Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving came, and what was I thankful for? Besides the obvious, a week off! We started our vacation by making a late night trip to visit Daniel's family. Daniel's Dad had to referee a football game nearby, so we had to wait until after dark to go. To keep Grant and I alert, we did all sorts of things out of the ordinary. He chose to break out the stroller and walk his baby penguin around the neighborhood. I loved the look on my neighbor's face when she caught me pushing Grant out in it at that time of the night.

Here, we caught up on some needed rest and ate until our heart's content. We visited with family and watched Grant play and entertain the crowd.

Grant and his Aunt Erica built a fort for a showing of "Finding Nemo"

Upon our return home, we got all sorts of things accomplished like backed up cleaning duties, laundry, and movie watching. Grant was a good help. I found him reading in bed one night, so cute.

My Mom and I went Christmas shopping one day and hit the pre-Black Friday sales. I found the weirdest things while we were out.

Like this Hilary Clinton nutcracker and this Bill Clinton corkscrew. Real classy!

And for the nostalgic ones, a Farrah Fawcett Barbie doll in her classic red swimsuit pose.

I came home with things MUCH better, and cheaper than this!

Wednesday we prepped for Thanksgiving. I made cream cheese lemon bars (a recipe from Pinterest) and Daniel tried his hand at coconut meringue pie again. We tried a few years ago, a couple of times and meringue just never worked. This time was a great success! Good for us, bad on my waistline...so good! I can report that the lemon bars were only OK. 'Regular' lemon bars are better.


Thursday was Thanksgiving Day. We woke up and Grant actually didn't care to watch the parades. He joined me in watching Beauty and the Beast which happened to be playing on the Disney Channel. I spent the majority of the morning singing the entire score of the movie.

We went to MiMi and PawPaw's house for Thanksgiving and my sister and her family joined us. Grant wanted to say the prayer, and I thought I filmed it. However, this is the only thing that came out: A picture of him scratching his nose and Vivian in the background looking shocked. Oh well, it was a great prayer of Thanksgiving.

We spent the majority of the day with the family and then went home just in time to watch the Texas vs. Texas A&M game...the LAST one. I seriously haven't watched an entire football game this season, Cowboy, UT, whoever...but this one I felt I must pay attention to. I was so glad I did! Watching this last 2 minutes got my pulse up and some loud cheers. I was glad to see TX pull out the win, but also happy for A&M that they didn't get stomped on during the last game of the rivalry. Great way to go out.

This weekend we decorated our home for Christmas, wrapped presents, and ate more pie and had Pinterest recipe attempts. Here is Daniel putting out the lights outside as the temperature began to drop drastically. I always hated decorating the for holidays wearing summer clothes!



I also tried to get some pictures of Grant for our Christmas card. He was NOT happy about it. I even tried bribing him with ice cream. I came away with 1 usable picture and he got 'bamilla' ice cream.

He acts as though its painful...

...then he just turns on his attitude!

Cousin Fun - November Edition

My brother and sister-in-law had a wedding to attend in which they were there DJ and guests, so we offered to keep Fletcher while they did they job/had fun!

We started out at the playground to enjoy the beautiful weather. I like living within walking distance to the elementary school and its huge playground!

From there, we went to feed the ducks at a nearby park. When I pulled up, most of the ducks were asleep. When I opened the car door, its like someone yelled "Attack!". We fed them bread as fast as we could. Grant got nipped by one, so I made sure to remind them to hurry and get rid of the bread.
I really could have sat all day and watched the boys chase (or be chased by) the ducks, geese, and one random kitten. It was fun to watch.
That night, we went to see "Puss in Boots".


(Don't worry, I took these before the movie started, but they were involved like this throughout the whole movie.)

After the movie, we went to eat with my sister, niece and brother in law. For dessert, we came back home and decorated the cookies we had made before the movies.

Grant kind of over did it on the red sprinkles!

Fletcher went home Sunday after joining us for church and a big lunch. Needless to say, Grant and I napped the majority of the afternoon. Grant slept for over 3 hours and I'm pretty sure he could have slept longer than that!

Candy Man

On actual Halloween night, we decided just to hand out the candy we had left over from trunk or treat. When it started to get dark, things got a little slow, so Grant decided to 'spur' on the business...