Thanksgiving 2009

This year we had Thanksgiving at Mama's house. The last thanksgiving of the aughts was a great success. The kids were nice and hungry, William tried a bunch of new food (sweet potatoes, squash), Mary Grace ate a bunch of turkey (with Ranch dressing of course...), and everyone had a great time. In addition we also had stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and of course, Mama's wonderful rolls. It was a feast.

As if that wasn't enough, we also had a pumpkin pie and an apple pie, both which were outstanding!

The weekend was a success remodel-wise too, as I finished the electrical work and got ready to hang the drywall on the ceiling.




Posing with "gobbles"

"Fill 'er up"

Mama and Mary Grace

Cute Poppy

The kids have discovered the cereal Corn Pops, which they cutely call "Poppies". William told me yesterday while looking at the box and reading the letter "Look Daddy, P O P S spells Poppies!".

Mary Grace on the other hand made a pet out of a little poppy. She found a tiny little one that was shaped like a seashell. I didn't know it was her new pet. While I was washing dishes, she handed it to me, and thinking she had found it on the floor or something, I ate it.

Once I saw the look of fear wash over her face, I realized I had made a great mistake. Then the crying began as she ran to Mommy crying "Daddy ate my poppy!". So we searched through several bowls of poppies looking for a suitable replacement pet, but didn't find one.

Good thing for me about 1 hour later, all was forgiven and forgotten. She has since found a new pet, twin small poppies. Now that I know that a piece of cereal can be a pet, I'll be a lot more careful...

Incompatible games

Mary Grace and William sometimes play really well together. Sometimes, however, it doesn't go so well. Imagine observing this:

Mary Grace is playing with her Ponyville. She has Pinky Pie and Minty and Star Song and the others. They're having a birthday party for one of the ponies. It's a great party until William joins in. William brings his dinosaur to join in the fun. Of course, being a dinosaur, the first thing it wants to do is jump around and knock all the ponies over, disrupting the party. The dinosaur proceeds to get into an epic battle with one of the ponies, at which point Mary Grace is running crying for a parent to intervene.

She calls this "playing naughty", as in, "No William, I don't want you to play naughty!"

Now imagine the other side. William has a franken-toy setup involving trains running over dinosaurs, blocks acting as the bowser trying to beat everyone else, and even pull-back cars running through the whole disaster. Mary Grace brings her Barbie doll into this, suggesting they could all work together to throw a surprise party for another Barbie.

There's no term for this intervention, but again, it ends up in a brawl of some sort requiring parental intervention.

Sometimes they play well, other times not so much!

It's ok to post Halloween photos before Thanksgiving

Trust me, it's ok.

For Halloween, Mary Grace dressed as a witch and William wanted to be Spiderman. Mommy did an amazing job of finding both costumes on the cheap, in like-new condition, and the costumes were awesome!

Here are some of the photos we took on the magical trick-or-treating night of October 31! The kids had a blast showing off their costumes to all the neighbors and and the adults had a blast watching the kids and consuming drinkables from the beer wagon!




The night started out chilly with a cold breeze but as we moved from house to house it seemed to warm up for us. We trick or treated for about an hour, then headed back to the house to eat some pumpkin seeds and inventory the goodies.

The kids are still enjoying the loot and now expect a piece of candy after every meal, even breakfast. Mary Grace, the perennial bird-like eater has adopted a strategy of eating half or less of her meal then trying to fill up on candy afterward. Yes, she is our little negotiator.

William has learned to climb up onto the counter-tops where he stands up to reach the candy on the upper shelves of the cabinets. Cannonball, as our ex-neighbors Mike and Doris nicknamed him.

We're all looking forward to the upcoming holiday!

The leaf monster!

Here's a video Mommy took of the kids playing out in the leaves this fall.