Happy Thanksgiving

I can't believe I've gone from a once a week blogger to a once a month blogger....wait, yes I can, I have three kids, it's the holidays, and we're booking it to finish our basement. :) Come to think of it, once a month is pretty impressive right now. I'll start it off with Thanksgiving, sadly, no pictures, but we did have one of the best Thanksgivings ever.

My parents and my brother and his family came up to stay with us for Thanksgiving, it wasn't really a planned thing, it just sort of happened and I'm glad it did. We had great food and had quite the spread for hosting my first Thanksgiving, although I think my mom still gets most of the credit for it, I couldn't have done it without her. Whether it was her cooking or playing with the kids so that I could get stuff done. We had a delicious turkey, candied yams, green beans with bacon, homemade crescent rolls, thanks Kim, Morgan is still talking about them, juicy ham, of course some Stove Top stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, dixie fruit salad, coconut creme pie, pumpkin pie (made with a real pumpkin!), cherry pie...wow, just thinking about all of it reminds me that I could probably still go another few days without eating. :)

Secretly, we were really making a push to get the drywall and mudding all done in our basement before the company arrived and I'm happy to report that we made it, of course that was also one thing that we decided to hire out. They got done the day before everyone arrived. My brother and dad were planning on helping with the drywall, so I hope they weren't too disappointed that they weren't hanging it and mudding all weekend. ;) Seriously though, we got so much done in those few days with help from them and Kim with some painting too. We were able to get the bathroom all tiled, the doors hung, the electrical stuff all working (yay no more flipping the breakers to have light down there), we got the fireplace mantel put together and a whole lot of other stuff.

We did have some fun too, although they all did spend a really good portion of time in the basement working. We played games almost every night and brought out good ol Monopoly and Clue, of course there was the customary Canasta games as well as a few others. The kids played so well together and we only had a few minor tantrums with all of them having a few turns each. :) Once we have the basement done we're definitely looking forward to more get togethers; we had a great time.

The next week...well, we all got sick. :( Damon and Logan each took a turn with the flu, it only lasted a couple days and included only one messy barfing each...although, when they spread it out over a week, it does feel like I was cleaning puke and diarrhea all week. I didn't get the yucky flu and neither did Tragon, but we both got colds, his nose is almost clear and it's not quite such torture to clean out his nose so he can eat. Morgan was sick a couple days, but not enough to take a sick day, it's really crazy at work around the holidays. We are all pretty much feeling tip top now with only a few drippy noses here and there. I hope that we have gotten all our Christmas sick bugs out and done with (knock on wood).

We've been so focused on the basement...which is almost done, but all the little details sure add up to a lot of little projects and time in the end, so it will probably be another couple months, our goal is to at least have the bathroom done by Christmas and since we just got all our stuff delivered today, I think we can handle that.

I did finally get the tree out....today....December 10th....shhh, don't tell my family. Traditionally it's me begging to break out the Christmas music by Halloween and man, if we don't have those decorations out the day after Thanksgiving, it's too late. It's a little different with little kids though. I did let them help me decorate the tree, but then Damon spent the bulk of the morning in time out for hitting the balls off the tree....I may just take all those breakable ones down, or keep the tree in our bedroom and just read bedtime stories by it at night, and we are definitely NOT putting the presents under there, oiy! It really does feel like Christmas time now. And, the shopping is almost done too, I think I only have a couple more things to get, wahoo!

The boys did like all the snowmen ornaments. They like to find their favorites and show me.
I was surprised at how well Logan could hang the decorations, even if the tree is a little lopsided and droopy on the bottom. :)
It's going to be a great Christmas!