Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving

The title is reminding me of the untimeliness of this blog posting. Oops!  So yes, we do have to go back to the beginning of last week to catch up on things.

Since we took the week off a few weeks ago for "fall break," I decided we would have school for at Monday - Wednesday of Thanksgiving week unlike other local schools who took the whole week off. The good thing was that our curriculum had a fun week of Thanksgiving related themes/projects so it ended up being quite fun and really a break from our normal week of school.

Some of our activities:

Turkeys made out of hands.  Unfortunately Calleigh put Aubree's through the laminator and it got stuck producing an inordinate amount of tears.  Which reminds me I have to remind Duncan to try and get it out...

Placemats.  We were supposed to do fall colors but Calleigh obviously took it another direction.

We had to make guesses about how much a pumpkin weighed,, how many seeds were in it, how tall it was, and whether it would float.  Calleigh was eerily close on most of the questions.

She guessed 200 seeds and there were 196,  Not bad!

During quiet time the girls like to go in the school room and do crafts.  This was Calleigh's one day.

Wednesday evening Ron and Elaine came and stayed overnight so that Ron would be on this side of town to get up early to go golfing with the guys as is their Thanksgiving tradition.  I left them all at home at about 11 pm so I could go out to CVS and Walgreen's and do my traditional Black Friday (or rather Black Thursday) deals.  All went well although I was reminded once again how CVS is 10 times EASIER to shop at than Walgreen's because of Walgreen's wacky way they do coupons.  So wish it was a CVS next to my house rather than a Walgreen's.

Calleigh must have told me like 10 times in the days leading up to Thanksgiving about how excited she was about the day...despite that the fact that she wouldn't be able to rough house with the boys. It really is a great day!  We always have our big Thanksgiving meal late in the day around 5 pm so it's usually a fairly relaxing day of preparing things rather than rushing to get everything done for an early meal.  I made pumpkin pancakes for breakfast and then put the parade on which is one of the big things they were looking forward to.  Eventually Jennifer and the boys came over and others followed suit.  The guys finished golfing and we had some appetizers including some cheeses I had gotten a good deal on at Publix.  When the Zbaraschuks arrived, the kids all went outside to play some games.  We seriously couldn't have asked for a better day weather wise.  Upper 60's and bright sun.  Perfect!

All told we had 27 people.  Everyone brought food or made it here.  Allen did the honors this year with the turkey since Jennifer could pop at any time and goodness knows we would have hated to have Thanksgiving without a turkey (insert sarcasm here).  I'll just post pictures to show the rest.

Grandma teaching her to cut the "chicken" for alpine chicken.

Showing Calleigh how to set the table.

Our noontime spread.

The asiago was the best.

Allen's fancy spread of brie, honey, pistachios, etc.  Yum!

Fun "Indian" game from our curriculum.  Color six almonds with a black marker on one side and put them in a container.  Each kid takes turns shaking the container and however many almonds are black side up, they get that many toothpicks.  After playing how ever many rounds, whoever has the most toothpicks wins.  Poor Calleigh..  She got a 1, 1, and 2 and lost by a long shot!  

Looking good!

Calleigh still wasn't very happy from doing so poorly with the almonds.

Our table.  A little plain.  Maybe some day I'll do something fancier.

Girls playing a game.

Watching the Bears lose.

Grodacks (6), Isidros (5), Bergherms (4 1/2), Zbaraschuks (5), Ron & Elaine, Lolo & Lala (Allen's parents), Julia (Jennifer's mom), Bobbi (Amy's mom), and Megan.

Time to eat.

I thought this was cute...Kaleb and Aubree shared a chair while eating their dessert.

While others ate theirs outside by the fire.

Brady is very thankful for Kohlden.

After everyone left and we finished cleaning up, it was time to look through all the ads to plan my Black Friday shopping trip.  I could barely keep my eyes open but I managed to get a decent plan. Since we don't take many gifts up to Boston because there just isn't room, I don't buy many Christmas gifts on Black Friday.  It's more about clothes and stuff for ourselves!  The day did not disappoint. Duncan had the kids and I left the house about 7:45 to make the rounds at various consignment stores, CVS (again), Target (40% off clothes), Family Christian Bookstore (not sure why the ABC isn't open on Black Friday.  They would have had my business!), Babies R Us (good deal on wipes), and Lowes (to pick up poinsettias ordered on-line).  One place that I didn't stay at was Old Navy. First of all, I had to park WAY far away (which honestly excites me because I love it when it's busy!) and then when I got into the store, there was a HUGE line to pay. Everything was 50% off.  I put a few things in my cart and then noticed the line had gotten even longer.  It was all the way from the front of the store to the back and then half way back to the front again.  I figured it was at least a 45 minutes wait.  I abandoned my cart and left. Hey, these are precious hours of shopping alone and I wasn't spending that much of it waiting to pay!

The dads stayed busy while the moms shopped.  A trip to Lowe's for supplies for another backyard project for Duncan (building a table for the pergola).

Isidros brought over the big ball.

Had our first fire in the fire pit Friday night and roasted hot dogs with the Isidros.  A little chilly but lots of fun!

One of my finds was a pair of snow boots for Brady as I didn't have any in a size 8 for some reason (we inherit that stuff from Camden but some years he may go up by two sizes).  I was really happy to find some at the consignment store and then they were 35% off for Black Friday.  On Sabbath morning, Brady was in my room getting dressed and wanted to try on his boots.  I looked through the bags for them and couldn't find them any where.  After church I checked my receipt and didn't see them on there either so somehow they had gotten missed.  The one thing I had really wanted!  So Sunday afternoon we headed back to the consignment store with the hopes of finding the forgotten boots.  I looked on the shelves with the other snow boots with no luck.  Just as I was about to give up and leave, I spotted them on the shelf with the rain boots.  Of course, I had to pay full price this time but what can you do.  Just happy to get them.  Ironically, though, the girl checking me out this time commented she had checked me out on Thursday so I told her that "Oh, we somehow must have missed ringing these boots up because of all the stuff I had.  Too bad because now I have to pay full price."  Perfect opening for her to say "I"m so sorry about that.  I can give you the discount now to make up for it."  But...of course, they aren't trained to give that kind of great customer service.

Other things we've been up to include a great time over the Zbaraschuks on Saturday night for a little get together, breakfast over Ron and Elaine's on Sunday morning and then getting our Christmas tree. We won't even enjoy it for a full two weeks before we head out but of course, it's worth every penny!

Kids are at it again...playing games.

Playing river/bank 

Eventually the Grodack girls and the Z boys were the only ones left.

Calleigh, Aubree and Zachary....whom they were both arguing over on the way there.  They both said THEY were the one going to marry him.

Sorry Calleigh!  Zachary was the eventual winner.

Chilling in the jeep at Grandma and Grandpa's.

Getting our tree at our usual spot along 436 in Casselberry.  Next year they won't be there thanks to a Wawa coming in.

Ahhh,, definitely not that one.

Playing with the netting the tree was wrapped in.

I guess they ARE stockings.

The finished product.

Our next bit of excitement came on Tuesday morning when London Elise Bergherm was born!  I told Jennifer to keep her in there until after Thanksgiving and directions were followed to a T.  She went into labor on Monday afternoon and London was born on Tuesday morning.  It all worked out perfectly because Jennifer was going to be induced on Thursday and this way she was able to skip all that.  The baby is just perfect and we couldn't be happier to welcome her to our circle of friends!

Went to the hospital Tuesday evening.  Ain't she adorable?  And the baby is cute too :)

Last night we went on an adventure to see ICE at the Gaylord Palms.  It's an event that they have every Christmas season were they carve all sorts of sculptures out of ice and then charge you a bunch of money to see it!  We've never been in all these years but since we've been learning about the Nutcracker and Tchaikovsky (who wrote the music) in school and that happened to be the theme for ICE this year, I thought it would be fun.  Almost like a field trip you could say!  I know it's crowded on the weekends so I thought it would be a good idea to go on a week night so Duncan met us down there after work (we parked his car at a Walgreen's nearby so we wouldn't have to pay to park his car too.).  We had such a blast.  Honestly though, ICE itself is probably not worth the price of admission. The sculptures are neat and the sledding they had was awesome, but it's a pretty quick exhibit not to mention that you're freezing.  No, the best part was after that when we went and listened and watched some shows...some singing and acrobatics in the main atrium of the hotel.  And the very best part was the search for reindeer.  The hotel has a contest where you have to locate these 16 inch reindeer they have hidden all around the hotel based on clues.  There are 10 clues and then there are also 6 bonus reindeer.  If you find any 10 reindeer, you are entered into a contest to win a free hotel night stay or something like that.  Of course, we didn't care about that part.

They supply you with these parkas to wear but we brought our own hats and mittens.

Good thing we brought them.

Sledding hill.

We let Calleigh do it even though she's still "healing" from her broken arm.  Brady chose not to sled.

They went down probably 6 or 7 times.  No lines at all.

The last thing is the nativity made of ice.

You could pay more money and go tubing.  This is how we roll in Florida!

This seriously cracked me up.  Instructions on how to go sledding.  Really!

I packed some sandwiches for supper because we weren't about to pay to eat at the Gaylord Palms! We ate while waiting for this show to start.

Let me tell you, it was SO much fun!  The kids were really into it, including or should I say, ESPECIALLY Brady.  It was a bit of a challenge because the atrium of the hotel is somewhat dark. The roof is made of glass and since it was night and they had all the Christmas stuff lit up, it was fairly dark in there.  But we did find some.  In fact, Brady found two of them.  He was so adorable too yelling out "A reindeer!!"  In the end, we only came up with 9 because we ran out of time.  It was getting past 8 o'clock and we had a 30-minute drive home so we had to call it a day.  Before they went to bed Brady asked me if we could go back tomorrow.  Of course, I said we couldn't but I can promise we will be back next year!  It's well worth the $18 of parking just to go to the shows and then to do the contest.  I asked when we were leaving if they do this every year and they said they do although it's something different each year (last year it was flamingos.  Kind of lame for Christmas but whatever!).

Reindeer they found in the window at the frozen yogurt shop.

Hard to see behind him but Brady found this reindeer in the sleigh among the foliage.

A parting shot.

 In Colby news, on Tuesday morning we took him in for his 15-month appointment.  Everything checked out fine.  It was at this age that the other three dropped their morning naps and went to the one nap a day in the afternoon.  We aren't quite at that yet but something weird did happen on Wednesday and Thursday mornings.  He took a 2-hour nap from 9:45 - 11:45 and then slept for 45 minutes from 3:45 - 4:30.  So I'm not sure what that's about as it's definitely different (when the others dropped the morning naps, the one nap would take place about 1:30ish).  I've got to say I don't mind it because we were able to complete almost all of our school work while he was sleeping and then have the afternoon free.  My personal quiet time isn't happening now until later but that's okay. We'll see if this continues or not.

Guess who can climb up on this horse by himself and thinks he's a cowboy?!

Why I hate to let him try and feed himself yogurt.

Also interesting is that he's nursing more again.  We were down to first thing in the morning and before bed but know it's happening at various times during the day when he pulls on my shirt and tries to put his hand down there.  Oddly enough, I just read my blog posting from when Brady was 15 months and I wrote the exact same thing about him.  So go figure!  Must be the age.  Lately when Colby has been nursing or when we lie on the floor of his room in the early morning hours, he'll put his hand in my hair and fiddle with it.  I don't know if he just started doing this the last few weeks or if I'm just noticing it or what but he's obsessed with it.  And oh my word, my hair is the worst rats' nest you've ever seen after the fact.  It seriously takes me probably 10 minutes to comb it all out.  I will say this habit of his did come in handy though the other morning.  I had a headache and his playing and pulling on my hair helped that part of my head feel better!

On that note, here are a few conversations with the kids:

On the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving:
Brady: I know what I'm going to dress up as for Thanksgiving...a bad guy!!"
Me: "Um, that was Halloween and secondly, we didn't even dress up for that."

Guess he thought you dress up EVERY holiday?

Talking about someone we know.
Calleigh: "But he eats meat."
Me: "That's okay.  People aren't bad because they eat meat.  Daddy eats meat."
Calleigh: "Who would want to eat something that has pee in its bladder?"

Why indeed?

Glad the homeschooling education is paying off here.  Or not!
Calleigh: "I wonder what the easiest job in the world is?  That's what I want to do when I grow up."

Calleigh and Aubree were getting into it over who got the last piece of cantaloupe and Aubree came running over to the table crying.
Calleigh (walking to the table behind her): "I didn't do anything and it didn't hurt her."

Aubree discusses with Duncan the states we've done so far for school.
Aubree: "So Delaware is the "First State" and New Jersey is the "Garden State" and Pennyslvania is the "T-Bone State."
Duncan: "I think you mean the "Keystone State?"

A couple more pictures...

Made johnny cakes for school.  Very good!

Made peach cobbler to go with the state of Georgia, our 4th state.

The Liberty Bell.

Lastly, my very favorite picture of my amazing boy.  My heart is full.

I am truly blessed.  Have Happy Sabbath.