Thanksgiving Shenanigans

I think I mentioned last week that the kids and I were off all this week for Thanksgiving break.  My sister, Emily, her boyfriend, Tala, and my nephew, Kai, all came into town on Monday night.  What followed was a week long party.  We cooked, cooked, and cooked for Thanksgiving, painted each other's nails, watched movies, shopped, played games, and Merrick and Kai had sleep over after sleep over.

They say that time flies when you are having fun and that is certainly true for this week.  Jeremy had to work most of the week, but has been off since Thursday and has been able to join in some of the fun.  I didn't get too many pictures from the week because we were too busy playing and I really didn't get any pictures of Merrick because I rarely saw him.  He and Kai spent the week off playing basketball, playing football on the Xbox, and riding bikes.

Emily, Kai, and Tala will be in town until Wednesday afternoon, but the party kinda has to end tonight.  The Cliffords are back to business as usual tomorrow with school and work but we have had a great week of shenanigans.  Oh, and as this week was Thanksgiving, please know how truly grateful I am from my many, many blessings.  We have been so richly blessed this year!

A few notes about the pictures.  The first two are Carrigan in her "nice and shining armor" made out of boxes she found in the recycling bin.  The third picture is the aftermath of "Auntie Minty" giving Carrigan a chocolate covered strawberry right before we got in the car.  The last picture are this kids helping Nana and Papa pick out and cut their Christmas tree.

Jeremy's Birthday

This week we celebrated Jeremy's birthday.  I am lame and have no pictures to share but I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to our favorite guy.  Jeremy and I mostly celebrated the weekend before with a rare date night.  My parents had our kids and Ben and Becca's kids over for a cousin sleep over and Jeremy and I took advantage and went to dinner and stayed out late seeing the new "Thor" movie. 

The movie was great and the dinner was even better.  Jeremy and I have been watching our diet really closely over the last month and a half so that we could ace our health evaluation for our new life insurance policy.  I have continued to gain weight, you know the whole growing a human thing, but Jeremy, as of last weigh in a week ago, has lost 11lbs.  Anyway, we decided to ditch the new lifestyle for one night while celebrating his birthday and went to a place called "The Original Dinerant" which has been featured on Drive-Ins, Diners, and Dives.  The highlight of the meal was the Donut Burger Sliders.  One word, amazing!

Jeremy's actual birthday was a bit more subdued with a much healthier dinner, a few presents and some, very responsibly sized, pieces of cake.

Hopefully, despite the more mild celebrations, Jeremy knows how much we love him.  We are so thankful to have him as the patriarch of our family and couldn't love him anymore. 

Veteran's Day at the Children's Museum

This week we celebrated Veteran's Day.  How thankful I am for all those have fought for my freedom, some of whom payed the ultimate price.  I know I am guilty of taking their sacrifice for granted but I really do try not to.  Saturday was actually Veteran's Day but Friday all of the schools observed Veteran's Day which means that the kids and I were all off on Friday.  Carrigan had been asking to go to the Children's Museum for a while now so we decided it was as good of a day as any to make that happen.

I feel like I have posted about the Children's Museum more times than I can count so I am going to spare you the details of the visit.  Instead I will just share some pictures of our time there.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that lately I feel like every time I turn around Carrigan is doing something else that causes me to shake my head.  This girl has more personality than I sometimes even know what to do with.  I thought I would share just a couple pictures from this week of Carrigan being Carrigan.

Halloween 2017

This week was Halloween.  As is tradition, the kids pick their costumes the day after Halloween last year so they were so exited that the day finally came that they got to wear them.  Merrick the Nexo Knight, Aaron, and Carrigan was princess Jasmine.  Carrigan's costume was not super weather appropriate, but thankfully we had a very mild, dry night and she had a sparkly gold sweater that match just perfectly.  Merrick's costume taught us some valuable lessons.  First, we learned that a mask with a perfect smile and eyes that always are looking straight ahead (at the camera) makes for really easy pictures.  The second thing we learned is that Lego hands do not make it easy to grab candy out of a candy bowl.

The night itself started with a Halloween themed dinner of jack-o-lantern pizza and then on to trick or treating.  As usual we went with Ben and Becca's family and followed our usual course through my parent old neighborhood.  After everyone was sufficiently tired and had a ridiculous amount of candy, we headed to my parents' for hot chocolate, cider, and caramel corn.  It all made for a great, long night.

One last thing, I guess that Merrick made his costume look so fun that Carrigan decided she needed to give it a whirl.  Never a dull moment with that girl.