Thanksgiving at our house

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year.  It was a lovely day!  I didn’t have to cook a turkey (thank you Dustin for the amazing smoked turkey you did) so hosting was fairly easy.  We did a good job of taking pics before lunch of everyone (yay)!  Sue was there but I guess we took pics before she arrived.  We missed Lindsey as she was with her family.  Here is J and MImi:

Mimi and the boys. She made them all these cute shirts!  They all 3 looked so cute in them – good job Mimi!

Sweet cousins!  Little cousins with the big cousins, Addison & Ian

Me and my cutie patootie. Her outfit is cute, right?  Oh the hilarity of this outfit.  I think I could make a whole blog on it alone.  Long story short mom and I have started using her embroidery machine to make cute clothes.  I do help even though I don’t know how to use the machine.  Mom doesn’t know how to do the computer stuff, so we are a good team. This is version 5, I think!  Several issues occurred and it worked long enough for a cute pic.  The ribbon is coming off – which is a whole other hilarious hiccup in itself.  At one point mom and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t talk.  It was so stinking funny.  At that point, we were either going to cry or laugh.  Hopefully we learned a few things and her Christmas outfit will go easier!

Our family!  Proud of them!  The McCoy’s! Pretty sure Miles is trying to eat the glasses.  :) Mimi and her granddaughter (I know she always wanted to be able to say that!) The Yales!  Harder to get the older cousins excited about pics!

Preschool Thanksgiving Party

Let’s see if I can catch up on some blogging.  I hosted Will’s school Thanksgiving party this year.  I felt like a real mom!  Will was so cute as he was thrilled to have me there.  He loved helping me pass out (or be the passer outer as he called it) cookies and juice boxes. These kids are so stinking adorable.  They all have great families that came together to help out their teacher who has a son with a tough illness.  Here is a pic of his table (please excuse the chocolate in his teeth).And the other table.  They all LOVED me taking their picture.  Hilarious.  Cheeseball!! Here is a pic of Will with Ms. Connors.  She is ah-mazing!  She is so wonderful with Will and has learned to deal with his hard headed/SWC-ness (anyone else have an SWC – you know what that means but if you don’t, strong willed child).After loading them up on sugar, Ms. Connors threw on the music and we had a dance party (to work off some of it).  If you ever want to feel good about yourself, go to your kid’s preschool class and dance!  They all want to dance with you!  You are the special guest! It was so fun! I sure enjoyed spending a little time with Will and his school friends.

Mom blogs worth reading

I like blogs.  I read them a good bit.  Sometimes I read them at work when I should be doing something like oh you know, working.  But that is about the only time I have to make that happen.  I came across this list of great mom blog posts.  I had read several of them before but some of them I had not.  This past week has been a little rough with a sick baby (who has been sick non-stop with one thing or another this last month) and very little sleep.  Anyway, some of these are written very well and say the things that a lot of us don't say aloud.  I especially like the one that addresses social media and how we only display the "pretty" parts of our lives.  It is easy to compare yourself to other people's pretty lives.  But really - how pretty is it really?  No one knows and generally all moms of young children (probably children of any age) are struggling with a lot of the same things.  All of this to say, I thought I would post just in case there is some other mom feeling really bad about their parenting/marriage/house/finances, etc. that might make them feel not so alone. It was a little lift to this tired mom.

School Days

Got Will’s school pictures back and I thought they turned out really cute this year! I couldn’t decide, so I bought 2 different poses.  They were all actually very cute!  He hammed it up this year!  Look how much he changed from last year!

Festival Fun

I forgot to post these. Dylan took Will to a festival at his church and Will had a blast! Dust and Tricia sent me these cute pics. Cousin fun!!

Halloween

Halloween was an absolute blast this year! At 3, Will was totally into it.  He picked out his costume and he loved wearing it!  Here he is roaring! I didn’t do a costume for Kendall, but my mom did make a tutu for her to wear with her little pumpkin outfit.  I think she looked adorable!Love this pic of Will and his friends!  The three of them went trick or treating last year.  My how a year changes things!  Last year they were…slow.  Very slow.  This year they were running up to the houses and onto the next!  Here is Will, Bryce and Victoria right before they started off.  Think Will was excited?  Ha – love the heads below peeking into the windows.  Funny kids!  We had quite the entourage! Will’s grandparents came over to enjoy the festivities.  Our street had the block party again before dark. Always fun to see all the neighbors out and about. Here they are watching the kiddos in action. I had a hard time catching a picture.  They were fast and off before I could get an action shot.  Finally got this one! Sweet little pumpkin and her daddy! Man this girl is sweet! She LOVED playing with her tutu.  I guess she liked how it felt on her hands.  She played with it all night and it was a bit of a mess by the end.Mimi passed out candy at the house while we walked around the neighborhood.  We all came back and joined her.  Good pic of Kevin, Kendall and Ally! Like this one of me, my mom and my daughter.  :) Will absolutely loved passing out candy – almost as much as he did getting it.  He kept saying – I think I hear some kids the door.  He was so funny! Halloween 2012 was a good one!

So long Big Tex

Two weeks ago, Kevin took the day off and we had a family day.  We had family pics taken at the Arbortetum and then we went to the fair.  It was such a fun day! On our way there, Kevin got texts from 2 different people saying Big Tex was on fire! By the time we got there – he looked like this.  So sad. Will was definitely bummed, but he took it ok.  He had been earlier in the week and loved Big Tex.  He loved seeing the fire trucks leaving the fair.  Ha.  But we stopped, had a moment and moved on with the day.  Of course we had to have our corny dogs!  Yummy!! Will was tall enough to ride on some of the kid rights by himself and he did.  He loved it! Kendall had a great time, too!  It ended up being a warm day and her baby legs came off.  Fun family time, fun memory!