As I had hoped, November has been much slower for our little family. Lots of happenings for our parents, but none for us! We're taking advantage of it, and getting a lot of house projects done along with refinancing. But save most of that for our renovation blog I guess.

Alden and Rhianwen almost didn't seem to know what to do with themselves with the slower pace. They kept asking me where we were going, and anytime we did go somewhere and were on the way home, Alden would burst into tears, "I don't want to go home!" Finally, they have rediscovered how much fun home can be, even if our square footage is now cut in half because of emptying our family room into the rest of the house.

Some advantages to not being so busy: Daddy dates for Rhianwen. She feels so special! This week she put on her Aurora necklace and asked if it was an adult date or a kid date. Then she declared that she was little mommy. I have to say, Alden was quite sad that he couldn't go, but I try to do something special with him while they are gone like watch a movie or have icecream. He ends up enjoying it.

And just to add fuel to my anti-Disney princess fire, Rhianwen came up to me all dressed up, said she was Jasmine because, "See I have n*_ipp))les." Lovely, I think she meant a b**r-a.

Enjoying the family room prior to emptying it.

In preparation for the baby, we combined Alden's and Rhianwen's room. It was important to us to maintain their own semi-separate spaces, and I think we accomplished it fairly well. They both seem to really love the result and play in there a lot.

Alden is on Rhianwen's bed. For more pics, you can go to our renovation tracker.

Wally also tore down the treehouse because our kids were beginning to step through the rotted places and found that very upsetting. Of course, they loved the resulting holes that their feet left, but we decided we'd better do something about it. Amazingly, we obtained our neighbor's old decking material, which is very solid and will work wonderfully for a new bigger treehouse.

Felt fun. Loaves and fish left over from a Sunday School craft. It was almost enough to feed 5,000 again.

Just some more home fun.

Funny Alden quote after watching a Jesus movie when we were stuck home from church with bad colds: "Where's God? Is he in the movie?"

Next up, Thanksgiving at Grandmama and Grandaddy's with PaPa and Greatmama just moved in. We're really looking forward to it!