Happy Thanksgiving!

I. Am. Stuffed.

We had a ridiculous amount of food today for the number of people we were serving. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, pea salad (yuck), bread, green bean casserole, squash casserole, sweet potato casserole, fresh cranberries, pumpkin pie, apple pie, cranberry pudding (steamed cake), peach cobbler....

Did I mention that I. Am. Stuffed.?

It was not an exciting day per se but a semi relaxing one which is always nice. I did most of my cooking the day before so we had some minimal cleaning up to do and then we could take it easy until dinner time. 

The kids had a blast with their cousins, well the boys did at least. Bella and her toddler aged cousin played in the same room but that's about it. We got to visit with some school friends who live around the corner for a bit too. Now everyone has gone home, dishes are done, kitchen is cleaned, laundry is going (never ending) and the kids are all asleep. Peace and quiet at last.

I am thankful today for my family, my friends, our health, the food on our table and the roof over our heads. What more could I ask for?

Math Night Video

This is my 5th attempt. Blogger's video isn't working right for me tonight.

Math Night

Logan's elementary school has a Math Night every other month or so. The kids do little crafts to help them learn about math concepts. This was our first time going and Logan loved it. I have to say it was pretty cute. The Kindergarten and 1st graders performed a song for us (and later the 3rd, 4th graders- no 5th graders showed) all about shapes.  

♪"Shapes, shapes, geometric shapes..." ♫

Logan's completely at ease on stage and had a huge smile both going up there and coming back off stage.

Afterwards we made our way to the cafeteria for some crafts. They made a string abacus, some bean baggie addition/subtraction thingy and made pictures using shapes they traced. I played with his abacus while he did the rest of the crafts. It's kind of soothing moving the beads one by one.

Kayla, Logan and Rebecca about to start their abacuses.

Logan, Rebecca and Austin

Oh Baby!

It was a day of babies at the zoo yesterday. They were everywhere and so darn cute! My family including dh for once, little BIL/SIL, MIL and niece all met up yesterday afternoon for some family zoo time.  The boys had a blast with their uncle and Abuela. Bella was running all over enjoying her freedom as dh got some exercise trying to keep up with her and I got some photos of the animals- the only little ones who would sit still long enough! 

Here's Jaya again. She's too cute and I love the photos of her. I have to shoot down from a platform to take pics of the rhinos.

It's hard to see here but she has a baby on her too. She was sitting way up at the top of her platform.

A few other animals...

Oh and a couple of MY babies (Ian never stood still)

Happy Halloween!

Halloween started out as any other normal day. Colored my hair (okay so I don't do that every day), went to Target and even dared to step foot in Party City (Don't do it- the place was mobbed). Put 2 kids down for naps since I knew we'd be out late and dh took one as well. Got everyone dressed, put all costumes, extra clothes, drinks, pumpkin buckets, etc in the car and we were on our way to our friends home for pizza, TOT'ing and ice cream sundaes.


After dinner we got everyone in their costumes and all 14 kids (not including baby Tybee) went TOT'ing. It was a mob of kids. By the time we were done with one house the rest were already onto the next. Bella got a Tootsie Pop from someone and proceeded to try to eat it wrapper and all. It was inevitable that she was going to get to it though so I took it off and she had at it. That was a sticky mess but one she enjoyed thoroughly.


It was so flipping HOT outside. Can we not get a nice, cool Halloween for once? The kids were sweating, the parents were sweating. Yuck. Next year I'm bringing water for my three. Spiderman (aka Logan) took off his mask he was so hot. Ian wouldn't let us take off his fireman jacket though. I asked several times. It wore them down pretty fast. They got tons of candy though and lots of chocolate (yay for me! LOL). We went back to the house to cool off and get some drinks and they stayed behind while some of the others went off again. They were just fine with changing out of their costumes and staying in the A/C.


We let the kids play some more and make some ice cream sundaes before heading for home. Bella was on a sugar high. It's really no wonder- lollipop, ice cream, cookies... she surprised me when she didn't fall asleep on the car ride home. Got them to bed and dh and I went thru the candy. Had to make sure there was enough chocolate for us weren't any needles and all that in the candy. There was one surprising give away in each bucket though- a little envelope of used stamps from all over the world. Hong Kong, USA(several styles), England, etc. Interesting. Maybe they thought it would get the kids into stamp collecting?


I took a ton of photos of our night so here you go!



This was our mob.

My little fireman.



She's ready to go!


Take a good look because you don't get to see me in pics very often!


That Spiderman is Logan.


My beautiful family.


Excuse the Cheeto.



Still all sweaty from TOT'ing.


Alex, Trey and Logan