I hope everyone's enjoyed a great Thanksgiving. We were invited for Thanksgiving dinner with Paul's Uncle Jim and his fiancee, Val. Val and her family are great and we're very happy for Uncle Jim.

Thursday night, the Castle Rock outlet stores opened at 10:00 PM for Black Friday. As Paul and I were brushing our teeth, getting ready for bed at 11:00, we looked out our back window, which overlooks a good chunk of the town, and saw the crazy mess of vehicle lights clustered around the outlet shops and at a standstill along I-25 as far North as we were able to see. Of course, we avoided the outlet shops this whole weekend.

At home, we started a few - and completed some - projects.

First of all, Abby is FINALLY interested again in potty training now that she's moved up to the next class in daycare. Most of her friends are in this class and they are all trained, so all of a sudden, she's eager to try again as well. We've been taking a very laid-back approach to the potty and if she isn't willing, we aren't going to make it a big deal.

This weekend, Abby spent about 50% of the time in training pants on her request. She'll get a tiny bit wet and announce it, then go sit on the potty. No results were achieved on the potty, but this was a HUGE leap from the complete lack of interest over the past few weeks. Thanks to BumWear training pants, we had absolutely no spills, no messes, no fears, no need for extra changes of clothing. Great stuff!

The second project we tackled was a picture wall above our family room sofa. I've been trying to do something with this space ever since we moved the entertainment unit/tv down to the basement. The blank wall was so dull to look at and I couldn't stand it anymore.

Luckily, Michael's was having a huge after-Thanksgiving sale on picture frames, so we ended up completing this project for just around $50. This is still a work in progress and I think the intermediate result feels a bit "heavy." Perhaps it is the dark, dark frames or maybe the way the pictures are clustered. I'm still tweaking it. Also, I have found some wall decals that might look good with the photos and allow me to space things out a bit to reduce the heaviness I feel with this arrangement. Still, I'm just glad to be doing something with that wall!

Our third project was to remodel our master bedroom closet. As with all new construction homes, we were given the obnoxiously impractical wire shelves, which is a pain for organization. We went to our local hardware/home improvement store and have purchased several modules of the ClosetMaid system and are nearly complete with the remodel. When done - hopefully in the next couple of days - I'll post pictures.

Our fourth and last project was to get out the Christmas decorations and put them up. (Sorry about the photo - I didn't have the patience to play with camera settings tonight.) All interior decorations are up, but we are still missing a tree skirt and some strands of light to go with the garlands looped around banisters, but for the most part, we're done! Exterior decorations may not happen this year as our hardware only support standard wood roof shingles, but this house has concrete, so we're not sure how to attach things without spending a lot more money.

We got to spend time with my family last night where my mom whipped together (we were supposed to have gone over for "leftovers") a spectacular dinner surpassing the extravagance of any Thanksgiving feast. As with every holiday meal at my parents' house, Paul happily took on a small side-project. He replaced my parents' doorbell chime, where the performance has degraded to practically unusable, and added an extender to allow my parents to better hear the doorbell when in the back of the house or in the basement.

Overall, a very busy, productive, and fun long weekend for the Newells in Castle Rock.

If you haven't seen them in the news already, you should look them up on the internet. Lara and Lucy are emperor tamarin orphans born at the Denver zoo back in July. Their father died before they were born and their mother died a few weeks after they were born due to cancer. The zoo staff are doing their best to step in and raise these cuties.

Can't wait to take Abby to the zoo to meet them.

Abby spent at least a couple of hours this weekend on our drive to Oklahoma reading "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" I read it to her a couple of times, but for the most part, she tried reading it herself.

When she reads the book, it's a mash-up of the actual words with those of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"

Notice also that she flips her pronouns and says, "What do I see?" and "What do I hear?" because when we read it to her, these questions are seemingly directed at her.

For those of you unfamiliar with "Polar Bear, Polar Bear..." the repetitious words follow the pattern [animal], [animal], what do you hear? I hear a(n) [animal] [action verb] in my ear. For example, "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you hear? I hear a lion roaring in my ear." The order of animals are:
= The Polar Bear
= The lion who roars
= The hippopotamus who snorts
= The flamingo who flutes
= The zebra who brays
= The boa constrictor who hisses
= The elephant who trumpets
= The leopard who snarls
= The peacock who yelps
= The walrus who bellows
= The zookeeper who whistles
Finally, the zookeeper hears all the children acting and making sounds like all the previously named animals.

The following video was shot during the second reading. As the trip moved along, Abby got all the animals right on the first try, used "hear" rather than "see" consistently, and tried to add the sounds each animal made.

It was so much fun to watch and listen to her progress.

Storytime with Abby from Cecilia Newell on Vimeo.

This year, we spent a wonderful Halloween weekend with Peter, Nicole, and Annette. Abby has been wanting to see her cousin since we visited for Annette's 3rd birthday in May.

We were worried when Denver was hit by a big snow storm on Wednesday, dumping 1-2 feet of snow on the ground by Thursday afternoon and closing I-70. Fortunately, I-70 Eastbound opened up Friday morning around 10:00 and we were able to hit the road.

The girls had a great time and played well together.

They baked cookies, decorated them, went trick-or-treating, hopped on the Dads, and chased each other around.

On Sunday, Aunt Gert and Uncle John took us all out to dinner. They stopped over in Oklahoma following Uncle John's annual Ship's Reunion and on their way back to Ohio.

Below is a slideshow of pictures taken this weekend. To view or download the originals, go to http://public.fotki.com/newells/2009/halloween-in-ok/