Levi's First Thanksgiving

This year we wanted to do something different.  Well, that, and uncle Alan invited us over for Turkey and a family fun filled trip to see the new Twilight movie.  Who can resist that?!  We packed up the car and loaded kids and dog and were off on a grand adventure!

It was a 12-13 hour drive, so we stopped at a hotel.  La Quinta, I do love you!  I love that they accept dogs and are cheap.  Levi enjoyed his first hotel stay. The kids always love a hotel.

Levi was awesome for the lengthy drive, as were the children.  We encountered standstill traffic while we were conveniently right next to a school.  So we pulled over, unloaded and ran everyone around for a bit.  The traffic cleared up and we were back on our way.  The kids enjoyed the break. 

Levi was so happy to make a new friend.  Alan's dog, Bismark was very good natured and let Levi slobber all over her. She also indulged in mock fighting and they seemed to have a very good time together.

Aunt Brandy is a rock star.  She knew just how to keep little girls entertained for endless hours.  She opened up her craft stuff and let the girls do whatever they wanted!  Oh my.  The kids loved it and had a ball.  Delaney made a ...um... hair bow.  She still makes me put it in her hair!

Joshua was thrilled to get to play Alan's games. 

 Rylee made friends with Bismark, who is  very tolerant and sweet dog!  Rylee told me, "I riding her like a howse!"  And when Bizzy got up to move, she hollered, "Yee Haw!" as she fell off.

We took time to stroll the Savannah River Walk.  It was nice, but chillier than we expected. 

A lovely street vendor offered this flower made of palm leaf, and Rylee was enamored. 

 We stopped by the Candy Shop and the kids were drooling over all these caramel apples.  Yummy!

Joshua was ready for some candy! 

Dan and Levi had to wait outside while we perused the candy.  Levi enjoyed the walk and was pretty good. 

Here's Rylee, enjoying her treat- a chocolate covered marshmallow snowman. 

Yeah, I caved.  I let Joshua get a giant apple.  He took 3 bites and complained that it was sour. 

Kids are so fun! I love that they can do stuff I only want to do but do not have the nerve! 

Back at the house, Rylee put her older cousins to work entertaining her.  Josh was offended that his sisters never play with him like that.  I'm pretty sure he's happier NOT having Rylee use his abs for a trampoline. Matthew bore it with remarkably good humor. 

Dinner was beyond delicious. 

My kids seemed to prefer the ham over the turkey, the heathens!  Levi was just happy that lots of people smuggled him treats when I wasn't looking. 

 We got to go for a post-turkey walk in "The Haunted Woods".  Levi enjoyed all the new, exciting smells.

 Cousin Jacob was a good sport and pulled the girls in the wagon all around the yard for much longer than I would have!

And Aunt Jenny read to the kids and made them a happy group.  Yeah, family is awesome! 

Marian entertained herself by taking all the letters from a game and making all the Africa related words she could come up with.  And I think she managed to use every single tile!  She wanted a picture of her efforts before cleaning up.  

So that was our Thanksgiving.  We drove home in 2 days again, which worked out well, as we got home mid afternoon and had time to settle back in.  The kids had fun, the dog had fun (and was so sad to leave his new friend behind), it was a great Thanksgiving!

I don't want to be the mom anymore.

I was at the school picking up the kids.  Delaney wanted me to carry her backpack.  I told her I would love to if she could ask me nicely. She did not want to.

She spent the next 20 minutes and 1/4 mile home screaming and carrying on in full tantrum.  But by golly, she would not ask nicely.  She screamed at me to hold her backpack.  She screamed that it was too heavy.  She screamed "HERE!" and shoved the backpack at me.  But she would not ask nicely.

She screamed incoherently.  She threw the backpack on the ground.  She kicked the backpack.  She screamed at me.  But she would not say please.

All
The
Way
Home.

And here's a spoiler:
It hasn't gotten any better.

Aaack!!!

Help!

I was planning to post pictures today, but I got this message instead:

"Whoops! You're out of space. You are currently using 100% of your 1 GB quota for photos. Upgrade storage

Photos are stored in your Picasa Web Albums account and are included in your 1 GB free quota for photos. Additional storage you purchase is shared between several Google products and is in addition to your free quota. Learn more"

 

What is that?!  I tried changing the pictures of the kids on my sidebar a few months ago and I got the same message.  Does this mean I now have to PAY to add any more pictures to my blog?  Do I have to delete previous posts to make room for new ones?  Has this happened to anyone else before? Is it time to do a new blog now?!  Help!  Help!

Happy Birthday Marines!

Last night was the Marine Corps Ball.  Dan still considers going to the Ball something that is a "novelty" and he doesn't understand why I would want to go every year.  That's because it isn't a novelty!  It is an annual event!  This year I found a fabulous dress that I loved.  I liked it a lot more till I saw so many other dresses at the Ball and then I kind of felt like I was old.  I was hoping for elegant, but I was a little concerned that it was more of an older lady dress.  Sadly, I am not as young as I like to think I am, so perhaps it is just appropriate.

Hanging out before the ceremonies started. 

Dan and his buddies.  It was lovely to hear all the guys he works with say flattering things about Dan.  They seem to really like him. 

My little slice of birthday cake.  It was yummy, too! 

Full view of the dress.  And I had on high heels that really made my feet hurt, but they looked marvelous.  Next year I'll look for something more comfortable, because no one got to see the super-cute straps on these.

Bad Mommy

Last night I was tucking in Rylee.  She wanted a song. Lately her favorite song has been "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" so I sang that.  She stopped me in the middle and said, "No!  You have to say 'Yittle Stawr'".

Hmmmm.... I tried again.  Nope.

"Not Yittle Stawr!  You have to say Yittle Stawr!"

I sang it again.  Apparently I can't figure out the difference between "yittle" and "yittle", and Rylee stopped me each time to correct me. Poor child.

Trust me, I tried every version of little, yittle, and wittle I could, but I just could not get it right.  Rylee was so disappointed in me.

One Naughty Doggie!

We live in Louisiana.  This means lots of water on occasion.  I have been quite impressed with how fast the water drains after a storm.  The area might flood a bit, but once the water stops coming, it leaves rather quickly.  To achieve such good drainage, there are lots of canals.  Everywhere.  We have canals on 3 sides of our housing section.

This canal separates us from another section of housing.  It is 50 yards from my front door.  Look how little water there is in it.  Sure, it looks like you could walk right across to visit the neighbors.  Sadly, tis not possible.  Partly because of the "Do Not" sign posted there, partly because there might be alligators lurking there, and partly because the solid ground is actually not solid at all.  Levi discovered this the hard way.

I usually put him on a leash to go out to take care of business.  Occasionally, I open the door check for any distractions and if there are no animals or children or people in sight, I let him out to potty and he is good about running out and back quickly.  Yesterday I let him out unrestrained, and as I did, a large bird took flight.  This was irresistible to the dog and off he went.  Never mind that the bird was high in the air and he had no shot at catching it, he was off like a shot.

The bird flew over the canal, and Levi was in hot pursuit.  His pursuit became less fun for him as he discovered the water on top was not clean, and it was not just inches deep.  He emerged on the other side soaked in muck.  And still hot after the bird.  Sigh.  I was not a happy camper.  I fetched a leash and went out to get the silly puppy.  Please refer back to the top picture.  To get across that canal, I have to walk the 1/4 mile down to the street and cross the little bridge, so I started off to do that.

Levi saw me and decided to save me the long walk.  He was smarter this time.  He looked for the driest spot to cross and thought he was going to walk over on dry land.  Twas not to be!  It LOOKS dry and solid, but it is actually close to 2 feet deep of foot sucking nasty mud.  Levi managed to make it across, but he was black from the chest down.

 After several shakes, he was a little less brackish, but still one dirty doggie!

No more white paws for this guy. Yuck!  He was quite distressed and could not be convinced to look up for a picture as he desperately tried to lick his legs clean. 

Look at that face! 

I would not let him in the house until I could give him a bath.  Poor puppy sat outside crying for 30 minutes.  He jumped up on the door and was so pitiful, but you see how dirty he got the window from just his paws?!  Eewww. 

Guilty face.  Yes, that's what that is. 

Guilty yes, but not repentant!  Look at that dried on muck!  It took 10 minutes solid of rinsing before the water washed out clean.  He was absolutely saturated with silty dirt.

One fresh clean doggie, napping in his favorite "cave".

Adventures in Oregon!

I had a marvelous extended weekend in Portland.  On Sunday, I got to go to my cousin Liz's house for dinner.  It was so much fun!  I adore Liz and it was so great to be there with her family, my sister Deborah and her kids, and my brother, his wife and kids.  A full house for Liz, but she is amazing and fed us a fantastic dinner and we gabbed till past time to go.  It was so nice and I wish I had more family close enough to do that with.

As Liz and Ryan were talking, I realized I had not yet gotten a picture of them. I handed Savannah my camera and sad, "Get my picture with them!"  This is the result. 

This is the picture when they knew it was being taken! 

 My sister and her cutie-patootie baby.

On Monday, Savannah took my on a fabulous whirlwind tour of Portland.

 We went to Pittock Mansion where I swooned over the colors.

 And these colors.  The fall foliage was so gorgeous I wanted to move to Portland immediately! I mean, just LOOK at this road!  It isn't even a special road you'd take just to see the colors.  They have roads like this all over! Can you imagine?

I got to go to Powell's Book Store, but I was too excited about the books and I forgot to get a picture of me there.  I have books as evidence though!

I was introduced to VooDoo Donuts.  I'd have said one donut shop is like another, but I would have been mistaken!  Where else do you find any kind of donut your mind can imagine? I should have taken pictures, but I did not have the nerve to bust out the camera in public and start taking pictures of the donuts.  I guess I should have.  Maple bacon donut, fruit loop donuts, cigar donuts.... it boggled the mind!

Here I am with my box of delights! 

Savannah introduced me to the Truck Food lot.  Yumminess everywhere!  How to decide!?  Fortunately, we were in a hurry and got some amazingly delicious curry chicken from the Tai place behind me.  Oh, my happy mouth.  Well, happy and burning from the spices. 

I got to see the OHSU building and see Adam in his element.  Here he is with his VooDoo donut- a peanut butter oreo donut.  Hey, he likes it! 

 Then we rode the super-cool sky tram from the top of the hill to the bottom.  Here we are at the top and I am again enthralled with the trees and colors below.

Can you see the tram coming up?  We went all the way down those cables. 

Here I am on the tram with my adorable niece, Denali.  She's amazing and I wanted to take her home with me, but she said no. 

Lastly, I got to go to the Portland Temple.  That was awesome.  Sadly, it was too drizzly to do more pictures than this but let it be known, I was there and it was lovely!

And then I came home.

TOFW!

 10 months ago, I mentioned to Dan that Portland was hosting a Time Out For Women event and how fun it might be to fly out there and hang out with my awesome brother and sister in law and attend the TOFW.  Dan set me up for a trip a few months ago. I had enough frequent flier miles to make it a free flight and off I went!

 My plane landed at 11:40pm Thursday night.  Being a thoughtful guy, Dan used his Marriott Rewards points to score me a free night at a hotel.  Aahhhhh, blissful night!

 I sat around, eating leftover Halloween candy, watching TV and playing on my laptop.Life was good!

 I even found time to jump on the bed a bit.

Then I was off to Adam and Savannah's place.This is my adorable nephew, showing off how to use dental floss.  You can tell his dad is in dental school!

Today we all drove to the convention center in Portland and had the most awesome experience!  It was doubly fun to get to be there with my sister, my sister in law and my cousin. Family is awesome.

We made the mistake of going to Denny's for lunch. With 3500 women at the conference, this place (and every other eating establishment around) was swamped.That was okay. What was not okay was the 75 minute wait for food, the incompetent server, and not-very-apologetic-while-appologizing manager. So we spent nearly 2 hours here, but only 10 minutes of it was actually spent eating.  And we were nearly an hour late getting back to our conference.  This is my sad "Denny's Stinks" face.

 This is me, with my sister, my SIL's friend, and  my SIL.We had a lot  of fun!

Here I am at the end.  Happy me!  We're waiting because my SIL's friend really wanted to meet one of the presenters. I wasn't in any hurry.  I had no kids, and was responsibility-free!

I am standing next to Hillary Weeks! LOVE her! She has some awesome songs.Check out this song and this one.   She is marvelous!

We also got to meet John Hilton III. I'd never heard of him, but he was fabulous and gave an amazing talk.Liked him a lot!

Here we are on the way out.  We wanted a shot by the TOFW banner.  Somehow my cousin snuck away and didn't make it into any pictures.That's okay, we're going to her house for dinner tomorrow!  (and I'll probably forget to get a picture then too!)

So, in case there is any question, I am having a wonderful time!  I have a great family and I love spending time with them.Dan is amazing and is holding down the fort at home. He's even going to teach my Sunday School Lesson tomorrow, cuz he's good like that!