Thankful for Snow and Fire

...and earth (the farm, especially) and water (in case the fire gets out of hand).

We spent Thanksgiving at the Lively Farm. It was tough this year, without Mom, but it was wonderful to be surrounded by family. My wonderful cousin, Schof, and his wife, Sarah, are expecting a baby this spring (as are the twin-in-law's, Rob and Lauren!), so we took the opportunity to promise them a special baby gift -- a tiny, little baby cousin coming in June. Yep -- my growing belly is more than turkey and green bean casserole! More news about that topic in future posts...

Right as we all sat down to eat, someone looked outside and noticed that it was snowing. There were HUGE flakes blowing sideways towards the big picture window on the back of the house. It felt like we were inside a snowglobe! Sophie loved her first snow:

My nephews, Michael and Christopher, scraped together as much snow as they could. Christopher actually launched his snowballs, but Michael was determined to build the biggest:

The night after Thanksgiving, after the snow had melted, we had our traditional Thanksgiving night meal of chili-dogs and leftover appetizers. Jud Bruce (Sophie has been known to call him Uncle Bug Juice) is the firemaster:

All aglow, but far enough away that the fire won't melt our faces Indiana-Jones style:
Now, with feeling! (And with flash.)

Basket Case

Sophie loves to read. She loves to be read to, of course, but lately she also loves sitting and flipping through pages and telling the story Sophie-style. And she pretty much hits the main words from each page! She has favorite books -- like the one my grandmother gave her about an adopted baby from China because Gram thought the baby on the cover looked like Sophie (?!?) and Bark, George and No, David (incidentally, there's a Spanish version out called...No, David) and Wow, School and the very annoying pop-up book featuring Elmo. I thought it would be great for our road trip this summer but who knew the batteries would last so long?

One of her most recent literary acquisitions is the Ten Little Dinosaurs book. It's basically the "ten little monkies jumping on the bed" story, but it somehow explains the extinction of the species (or the genus?). She climbed into her toy basket in the living room and read it several times to herself.

Two Thumbs (and a finger) Up (the nose)

Lucy and her folks invited Sophie (and her folks) to a movie this afternoon. It was Sophie's first adventure to the theatahhhh. And she LOVED it. Loved the popcorn, loved the big cartoons, loved sitting on Nini's lap, loved eating Jason's Reeses Pieces. I was a little worried when the lights got very dark for The Golden Compass previews -- a giant polar bear jumped onto the screen and roared -- but Sophie just yelled "Lion!" and roared back. We saw Bee Movie, a nice choice for her first film because there were no really scary parts and she likes bumblebees. Taking after her mother, Sophie did chomp down half a bag of popcorn before the movie even started. Frank was afraid she might barf so we had to hide the bag for a while. Lucy loved the movie, too -- despite her finger-up-the-nose commentary in the final picture. They both spontaneously applauded at the end. You don't get better reviews than that.

Gross

Frank went out to listen to some music a couple nights ago so I decided to introduce Sophie to the wonders of Subway rather than cooking dinner. When we got home, I cut her tuna fish sandwich into smaller pieces, but I left my roast beef sandwich whole. Here's our dinner conversation:

Sophie: You gotta hot dog? I wanna HOT DOG!
Me: No...I just have a big sandwich. And you have a small sandwich.
Sophie (picking at sandwich): What dat? I'm eating goldfish?! Goldfish?!
Me (laughing): No, it's TUNA fish. Not goldfish.
Sophie: You're eating kitty cat sandwich.

So then we just split the Cheetohs and called it a night.