The weekend before Thanksgiving, my grandparents came over from Louisiana and stayed for several weeks. They had only intended to stay one week, but my Papa had some health complications and ended up in the hospital. They are back in Louisiana now and feeling much better. I enjoyed getting to see them. Here is a picture of Heather with my Nanny.
Speaking of Heather, she has a new boyfriend, Jacob, who looks just like Justin Bieber!!! We haven't met him yet, but we would love to. Heather says he has cut his hair since this picture was taken (I "borrowed" it from his Facebook page).
The day before Thanksgiving, our friends Kamie, Emma and James came over and we decorated sugar cookies and went to lunch. All the kids and mommies enjoyed hanging out together. Here are the kids enjoying their lunch.
We had a very nice Thanksgiving, we even fried the turkey this year! We also had a Native American dish called Three Sisters Stew that we all enjoyed. It seemed fitting to include a Native American dish into our feast. The weekend after Thanksgiving, we decorated the house for Christmas. We decided not to put up our full sized tree this year, as Zachary is too little. He is in the destructive phase now and we know our tree wouldn't make it. I collect ornaments whenever I go on trips and my ornaments all have a special meaning to me so I don't want want them to be broken. My mom bought us a little tree with un-breakable ornaments for the kids to put up. They had a great time. Once, the cat knocked the whole tree over and a few times Zachary has snuck past the gate and grabbed a few ornaments off the tree, but for the most part, the little tree has worked out well.
I took the boys to the Galleria one day so they could see the HUGE Christmas tree there and they thought it was amazing! We even saw Santa ice skating! The boys loved all the beautiful decorations.
The weekend after Thanksgiving our elf friend, Barney, returned! The kids LOVE Barney and race downstairs every morning to see where he is hiding. If you aren't familiar with Barney, here is his story www.theelfontheshelf.com Last year, our friend Alicia told us about her elf, Ernie, and how to invite one to come spend December with us. Our friend Kamie also has an elf and his name is Jack.
I absolutely love to bake and decided to try something completely different this year. I attempted to make a Figgy Pudding! It didn't come out quite right, the flavor was fine but the texture was weird. The boys seemed to enjoy it more than Paul, Heather or myself. Caleb thought it was called Piggy Pudding and we all liked the name and it stuck! Every now and then Caleb will ask when we are having Piggy Pudding again, but he clarifies that "it doesn't actually have pigs in it, we just call it that." It cracks us up.
This week, we made Gingerbread cookies. The boys helped me make the dough and they did a great job. I measured the ingredients and let the kids pour it in the bowl. Rolling out the dough didn't go so well. Somehow, that ended with the boys playing in their room while I cleaned up dough that had been thrown all over my kitchen. I was not particularly happy with the boys for getting in a food fight! Decorating the cookies went much smoother and we all enjoyed that. Even Daddy got in on the fun and made a "headless" gingerbread boy. It was pretty gross but Caleb and Paul thought it was hilarious. My cookies were much more traditional.
I am working hard on getting my Christmas cards in the mail. I am hoping that they will go out on Saturday, at the very latest Monday. This year is the first year I haven't sent them out right after Thanksgiving. There is just so much going on. These are some of the best pictures of the kids. Unfortunately, Zachary did not want to have his picture made and wanted to watch Barney instead. He was not exactly happy during picture taking time, but he is still pretty darn cute.
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