A Little Update

Happy Holidays, Everyone!  Welcome to the busy, crazy, but mostly fun time of the year.  In the midst of all of this craziness, I thought I would try to squeeze in a Thanksgiving picture or two. 

We stayed downtown again this year, but this time we invited family to join us!  My brother Steve and his family, as well as my brother Dan and his wife, Corrie, booked rooms and hung out with us.  It was my nephew's 13th birthday, to boot!  We rode TRAX to gateway, had dinner, the went back to the hotel for some swimming.  After that, we played games in my brother's room until much later than was really good for us.  We were having so much fun, we couldn't stop.

The next morning, Wes, being in a new and different place, woke bright and early.  I snuggled him into our bed and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  To my surprise, he actually really enjoyed it.

Above, he has his classic snuggle position going on.  His blanket corner (and yes, it has to be a certain corner) under his nose, and thumb in mouth.

Wes, all dressed up for Thanksgiving.  He liked the mirrored closet doors... after his first, not-so-pleasant, and quite literal, run-in with them.  When we first arrived at our hotel room, Wes was running all around exploring.  He is not used to foor-to-ceiling mirrors, so in his running, he thought that the room just kept on going, and SMACK! he ran straight into the mirror and knocked himself backwards.  Don't worry, it wounded his pride more than anything.  He just sat up, looked at me with a stunned expression, and then got up.  He walked by the mirrors several more times, eyeing them suspiciously, before he realized they moved and were fun to hide behind.  The mirrored doors and Wes made peace at last.

In the morning we met Grant's family for brunch at Little America Hotel downtown.  It was delish.  Wes found the chocolate fondu espeically yummy.

After Little America, it was time for a nap, and dinner at my parent's house.  Here I am with some of my neices and nephews, from left: Robbie, Heidi, Jadon and Karli.

The table all set up and ready to go.  One of my favorite traditions is going down to my mom's the day before Thanksgiving and helping to set the table.  Doesn't it look pretty?

The fam enjoying dinner.  Ok, this is half the fam enjoying dinner....

Here is the other half enjoying dinner.  What a great day.

Clowning Around

Squeezo

I am in desperate need of a lazy moment or two, so here I am. Not that I don't have plenty to do, because I really, really do. For instance, my bathrooms haven't seen the business end of a mop in probably three weeks. But that's cuz my mop broke so all of my floors have been just disgusting. And sticky. But let me back up. It is canning season, which means that all of my keeping-the-house-in-a-at-least-somewhat-decent-state-of-cleanliness efforts go into picking, chopping, preparing, boiling, sanitizing jars, etc, etc, etc. So my house has been filthy, and I do mean filthy. Yesterday Wes walked around barefoot for a few hours in the morning and the bottoms of his tiny feet were BLACK. Gross, I know.

But that brings me back to the mop. I have had no mop and no time to mop. This weekend I canned (with some assistance) four batches of grape jam and two batches of applesauce. (This is after a month of canning jar after jar of marinara sauce and salsa). By Sunday the floor was so disgusting that even the dogs wouldn't walk on it. It was so absolutely awful that my sweet husband waited until after midnight to go to the store to get me a new mop.

Why didn't I just get down on my hands and knees and scrub it the old fashioned way, you ask? Well, I had actually done that shortly after the mop broke, and it hurt. My knees, my back, my neck, you name it, and it hurt after scrubbing that much floor on my hands and knees. So when it was that disgusting, I needed a mop.

So that is what I have been doing all day today after a weekend of canning. Mopping. Don't you wish you had my life?

I am very happy that some family were able to put to use the abundance of Concord grapes that grow in my backyard. I am also very, deeply grateful to everyone who helped with the new shed we have been building. I now have hope it might actually, just maybe, be done in time for winter. I have the very best family in the whole wide world.

Some of you may even know that we went on vacation in September. I have, several times, sat down to blog all about it in great detail with a zillion pictures and all. The tasks was so overwhelming that I never got very far with it. And then it dawned on me: no one really cares that much. So I will post some of our favorite photos from one of our favorite vacations. Oh, we went to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, in case you were wondering. And yes, it is beautiful, and lush, and warm, and wonderful. Put it on your list of places to visit sometime in your life. You won't be disappointed.


We didn't go on our trip alone! Grant's sister, Jessica, her husband, Shane, and her two utterly adorable girls Jada and Chloe, drove over from Tennessee to play with us! It wouldn't not have been even remotely as fun without them. It was wonderful to spend so much time together, especially since we don't see them very often.
This photo makes the list of favorites because it always makes me chuckle. Grant's brother-in-law, Shane, has these remote control airplanes that are kind of interesting to me but are fascinating to males in a way I will never quite understand. Even these random old men on the beach loved them. What really makes me laugh, is that the old guy's black swim suit looks like a black censor block over his bum Don't worry. I promise we were not taking any pictures of naked bums. ESPECIALLY not old man naked bums.



This was the neat pattern in the sand left when the tide went out.

Bike riding is a must in Hilton Head. There are miles and miles of scenic bike trails, as well as bike rental places right on the resort properties. To rent a bike for a week: $25. The fun and the memories created: priceless.

I love how happy Grant looks in this picture. I also love how he is not pedaling at all. Poor Shane may never recover. I guess he needed to work off all of those packages of Double Stuf Golden Oreos. Seriously. We went through six packages of them while on this vacation. (Okay, okay, FIVE packages of Double Stuf Golden Oreos and ONE package of disgusting, gag inducing normal Stuf Golden Oreos that I bought. Sorry, Shane.)

Aren't my boys handsome?

We went on a pretty-cool dolphin tour while in Hilton Head. It was a beautiful day for it, and we did, indeed, actually see some dolphins!

Wes and water... nothing makes him happier than playing in the bathtub, the swimming pool, the ocean, you name it. He and Grant had some good times together in the water.

I love, love, love this picture. It is Jada dancing in the waves at sunset. It is so free and uninhibited. It makes me wish I was five again.

This is one of my favorite sunset pictures of all time. I love the way the wet sand is reflecting the colors of the sky.

Another beautiful photo by Grant. It is just so beautiful! It makes me wish I was back there. The weather was so beautiful and the water was so nice and warm.... Ahhhh.

Jada has to be one of the cutest, smartest, sweetest kids I have ever met. Evidently she's a little silly, too!

I wish I was sitting in one of those chairs right now.

Wesley the Magnificent!

Here you will see in my hands a washcloth. But this is not just any ordinary washcloth. It is a very special, magical washcloth from India.

Pay very close attention as I, Wesley the Magnificent, will make the washcloth disappear right before your very eyes. I will just place the magic washcloth in the magic photo album....

Then I will wave my hand over it like so

Then I will say the magic words

And then, so quickly that the naked eye can't see it, I will close the cover on the magic photo album....

And, VOILA! the magic-washcloth-from-India has disappeared!

But that's not all. Oh no, that's not nearly all.

If I open the photo album just like so....

wait for it, wait for it.......

SHAZAM! The washcloth REAPPEARS!

It doesn't get any more amazing than that, folks.

Yes, I am truly Magnificent.

Thank you, thank you-- I'll be here all week.

New Camera

Well, as you might have guessed from the title, we got a new camera. Sadly, our last point-and-shoot was lost while camping at Rockport about a month ago. After a long search, we finally accepted the idea that our camera and (even worse) our pictures were gone forever. We went to pick out a new camera, and here it is....

Isn't it pretty?

We figured we should learn how to use it, so I downloaded a series of online photography lessons and we started learning stuff.

We went for a walk in the park and tried our hand at photography. The first lesson was on aperture.

We used Wes as a model quite a bit. Couldn't have a cuter one, if I do say so myself.

Don't you wanna just lie in that sunny spot and take a nap?

Practicing shutter speed: the photo is a little dark, but I thought the splash was cool.
We used Scooter as a model a lot, too. He likes to pose, so it seems. Oscar just runs away.

This picture just cracks me up...

This looks like it could be a Zoolander pose or something.

Wes's new favorite pastime is to help me cook. He loves to hold a "poon" and a "bol" and stir. We made bananna bread and he was so excited about it. He kept running over to the oven to check on it.

The final product. It was delish.

We are taking pictures of EVERYTHING with our new fancy, shmancy camera. (I was trying out the different lighting features for this picture.) It is kinda fun to have pictures of stuff you might not usually think of. Like this:

These were a hand-me-down from my nephews. They are Wes's favorite thing in the whole wide world.

I think this is one of the first pictures taken with our new camera. Grant took this. It looks so good. He has a knack for photography.

Offically Old

I am sure everyone has this experience sometime. This just happened to be my first and I didn't like it.
Grant and I were watching some of my nieces and nephews and they thought it would be fun to look through some of our old photo albums. Of course, my neices thought our old high school dance pictures were especially entertaining. Grant asked the innocent question, " Are you girls excited to go to dances when you get older so you can have cool pictures?" My eight year old niece said, "Yes, but ours will look better 'cause our dresses won't be so old-fashioned." The way she said would make you think I was a pioneer or something-- prairie dress, bonnet and all.

In that moment I felt officially old for the first time.