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.

Clemson Homecoming

One of our favorite family trips every year is our annual trip to Clemson Homecoming with my family. It is always so much fun and the children love getting spoiled by eating whatever they want whenever they want all day, not to mention all the attention they get from all angles during the day. This year things were a little different as the crowd that we came with was missing some people and we actually had to tailgate outside instead of at Matt's appartment since he has graduated, but it was a whole lotta fun and I can't wait for next year.

The children are really getting to an age where they can enjoy it and get more out of the day then just sitting around getting diapers changed. Shelby really loved walking around and looking at all the floats.



JP was extremely tired most of the day (imagine that). They were both so excited on Friday night to be sleeping in a hotel and going to the game the next day that they had a hard time falling asleep, but in true JP fashion, he was up and at 'em at 5:00am ready to get the day started - lately he has had this thing where he wants to make sure he is up when it is "still dark outside"; I have no idea what started this obsession, but I am hoping that it won't last long. At any rate, by the time we got to the tailgate spot he was done, finished, long gone. It was tough at times to keep him going, but during the game he got about a 20 minute nap in my arms (sigh-sometimes I really miss those days with both my babies) and that was just what he needed to get hime going for the rest of the day.



At one point Pratt and JP went to get some water and as they were walking around the concourse JP asked Pratt why the bad team is always in red. Just when you think that they don't pay attention they bust out a question like that and you realize that even if they are just running through the living room or whatever, their little brains are picking up more than you know. He also wanted to know what the guys in the black and white shirts do.

I think that Shelby could still care less about stuff like that, but she was so proud of herself when the game was officially over announcing, "I stayed the whole game!"

We were very grateful for the Fishburnes having us at their tailgate. The food, company and drinks were divine!!! Thank you so much!!!!

Dad-I know you say every year that you aren't going to do it again, but it things continue as they are we all might want to consider getting season tickets and a parking pass....I'm just sayin;)

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!

On our way to Clemson for homecoming two weeks ago we decided to take time to stop at Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia. The children were pretty tired, but the zoo proved to be the perfect size for their little legs to walk around. We saw all kinds of animals and JP even milked a pretend cow. Shelby was a little shy of the cow but loved walking around and looking at all the different kinds of animals.



I think that they both were a little overwhelmed by it all because the bears were going crazy when we first got there. It is no joke to see a bear standing on his hind legs and pacing back and forth like the bears were. I have to say even I was little bit intimidated and very thankful for the fence and huge ditch between us and them because that bear looked like he was on a mission to get across and take a look around.



They have made a ton of changes from what I remember the zoo being like and I have to admit I really missed those crazy screeching monkeys, but it is a lot quieter to walk around now so that is good.

Going, going.....

Shelby has been dying to lose a tooth!! To her it seems like all her friends are losing teeth and she just asked me the other day, "How come Eliza, who I am older than, has lost teeth and I haven't?" I told her that God made us all different and when it is time for her teeth to come out they will. Thankfully she didn't come back with the "Why?" question that children so often come back with.

Well, today is a big day in this house...No, she hasn't lost a tooth yet, but her mood quickly went from grouch to happy when we discovered that she doesn't just have one loose tooth but two. She was upstairs with her friend Kendall and came down complaining that it felt funny when she closed her mouth and put her teeth together so we went in her bathroom. She pushed on her bottom teeth with her tongue and much to my surprise they moved. I wish that I could have captured the look on her face when I told her that her teeth were loose. It was priceless.

So, just in case this is the last picture I ever get of those little baby teeth that are moving on out, here is a picture of my sweet little girl's baby tooth smile.



Can you tell she is pushing on her teeth with her tongue? I wonder how she will do with the tooth fairy???