, and even this morning. The doctor said it could bleed off and on for days. She also said we shouldn't do anything to treat it because the more we touch it the more it will bleed. After everyone saw the big playground drama, Rebekah was the superstar of the preschool. Everyone wanted to know how she felt and what the doctor said. She has relished all the extra attention. This morning her little nose is swollen, but it's not discolored at all. Her eyes are not black (except for the dark circles under her eyes that she has been genetically cursed with). Her nose is very sore and her teeth are, too, but she is in good spirits and ready to play all day. I just hope she doesn't smash her face again. At least until it has a few days to heal.