Thanksgiving 2016

This week we celebrated Thanksgiving and, as always, we have much to be thankful for.  First and foremost I am thankful for my family and all the extra time we were able to spend together.  The kids and I were all off work and school all week and Jeremy had Thursday and Friday off.

On Wednesday we started things off right with a trip to zoolights.  This year we got to go to the member preview night and let me tell you, that perk is worth the cost of membership.  There were only a small fraction of the crowds you normally see at zoolights.  Walking around I was enjoying myself so much and it occurred to me that that was the first time since we started house hunting/buying/remodeling that I felt totally relaxed and stress free.

Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving with dinner with my parents and Brendon and Rachel's family.  We had delicious food and a dance party.  What could be better?

The rest of the weekend we spent moving.  We cleared out my parent's two storage units and moved all the furniture from our house to the new house.  Now we just have the small things to slowly transition over (still a lot of work though).

We are excited to celebrate the upcoming holidays, excited to finally finish moving into our house, and excited to soon have our first house guests (Jeremy's parents and grandma are coming for Christmas!!!).  So much to be grateful for and so much to look forward to!  Oh! And Merrick lost another tooth this weekend too so that's fun too!

Kiddo Catch Up

Over the last several weeks with the funeral and traveling, I have neglected to report on all kinds of fun things with the kids.  Today is my attempt to correct that.

First off, at the end of October, Merrick wrapped up another successful soccer season.  He worked really hard this year and really improved.  After the last game, his coach commented on how he could always count on Merrick both offensively and defensively.  I think it is easier to play defense when you tower over everyone else.  One of the biggest highlights of the season was the t-shirts Coach Gregg had made for the team with the team name, "Our Game Is On Fire".

Next up was Halloween.  Merrick was "Captain America" this year and Carrigan was "Cheer Bear" (otherwise known as the pink Carebear).  I obviously didn't do a good job of getting a picture of Merrick in his costume, but I did capture him on the bus on Halloween with his bus driver's Halloween trick.

Lastly, I wanted to mention Carrigan's new obsession with picking out an entire ensemble to wear to preschool (even down to the mismatched socks).  Here are her ensembles from a week or so ago.  The first one was her "Handsome Prince-um" outfit and the second was her "Fancy Dancy" outfit.

I think that at least catches us up on the highlights just in time for the upcoming holiday this week.

Grampy's Funeral

You may have noticed the lack of blog for last week.  We spent the day in the airport traveling back from Grampy's Funeral with delays and changed flights.  It was a brutal end to a very wonderful weekend spending time with family and celebrating Grampy.

What do you say about funerals?  It was wonderful and the spirit was so strong.  All the children spoke and shared memories and we had some very powerful musical numbers.  As funerals go it was amazing.  Not only that but after the funeral, Grammy's neighbor came by will his tractor to pull the the kids on a train ride and brought cotton candy for everyone.  The kids spent over an hour riding around and then overdosed on cotton candy.  We joked that we set the bar a little too high for future funerals.