Thanksgiving...

We had a very low key Thanksgiving this year. The kids didn't have school all week and luckily work usually slows down around the Holidays so I was able to focus on having fun with the kids and working during their nap time. Right down the street is a great park with hiking trails and a lake. The trails are flat so the kids can walk/run them.

There is a small sandy patch of beach with shells. Some ducks came to visit us this time. We brought lunch and ate it on the rocks and had a little bread left over to feed the ducks.

Mark only got Thursday and Friday off (I know, welcome to real life, right!) so we decided to stay in Charlotte this year. Hannah came down and spent the weekend with us.

I know I've said before that my kids love Hannah, but really they do. Addy and Katie did not leave her side the whole time she was here. Today in the car I mentioned Hannah's name to the kids and Marcus said "I want Hannah." (This coming from the same little boy who has decided that he is in a bad mood today and has literally said 15 words to me ALL day).


Hannah, Addy, Katie, Marcus & Me
We bought a 18lb turkey for the 6 of us to eat and still have leftovers, but no one is complaining yet. We made lots of other yummy food and stuffed ourselves all weekend. Hannah and I did some Black Friday shopping and we all laid around and were lazy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Life as we know it...

I feel like I have gotten really bad at this blogging thing, it might have something to do with the fact that I am now a single parent 4 1/2 days out of the week . . . although now that I put that in writing it doesn't sound as bad. But really, I put the kids to bed by myself Monday through Thursday. And at the end of everything, I don't feel like doing anything. If you notice the date on this post, I started it quite a while ago, now I am just trying to finish it before the start of December.

So some of the things I was supposed to blog about when I was in the "single parent,working with too many birthmothers and adoptive families and now doing fundraising for the orphanage mode . . . "

Mark's job is going well. We have kinda gotten into a grove and gotten used to the long hours (if that is possible). We get in lots of family time in the mornings and on the weekends. Marcus is taking it harder than the girls. He doesn't leave Mark's side on the weekends.

We celebrated Mark's birthday on the 13th. Katie was pretty excited to help me make the cinnamon rolls that Mark requested this year. Everybody had lots of fun eating them. I made too big of a batch and we talked about giving some away but then decided it would be better to go ahead and start gaining that Holiday weight--so Mark and I ate them all (well, the kids had a few).

We had a little mini-Maine reunion a couple weeks ago when my best friend's (from Maine) parents were in town. Their son Dan lives nearby so all three of them stopped by to say high and to play Nani and Papa (until their kids can start producing for them--hint hint Nate). My kids didn't mind at all, accepting presents and showing off comes natural to them.

The weather has been amazing this fall. This is why we moved here. We have spent so much time playing outside. The leaves have started falling and we have been waiting and waiting to get enough leaves to make a big pile, we are almost there.

Marcus and John
(Have I ever mentioned how much we love our neighbors, we have lots of friends for the girls at church, but seem to be missing someone for Marcus--and now we have John!)

Can you help...?

Ok, I am going to force this post on you, by emailing it out to most of my contacts. Most of you know my background and know about the organization my parents started in Guatemala 6 years ago. We are currently helping the Mayan Indians, so many of which, have been devastated by mudslides from Hurricane Agatha. Safe Homes for Children is focusing on community programs and trying to help the Mayan people better themselves by encouraging education. We provide school lunch (sometimes the only meal they get to eat that day), provide tutoring and some other programs which you can read about here.

Among the Mayan Indians the average age to drop out of school is 12, not because they don't want to continue, but because it costs money for uniforms, supplies and enrollment that their families don't have. How can they change things for their children? How can they end the poverty that they live in? How are they supposed to have a better life then their parents if they don't receive an education?

Go here (http://casadesion.blogspot.com/)and look at the kids and to get more information. I know that most of the people that read this blog are not wealthy, but with Christmas time coming near, it is a good time to search out those in need.

You can pick a kid to sponsor for this upcoming academic year, or throughout the rest of their schooling (yearly), you can split a sponsor with someone if you need to (let me know and I will take care of it). I am very involved in everything in Guatemala so you can come to me for an update at anytime. Their school year is different then ours (runs January to October), so the money is needed in the next month or these kids will not move on to middle school.

Cuteness galore...

The Sanofsky family loves Halloween, Mark and I started dating around Halloween 7 years ago--7 years and 3 kids, wow that is fast right? It was even more shocking when we had only known each other for 5 years and had 3 kids!
Halloween started this year with a costume parade at the kids preschool, I knew what the kids were going to dress up as but I was a little behind on getting the details together so Addy and Katie wore different costumes. I had to bribe Marcus with candy to get him to put his on.

Then Friday night our church had a 'trunk or treat'. Addy wasn't feeling well so she wouldn't put her costume on--there is no bribing Addy, either she does it or she doesn't. It took the kids two cars to learn exactly how it works and they were hooked.

She was cute enough to get candy anyway.

Saturday we carved a pumpkin with the kids.

The big day.

Here we have Addy as 'Princess Tiana' (Princess and the Frog) and Katie as her sidekick 'Lotte,' Marcus was supposed to be the frog prince but we could not find a frog costume anywhere, so he is the alligator 'Louis' (ignore the fact that he has wings--which would really make him a dragon).

With the 'trunk or treat' fresh in their minds, they didn't need much help. Addy and Marcus would follow Katie to the door, she would ring the bell. They would hold out their little pumpkins for the candy and say "trick or treat" (Marcus and Addy to the best of their ability-sooo cute!). Addy was a sneaky little one and would slip her hand in their bowl while they were giving Katie and Marcus candy and kept taking candy until they (or I stopped her).

After an hour and a half they were all tired so we came home and hung out with our neighbors in the driveway handing out candy until bedtime.

Our neighbor, John

Road trip...

Mark flew to Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon, so I was home alone until Wednesday night. We have been wanting to go visit Hannah at college for a little while now, and I decided Monday was the perfect day. Flossie decided to join me. It was a 3 hour trip and Flossie and I met up halfway and rode together. Once we got to Buena Vista, we crammed Hannah into our already full car and headed to a park for lunch. The kids were so excited to be with each other and to run so they had lots of fun. Flossie, Hannah and I sat around and gossiped--oh how I love my sisters!

Carson and Katie

Cooper and Addy
(please don't pay attention to her hair, I had it fixed all pretty but the 3-hr car trip gave Addy enough time to rip out her hair clips and matte it up)

After the park we went to Goodwill which surprisingly had some good finds--it brought back a lot of memories of shopping in high school. The kids ran around like hooligans, but luckily no one seemed to mind, we lost Cooper a couple times because we kept forgetting how fast he is. When the store had enough of us we went back to Hannah's to check out her apartment (I think her roommate got a little scared when she saw the five kids). The we headed to her campus for some ice cream (that adventure also included jumping in the piles of leaves that were being raked up and feeding/trying to get the gold fish in the pond).

The car!

Some of our craziness...

This whole summer has been a whirlwind of trying to do everything we wanted before Mark started his new job...the last 4 weeks have been no exception (and that has led to me being a total slacker with the whole blog thing).

At the beginning of the month I had some friends over that had adopted through us; actually, we became friends when they adopted through us. Both families adopted from the same birthmother, so they were excited to get together. (Both have very crazy stories, and if I ever do an adoption blog I will write about them--I'll ask first, Richele.)

We had 2 preschoolers, 5 toddlers and one baby in the house--it got a little crazy, but oh so much fun.

Jess, Katie, Cambriah, Jasper, Brandon, Addy, Fletcher and Marcus
Marcus and Fletcher became fast friends and were so funny to watch together.

My kids are all still obsessed with babies

Katie has been doing great at soccer. Her last game she was a superstar. She isn't afraid to kick the ball anymore and she has some serious ball handling skills for a 4-yr-old.

Marcus is ready to play, he keeps trying to get on the field

I flew to Washington State last week to have my wisdom teeth removed (Mark's cousin did it for us since we currently don't have dental insurance.) Kris and Liz (Mark's aunt and cousin) picked me up and we spent the day in Seattle. After some site-seeing we met Emily for dinner (wouldn't be nice if I had taken a picture of us at dinner with Emily).

the 'fish market'
The next day I had my teeth removed, and the rest of the trip I was 'couped' up in Aunt Kris' house on the sound, watching TV in their theater room and getting room-service of ice-cream shakes. (thank you Kris and Phil for taking care of me!)

Sunrise on the beach in front of their house

Mark survived surprisingly well without me, and the house was clean when I got home!
We spent the last week just hanging out.

Mark used his smoker one last time... (doesn't it sound like he is going off to war or something.)
Of course he had to make this delicious food while I was still recovering so I didn't really get to enjoy it, but Mark ate enough for the both of us.

Mark also grabbed some pumpkins for us to carve. The kids were pretty excited about them.