You know we had to work off that turkey so the day after, we traipsed up to the mountains

for a little frolicking in the snow.

 That's Greer driving the four runner... pulling several of my cousins' kids.

 Reesey shadowed my two nieces around. 

She calls them her "snuggle buddies".

 The "keeper"shot of the day is this one.

That's my 93... yup, you read that right... 93 year old grandmother with my

mom and cousin on a four wheeler.

I wanna be just like her when I grow up!

 And finally, here's my cutie pie husband racing around with Reese.

I sat by the fire most of the afternoon holding a sleeping Kean.

But I had a blast watching my children have a blast.



Clean Up on aisle one!

Note to self: 

Only feed the boy chocolate chip pancakes when it is bath time.

Not when it is errand time!

P.S.  Happy Thanksgiving from our favorite little Pilgrim.

Elasticboy

Ewwww.

This is how I find the little guy sleeping sometimes.

It looks more than uncomfortable.

But clearly, it's not bothering him (just me).

 Yes, that's his toe right up next to his mouth.

 Most of the time, I'll "unfold" him.

P.S.  The wet spots on his sheets are not from a neglected diaper.

He has learned a new trick of shaking his water bottle to get his bed nice and wet.

Horseplay

Who ever knew there existed intrigue, gut wrenching competition, showmanship

and pageantry... all among the pre teen set?

We spent our Saturday evening (3 HOURS) at a model horse show.

Holland and Greer spent hours cleaning, polishing and dusting off their toy horses.

They hauled them down to Uncle Doug's horse store (Flynn's) for the big competition.

That's my niece, Morgan in the green shirt.  She gave Reese a ribbon for being the best helper.

They then had to place the horses from the right category (Arabian, Appaloosa, Draft etc)

on the table for judging.

One of Holland's horses made it to the final round.  Both girls won lots of fun

ribbons... but neither took home the top three prizes (new Breyer Model horses).

Ah, there's always next year.

All In The Family

I'd thought you'd like to overhear a snippet of our conversation tonight:

Reese:  "Mom, when I grow up and get married, I'm still going to live with you forever in our house."

Me:  "Sounds good.  And I'm sure whoever you marry will be thrilled."

Such Hams

We had a neighbor up for dinner tonight.

Do you know what that means?

Fresh meat.

No, I'm not talking about what I served for dinner.

I'm talking about our company...

Our girls had a "fresh" audience

and boy did they take advantage.

 We were treated to-- not one, but two puppet shows.

 If I do say so myself... it was quite the smashing performance.

 We clapped, we cheered, we wept.

We gave them the two thumbs up.

So maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.

But we did clap and cheer.

Keanut Gump In Training

These things are doing the trick.

 It's not a fluke.  Kean has pulled himself up to standing a couple of times.

And yesterday, he pulled himself up ... and then toppled into the bathtub.

He didn't particularly like that little trick much.

 We had such a relaxing weekend.

A couple of my mom's sisters (who happen to be some of my favorite people in the world)

were in town visiting.

That's my Aunt Beverly (she's married to my mom's brother, LeeRen) sitting next to Holland.

My Auntie RoEen is next to GiGi.

 Here's Reese muscling in on Aunt Ilona and Uncle LeeRen.

 This is my Aunt Daleen sitting next to my so-young-at-heart Grandma.

My kids call her "Grandma the Great"...

and yes she is!

 And finally, Kean entertained all with his "Elastic Man" impersonations.

Boo (hoo)!

Ah the chaos of Halloween night.

You moms know certainly know what I'm referring to!

It also happened to be our neighbor, Jaimey's (Greer's buddy) birthday.

Her dad asked if he could bring over cake and ice cream and have us help her celebrate.



 To add to the craziness, Jaimey forgot her Halloween costume over at her

mother's house (quite a hike away)

So we quickly threw together another witch (she wanted to be like Greer).

They looked pretty darn cute.

 We were late getting off...

but visited my parents, the Bodily's and the Angus'...

of course, they were spoiled rotten.

 We headed over to a nearby neighborhood...

where Greer's teacher from church stages a massive haunted house each year.

We ran into this crazy woman-- our good friend Sally with her Chucky baby.

Byron's always joking he's going to turn me in for two 20 year olds...

I think I'll remind him of this picture... this is about the caliber

of "lookers" he should be able to get!

 We found the haunted house the kids were so excited to visit.

We had to wait in line about 30 minutes

(which is a real commitment for the kiddos-- you know, less candy).

The minute we got inside, well, I should say, the first scary character that

said boo... launched Greer into tears.  Reese wasn't too far behind.

They couldn't get it over with fast enough.

The rest of us, thought it was great though.

 We ended the night with a visit to our dear old neighbor, Nancy.

The old isn't referring to her age, by any means.

We just have a long standing tradition of visiting her and taking a picture just

like this one... with the kids all dressed up.

We've done it every year we've lived here.. except for last year.

She lost her house in the 2010 fire and no longer lives next door.

So it was a particular "treat" to get back on track with our tradition.