Thanksgiving at Grandma's

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of lots of good food, good friends, and good family! We sure did! We drove out to Grandma Zukie's house on Weds. night so that Brian could get the brine ready for his smoked turkey. He started smoking the turkey last Thanksgiving and wanted to keep that tradition going. Aunt Laura and I took the kids to the park on Thursday while everyone was cooking, just to get thier wiggles out. We all made a bunch of side dishes to go along with daddy's turkey and just ate ourselves silly. We had turkey, roast beef, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, maple glazed carrots, creamed spinich, sauteed green beans, cranberry sauce, cornbread pudding, sweet potato balls, rolls, and salad with pumpkin pie, creme brulee, and gingerbread trifle for dessert. YUM!

The kids got to sit at the kids table, as per their request, and we all sat at the new HUGE table that Uncle Jon finished as a gift to Grandma Zukie for her birthday. I think we got 14 people around that table!

It's that time of year again!

Time to start thinking about Christmas! This time of year is so much more magical when you have kids. The boys ask every day when it's going to be Christmas. We'll have to make one of those chains for them to count down starting December 1st. We also picked up some chocolate Advent calanders the last time we were at Trader Joes. We have made it a family tradition to go out looking at lights on Christmas eve. Last year we drove to a house nearby that had thier whole yard covered in decorations, including one of those huge inflatable snow globes with "snow" blowing around inside of it, and a Santa coming out of their chimney that you can actually control by pressing a button out front. The kids got such a kick out of it that they didn't want to leave. The promise of Santa always gets them to bed on time though.

The night before last we took pictures of the boys, which we are going to use in our Christmas card this year. Uncle Jon shared with us the idea of taking a picture of them while they were sleeping, so we attempted it and are very pleased with the results. Staging this took quite a bit of planning on our part. We dressed them in thier matching Christmas jammies, put them to bed as we usually do, then waited for them to fall asleep. I then draped thier sheet over our queen sized bed, brought thier pillows in, then we carried them into our room. Brian took the picture standing on the bed and covered the flash with a white piece of paper. We thought we were pretty artsy, LOL. We hope you enjoy!

I have to brag on Will!

Hey, if you can't brag about your kid on your own blog, then where else can you?;-) I just have to take a minute to sing Will's praises. I had his parent/teacher conference this morning and Will is doing so well in school. She said that he is always raising his hand, ready with the answer when she wants to call on someone and he is eager to take his turn to read when they do reading groups. He has passed the tests so far for all of his sight words, he is good at sounding words out, and he is on the 5's in thier timed math tests, the highest they have gone so far. He has not had to take any tests over again and has no problem finishing in the amount of time allotted.

I'm so pleased that he's doing so well and that the teacher seems to like his personality as well. She's very sweet and patient. Today Will wanted to make an art project at home to give to his teacher, so I get the feeling he likes her too:-).

Happy Birthday Little Guy!

Our baby is two today! I remember every detail of the day he was born so clearly that it seems like yesterday. He was so tiny and so perfect. It's so bittersweet watching my last baby grow up so quickly, but we are also thrilled to finally be getting some sleep! If anyone ever tells you that babies sleep through the night at 3 months, don't believe them!

We celebrated on Sat. with Brian's family. Everyone came out and spent the night. It was a full house, but lots of fun. The kids had a blast playing with thier cousins. Sam was also really excited over his gifts and cake. He kept taking the little Telletubbie figures off of his cake, and then putting them back on again. It was hard for him to get through the stack of presents because he wanted to stop and play with each one. He was so cute, enjoying his new toys.

This Thursday my mom is flying out from Vegas and we'll do a little encore party on Sat. and my dad will come over too. We aren't having cake tonight, as we feel that THREE parties would be overkill. Sammy doesn't really know that his real birthday is today anyway.

We are just spending a quiet evening at home tonight and I'm going to make ravioli with pesto and chicken. It is finally cold and rainy, which I LOVE. Will came home from school with very muddy shoes today, which are in the washing machine as we speak. I think I'll send him in rainboots tomorrow, that way I can just hose them off.

The first parent/teacher conference at Will's school is tomorrow, which I am looking forward to. He seems to be doing very well in first grade so far. He has gotton A's on all of his spelling tests, his reading is really taking off, and he's doing well in math too.