Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving week! And what a week it was!  We had two full real Thanksgivings, and then leftovers since!  Wednesday night we had the Cammacks over for a "Friends-giving."  My brother invited us over for Thanksgiving, but we had to have leftovers, so we had our own the day before!  Also, Monica's diet can be pretty restrictive, so this way we knew we had some of everything.  We love Thanksgiving food, and we love the leftovers, so it was perfect!  To help drive this point, on Friday Monica went to Costco to get some groceries and happened to see clearance turkeys and picked up another 18 pounder.  Oh yeah, it's turkey time.

On Monday I took the kids outside to play.  Grayson and I sat in the grass, and he... well he just sat there.  He didn't really do anything.  But we did get to watch the sidewalk chalking.  The girls drew a few pictures, and then Brooke thought to do a hopscotch board, and then it was all hopscotch after that.  Brooke made an early exit after Winry kicked her for standing on her hopscotch board, and then Winry would draw individual squares, and then I believe decorate them with ears and... a mane maybe.  Then she did hopscotch jumping from one box to the next.  I was pretty impressed with her hopping, as I've never seen her jump like that before.  We were out all the way until we got called in for dinner.

On Wednesday I made my best attempt to dress Grayson and myself to be matching.  At least we're both in plaid, right?

Much of Wednesday was Monica in the kitchen, and me keeping everyone else out.  The girls went to play with Eleanor and Clara in the morning, so that was really nice.  Eventually night came, and with it company and food!  We set up a separate table for the kids, which usually ends up being a pretty big hit.  The kids all loved sitting together, while the adults got a little peace.

It was great having friends over, and we had a lot of fun!  I'm grateful that we have wonderful friends, and especially for the Cammacks!  Our families pair together so great!

After all was said and done and everyone under 7 was in bed (at least in our house), Monica and I were doing some cleaning up, when she turned to me with the wish bone!  It was time!.. or so we thought.  It wasn't dry yet, and didn't break, so we set it aside and will have to try again later.

On Thursday, also known as Thanksgiving proper, we headed up to Westminster to visit my brother's family.  We had a great time with them.  I think the big highlight is always that our kids have so much fun and don't always need us to entertain them.  Monica and I have a lot of fun catching up with everyone too.  While we were there Grayson was having a bit of a hard time, but fear not, we had our stroller in the van.  I think we always have a stroller in the van, and right now I don't think I ever want to leave home without one... I guess under the assumption I also have Grayson... probably don't need to take one to work.  Anyway, Grayson and I enjoyed a nice walk around the neighborhood and got back in time for Thanksgiving dinner!

One fun thing at Tyson and Tina's house was a big tree they made for their wall with lots of leaves.  The kids were writing things they were grateful for on the leaves and taping it to the tree.  Brooke and Winry both made a leaf to put up while we were there.  Also, Winry loves that she can "touch the sky" at their house.

Andrew surprised his family by coming out for Thanksgiving.  Originally he wasn't going to, and just headed up to my parents house.  My dad watched the weather, and since it was good, they came out to surprise everyone!  My mom did not come out though, as she's still not feeling great from her hip surgery and didn't think she could sit in the car that long.  I called my mom and we chatted for about an hour.  She was doing well, and was making a consolidated Thanksgiving of her favorite foods: turkey, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.  That's a pretty good list if you're pruning down.  We had a lot of fun talking and it was good to catch up.  After the call I stumbled upon some party games.  Here are all of the kids sitting on the "same" chair!  I texted it to Tina for their Christmas card, so I guess we'll see!

While there, Katelyn told me they had a salamander!  I used to have a bunch of salamanders growing up.  They would fall into our window wells and eventually I set up a tank and would keep one or two of them in my room and rotate through them.  They had a small salamander, and I was going to pick it up for a picture, but it was laying under a stick and I didn't want to bug it too much.

Grayson has started to do a little self feeding lately.  He's not great at letting go of food in his mouth, but he'll put something in his mouth and try to get it out of his hands. He's also started to hold his bottle when we feed him.  It's pretty nice, however this also means that once you make his bottle and are carrying him up to his room he'll rip his bottle out of your hands and start drinking it on the way up to nap/bed time. If you know Grayson, this is all a really big deal!

On Friday we decided to go to the zoo!  We had a lot of fun there, and we even went to the elephant and sea lion shows.  Here we all are waiting for the elephant show to start.

And the elephants did not disappoint!  Half way through, one of them almost left, but I guess he decided apples were worth it and turned around and came back.

Winry was so excited for the sea lion show because they jump up and touch a ball.  Sea lions are one of Winry's favorite animals (along with vultures) and I'm pretty sure it's from seeing it touch the ball.  That jump made a big impression on her long ago.

The lions were right up next to the glass when we got there, and the male was making some grunting noises or something too.  We heard him calling as we were coming over, and then he was silent while we were there so I didn't take a video, but once we left I heard him calling again.

On the way home Grayson stuck his foot in his mouth!  He's never done that before.  I guess if you want your baby to put some things in their mouth you've gotta be ready for EVERYTHING to go in their mouth.

On Saturday morning we went to get our Christmas tree!  The girls were so excited.  We got it in the base and decorated it right away!  This is reminding me I need to water the tree again, be right back...  All right, I'm back.  Glad I remembered that!  The tree looks great.  I wanted to take a picture of it once it's dark, but I forgot last night, so I'll try to remember tonight and get it in here for next week.  We also started decorating the house, but don't have all those lights up yet either, so I'll put a picture of the house up once it's all done.

Monica used the branches I cut from the bottom of the tree to make a wreath, and it looks great!  I love our homemade wreaths!

That afternoon, Grayson was having a hard time at home and needed something to do so I took him on a walk.  We were out for an hour! which took us all the way to nap time.  He was happy the whole time, except one part where the sun was in his eyes.

This morning Grayson really wanted to get to the Christmas tree.  We've made a barricade around it so he can't pull things off the tree.  Well, I put his play table too close and he used it like a stair case!  I got him before he fell in on the other side, which is good!  Looks like he's gonna be a climber...  Hopefully this was really just a fluke.

At church it seemed like Grayson was going to stay awake for church for the first time ever.  He made it all the way through sacrament meeting and never even seemed tired.  That quickly changed in elders quorum.  I even held him sitting up to try to help him stay awake (he's kind of transitioning to one nap, depends on the day, but it seemed like today would be one of those days) and he just curled up against me sitting up, put his thumb in his mouth and went to sleep.  So I spent the rest of church pacing with him.  He woke up before church was over, but was pretty grumpy for a little which forced us into the hall.  When we got home, Brooke wanted to change into some new clothes that she got as a reward for stopping sucking her thumb and let Grayson feel them because he loves soft things.  He was laughing and giggling he loved it so much.  He even started chasing her around to rub his face on her shirt!

I think those are all the happenings around here.  Jelly is currently in the Christmas tree playing with something.  I just keep hearing rattling, but things seem like they're probably fine.  The tree hasn't fallen over yet.  Anyway, I think that's everything for now!  Have a great week!