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!

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...

Happy Halloween

Grant's little school has Noah's Ark Day instead of 'Halloween'. I ordered a mask and shirt a month ago. I'm so glad it came in. It was supposed to arrive the day we needed it, but ended up arriving two days earlier! I was so excited I didn't have to throw something together at the last minute.

My niece was a kitty cat. Usually all smiles, she was weary of us leaving her at the school.

This is the first year we've actually been home Halloween weekend in a while. So we made some plans with our church's Trunk or Treat event. On Friday, I came down with a nasty stomach virus. I was for sure I'd miss all the festivities on Saturday. I did my best and pressed through and felt fine by Saturday afternoon. So I got out of my funk and put the finishing touches on our costumes (ways to make them warmer) and trunk decorations. The first stop was my sister's church for their event.

My little pirate played some games, and won some prizes.

My big pirate helped chase a beautiful butterfly, my niece.

It was a wonderful day, weather wise, for the events. Even a little too sunny!

Next stop was our church event.
Vivian and my sister decided to come with us. You can see her wings really well here.

Grant scarfed down the cotton candy, and pretty much became the usual giant sticky mess.

I didn't get a picture of our trunk, but it was basically a giant 'friendly' skull my Mom and I made. I had a plan of kids reaching into the skull's mouth and drawing coins. The color of the coin told me how much candy to give them. Well, I left the trunk up with the bowl of plastic coins in the skull mouth and when I came back from eating, all but 1 coin was gone. I guess some kids went early and thought thats what I was handing out. So, yea, Greg, I have to buy you some coins to replace the ones I borrowed...sorry. Arrgghhh.
The kids that DID do what they were supposed to got some great candy and Play-Doh. Vivian came by to get some as well. Grant didn't care much for the trunk or treating as he did the playground and bounce house.

Happy Halloween, mateys!

Pumpkin Patch

Ahoy maties! We will be a family of pirates this year. Daniel didn't join us for the pictures, he had the scurvy....(technically a Cowboys game to watch).

We then had an outfit change to match Miss Vivian.

Thank You Columbus

Due to Columbus being honored for getting lost, we got a day off from work! Daniel and I took Grant to The Great Wolf Lodge. Grant fell asleep on the way there and good thing he did because we had a long day ahead of us.

It rained, hard, the entire way there.


Here was the view from our room.

A quick snack before we start our day.


This is where I would insert all these adorable pictures of my son having a blast with his father and I at the indoor waterpark. The only one in the south of it's kind. However, I took a waterproof disposable camera in the park and it was too dark and only a few pictures barely showed up. I was quite upset to say the least. So here are some ones I found on the internet to let you get the idea.

That evening we checked out the stores at the hotel. Here, Grant is trying to convince me to buy this treat. He is quite the negotiator.

His negotiating skills worked better in the gift shop. He had to have these motorcycles.

Later, we went trick or treating at the hotel. He quickly said, "Mommy I can't trick or treat without my costume!". I reassured him the hotel staff would let us participate anyway.



As we wrapped up the day, we joined all the other children for storytime. He was excited about his new McQueen house shoes he got for the occasion.

Daniel and I were worn out. We had to hit Starbucks to make it through storytime.


These animatronic figures taught us not to be scared of nature. I was scared of the thing that looked like a little boys head on a stump. Surely he was scared of nature!

Cheese!

Grant was into the story line, or confused by the boys head, I don't know...


Grant and one of the Great Wolf mascots.

Grant and Daddy racing back to the room.

In order to save some money, we pulled out our own breakfast. Some quick bites and we were back to the waterpark.

Insert more cute pictures here. On this morning, he was brave enough to wait in line with the 'tweens' to cross the pool via the log stumps (see picture from brochure below). However, he was not tall enough to use the rope, so he jumped from one to the other. At point, some girls about 8 years old or so were clapping for him and cheering him on.

It got to be around lunch time and so we packed up and headed back home. We stopped for lunch at this great little diner we thought we'd try. It was so good!

Next time, I'll know to be like those people I talked about who had their expensive cameras out taking pictures of their kids in the water. Ok, maybe I'll just get a diposable with a flash next time...if they still make them by then!