Happy Thanksgiving Y'all

We had a wonderful week of Thanksgiving.  I say week because we literally celebrated Thanksgiving nearly the whole week.  JP had his class thanksgiving party on Tuesday, Wednesday we enjoyed a beautiful day with our neighbors, Thursday we enjoyed thanksgiving at John and Sandi's, Friday we had another family dinner at John and Sandi's that included most of the family from Tennessee and all the Reeds that live here, and then on Saturday we went to my parents for Thanksgiving lunner (lunch/dinner).  It was a whirl wind and I am tired, but it was so much fun!!!  We give thanks for the blessing of family!

Here is the finished product of our annual Thanksgiving turkey.  Didn't it turn out lovely???

All the great-grandkids with Grandmother and Granddaddy.  I think this picture includes all of them.  Isn't it amazing?

A little Go Fish before lunner with Grandmother.  This is one of the children's favorite things to do with Grandmother among others that I am sure I am not even aware of;)

Saturday morning before heading to the island we picked up our tree and set it up so that Sunday it would be ready for decorating.  Since we had a late night Saturday night (it was the Clemson/S. Carolina game-booo hoooo) Pratt let me sleep in; but once JP started trying to hang his socks on the tree he knew it was time to get this show on the road.  After I rolled out of bed and got myself together we started decorating the tree.

We had such a wonderful morning of family time and decorating that we decided to stay in and spend some family time together.  It was great.  JP and Shelby did a wonderful job under the supervision of their dad at decorating the tree.  It is one of the best trees we have ever had.



All the decorations are out.  The outside is decorated and so far I am happy to report that we have only had one casualty; this morning Daisy got a hold of one of the wise men from our Fisher Price nativity scene and well, he is no longer with us.  May he rest in peace.

Number 2 on 2 Wheels

We are so excited to announce that there are no more training wheels in this house!!!  On Wednesday JP decided to give the old two wheels a try and following in his sister's footsteps caught on right away.  The very first run down the street he did it all by himself and every since then he has been riding like a mad man.

One of the draw backs of being anything other than a first child is a lot of times your actual first of doing anything isn't caught on camera:(  Sorry buddy that this is a few days after you started riding.  We are so proud of you!!!

I'm Back

Oh how I have missed our computer!!!  For over a week our computer has been at the "doctor" getting checked up, cleaned up and updated and I am so thankful to have it back!!!  It is nice to have a phone that does practically everything, but nothing beats sitting down to a keyboard and surfing the net or posting a blog or checking e-mail or paying bills or admiring a nice balanced check ledger on a spreadsheet, etc.  There are so many wonderful things you can do with a computer!!!

So, since our down time so much has happened and I don't even know where to begin.  Actually, after looking back over the pictures, I have some picture downloading to do; so in the meantime, here are some pictures from our Halloween festivities. 

Shelby and JP loved their vampire teeth from Miss Katie!  They were excited that they were orange and purple (shout out to Clemson).  When they finally broke the children had meltdowns to which I told them that Miss Katie could get them more next year (JK Katie, I didn't tell them that, but they really did love those teeth!:)

Pratt carving the pumpkin.  Check out the spray painted Clemson pumpkin in the background.  I love my husband's creativity!!! 

The finished product plus JP rockin his army costume.  If you look closely you will notice that the pumpkin is missing a tooth.  It fell off and we tried to fix it with a tooth pick, but Daisy had other plans and ate it.



Shelby at our church Fall Festival.  We had a great time so much in fact that....



JP fell asleep in the car on the way to dinner.



Here's the whole gang for trick-or-treating on Halloween night.  Every year we get together, fuel up with some pizza and then role out to see who can collect the most candy.  We live in a super cool neighborhood and have the best neighbors and friends to celebrate holidays with.

Our group grew this year so some of us brought up the rear in a separate car.  At first we thought we would walk, but there was no keeping up with the crazies that were driving the hayride...you know who you are;)

All in all, we had a wonderful Halloween!!!  And since then things have been moving right along.  I can hardly believe that today we are one week away from Thanksgiving!!!  YIKES!! 

GONE!

"Mom, My tooth just fell out."

"You're tooth fell out?"

"Yeah, it just fell out!"



We had a joyous celebration over Shelby's first tooth to fall out. She has been waiting and waiting for this day and it came. I really have never seen her so excited about something as she was about this.

And even more surprising is that she didn't have any problem with the toothfairy coming into her room; go figure?!?!?!? (Maybe we will have more luck with Santa this year-maybe)

"Where does the toothfairy live?"

"In toothfairyland." (I know, not real original, but I was on the spot and couldn't think of anything else)

"Why does she take the teeth? What does she do with them?"

"She uses the teeth to buy things in toothfairyland, like food, clothes and stuff." (Again, on the spot and that was the best I could come up with.)

"Can I write her a note?"

"Of course you can, let's go."

Shelby's Note:
What is your name?
My name is _________________
Our dog is friendly.
Her name is Daisy.
Here is a special treat for you. (a bag of m&ms and a tootsie pop)
Thank you for visiting me.

"I wonder if she will write in cursive? Do you think she will write in cursive? I like cursive, but I can't read it."

The next morning Shelby had a dollar and a note back from the toothfairy. There was glitter on the note, on the dollar and on Daisy nose:)



Oh yeah, and her name is Chrystal.