Thanksgiving 2012

I'm a little late, but I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

We went to nky to be with Derek's family and I made my first Thanksgiving dinner! Luckily I had been to Columbus a couple weeks prior and my mom and I made a practice turkey, and my mother and sister in laws were super helpful the day of, but dinner was a success and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. I may or may not have had dreams about things going horribly wrong and dinner being ruined, or the turkey still breathing while I was cooking it.

The only potentially bad thing was that the turkey innards were not contained to a bag but instead were just sitting there inside the bird and needed to be taken out. I got hot and kind of nauseous when I saw them, but Linda came the rescue and took them out for me. I think I would have been able to do it, I just might have needed to go outside and get some air and work myself up to it. Maybe next year :)

Anyways, here is the finished product, my first turkey.

We also celebrated out nephew Connor's birthday over the weekend. We got him a lumberjack shirt that matched Derek's and a toy chainsaw so he could be a little mini lumberjack.

Oliver wanted to get in on the toy chainsaw action. He even was a fan of the safety goggles!

All the grandkids with grandma and pap pap. 

We are blessed with wonderful family and are so thankful for them. We're thankful that we were able to be with half of our family for Thanksgiving and look forward to seeing the other half at Christmas. We're also thankful that Linda is halfway through her chemo treatments and is doing well. (Doesn't she look great in the photo above?) She was even able to help pull Thanksgiving dinner together on Thursday! We have so much to be thankful for, most especially our Savior whose birth we anticipate as we wait to celebrate the moment in eternity when God entered the world in the form of an infant to save us when we were helpless to save ourselves.

Halloween

A little late, but I didn't want to miss out on posting pictures of our Halloween.

 We carved pumpkins with some friends on Tuesday night. Moose loved eating the pumpkin guts. Who knew? Is there anything he won't eat?

Here is a picture of my pumpkin and Charissa's. Charissa is an art teacher. It is obvious in the quality of our pumpkin carving. Derek carved a pumpkin with a mustache.  He was so proud of it. And so psyched when trick or treaters and/or their parents commented on the mustached pumpkin.

We dressed Moose up as a squirrel. My real dream is to get a little dog and name it Squirrel, so we can have Moose and Squirrel. But dressing Moose up as a squirrel will have to do for now. He tolerated it fairly well.

As always, we had a great time passing out candy to all the cute little trick or treaters. And they all loved that Moose was in costume. Some of them even tried to come into our house! No fear, those little crazies looking for candy!

Life

It's been a bit quiet around here. I'm not quite sure why. After the very busy weekend of celebrations things at work were real busy, but I made my nearly impossible Friday deadline, and now work is manageable. It's good to not feel rushed.

We finished up our fall soccer season. We had such a great time coaching our little girls. Practices and games were always a highlight of the week, even when little ones had a hard time paying attention or didn't quite pick up on what we were trying to teach them. I think they made great progress this season, and we have some really sweet girls on our team who brought lots of smiles and laughs to our lives each week.

We also got to spend a few days watching the 2 youngest boys of an LCA family. They really aren't that young, 10th grade and 6th grade, but young enough that they need someone to take them places and feed them. Old enough however to put themselves to bed, wake themselves up, get their homework and make plans with friends. We didn't need to entertain them, just make sure they ate and slept. But, let me tell you, we were only with them for about 4 days and keeping track of the schedules was no joke. Since one is high school and the other elementary school, they had to be at school at different times, got home from school at different times, had different football practice times, and then in the brief time we were there a senior football dinner, early morning football workouts, football pictures, a game, practices and the making of a Spanish appetizer for class were also thrown into the mix. Neither Derek nor I remember being that busy growing up. We think kids now are much busier than they used to be.

We had a few pretty low key days last week, and then this past weekend capped off wedding season 2012 for us. Our good friends Alex and Laura tied the knot on Saturday. Derek and his brother Kevin were both in the wedding party, which meant that we had the treat of Kevin and Kayla staying with us, as well as getting to go to the rehearsal dinner Friday night.

A few people came over after the rehearsal on Friday and we didn't make it to bed until 3 am! I can't remember the last time I was up that late. Luckily Kayla and I had no where to be until Saturday evening, so we went to Windy Corner Market for some breakfast and then laid on the couch and watched Friends while we dozed in and out of sleep. I can't remember the last time I did nothing all day, but it was pretty glorious. We met some friends for a little pre-wedding snack at Drakes and then headed to the church for the ceremony. The reception was at the Lexington Country Club and was absolutely gorgeous. They had delicious food, cake and other deserts, and the reception even included some square dancing - a Young Life favorite! Angie and Micah had a little after party, and it was another late evening. It was great to spend time with so many friends this weekend.

Sunday consisted of church and small group, as well as christening our fire place for the winter. I love cozy fires! Yay for being lazy all weekend long!

I think Derek may have some pictures of these things on his phone. I'll try to find those, but for now, just words. Sorry, I'm a bad blogger!