Update

Wow! What a wild week it has been ! Thanksgiving was a wonderful as I anticipated. The kids helped me make Frosty the Breadman:

All of our family came and celebrated with us. We shared our thanks, ate all day, and then the (younger) men had the traditional "Feats of Strength" Competition to burn off some of the calories:

The kids were suitably amazed. :)

Since Thanksgiving, I have been so busy.

I got all of my Christmas shopping done (except for my shopping for Joel. He is incredibly hard to find a gift for....), thanks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.  I do not, however, have all my Christmas crafting done; which means the busy-ness is far from over.

I have been frantically catching up on pattern writing and prepping for the next couple of designs I need to get going on. In November, I have designed and knit 2 pairs of mittens, 2 hats, and completed a pair of socks- all of which had to have the patterns to go with them finished and sent out to test knitters.

Admittedly, that doesn't seem like very much knitting to show for a full month- but I have been so busy otherwise with school, the kids, Thanksgiving, and all, that there was at least 2 weeks out of the month that I was only able to knit maybe 1 hr per day- which is not a whole lot of time.  I am hoping that things will actually start to calm down here pretty soon- when I'm done with the Christmas crafting, that is- and I will have some more time for knitting. In anticipation of that, I've started a new purse project (mittens and a cowl- or maybe a hat, I can't decide.), and a big at home colorwork sweater. Which I finally cast on for last night- and I am so loving how this yarn is knitting up!!! I am really excited about how this is going to turn out. I'll tell you more about it later.

So I have spent the last week prepping (shopping) for Christmas, doing and prepping for school and vacation, taking Roo to the Dr (prayer would be appreciated- that surgery is unnecessary. Nothing life-threatening, just things are not where they are supposed to be...), knitting/pattern writing/designing, cleaning and organizing (we always go through the toys and pass a lot on before Christmas in preparation- do you??), and just being busy with general mama stuff.....

In the meantime- I also received an early Birthday/Christmas present!

I am extremely excited about this big black box.

Because you see, it is a dehydrator. A nine tray Excalibur Dehydrator.

 And I have been putting it to good use already. The kids are thrilled- and so am I!

First Fruits:

First Meats:

Snacks the kids can have, and snacks I can have. Happy tummies all around. :D  Yay for useful gifts! (Thank you, Mom, I LOVE it! :D )

And just because I can't leave a blog post that has this many pictures without the requisite cuteness- here is Bear and Roo happily playing together- and Roo has discovered what to do about that painful camera flash.