Gobble, Gobble!

Thanksgiving day was a very enjoyable day. We spent the day with many family members that we don't see that often, so it was a good day to catch up. We enjoyed some great food, conversation, a mean game of Boggle, and even some SNOW. It actually snowed on Thanksgiving. Not that any of it actually stuck, but it was falling from the sky, quite heavily there for a while. Only in Texas can it go from 85 degrees earlier in the week to 38 degrees two days later. Last year on Thanksgiving we were sweating, this year, freezing. Not that I mind, I love the cold weather, so I gladly greet it, and ask it to please stay.
All was fine all day long at Luke's parents townhouse, and we left there around 7:30 ( with no leftovers in hand- Yeah! I accomplished my goal of having no temptations around or in my house!) or so, came home put the kids to bed, I started doing stuff around the house, Luke was relaxing, when he started feeling not so well. Soon after, he departed to bed and I stayed up to finish some laundry( oh- the exciting life I lead- crime fighter by day- laundress by night). I was trying to have some clothes clean for the children to wear for our trip the next day to Pappy's farm. So around 11 I finish up and head for bed, and as I am walking down the hall, I hear the sound. It is so tell-tale, and it is so not the sound you want to hear. We always joke if there were an alarm made of this sound, no one would ever be caught snoozing. It is the sound of your child vomiting- it will make a sprinter out of the slowest of folk, as you deftly flash through the air trying to grab them up and dash to the bathroom with the least amount of puke landing on you or the surrounding surfaces. Unfortunately this night was not a top performance night from either of the master vomit savers, and Rylie's room turned out to be a not so pleasant site. Of course at this point, you do rock, paper, scissors to divy up the required clean up tasks- child or disaster zone. I took child, aka Linda Blair from the exorcist- poor Rylie was covered head to toe. GROSS OUT! But as a mother, you do not have this luxury or right, some how, you just get over vomit the second you birth a child ( as long as it belongs to your child). So Rylie goes straight into the shower, I clean her up, change her, go to put her in bed, only to find out task #2- ground zero is still declared unfit to enter. Go looking for father, only to find out that he too has now succumbed to the almighty porcelein throne. Hubby is sick. I am in charge. So I whip into Hazmat sanitation mode, lysol and other cleaning supplies in hand and get Rylie's room sterilized as soon as possible. Move to our room, change sheets, lysol surfaces, wash hands mulitple times between tasks, change my clothes- just to be sure, there are not any rogue germs trying to attach themselves to me. "I WILL NOT get sick" is my mantra! Unfortunately for Luke and Rylie, the rest of the night did not fare any better, and they were up on and off the rest of it. Needless to say, there was no trip to Pappy's farm, Luke had to use his first sick day at his new job the day after Thanksgiving ( He REALLY was sick and not playing hooky) and everybody was pretty pooped all day Friday. The original culprit of this whole bug was Jack, who got it on Monday night and then passed it along. The good part- it was short lived, the best part- I didn't get it, and it definitely made for a memorable Thanksgiving night!

The Great Outdoors

Well, for those of you that know me well, I am definitely more of a Westin girl, than a great outdoors girl. I much prefer "roughing it" at a 4 or 5 star hotel and I know that my love for luxury goes far above my actual means! However, we did go camping a couple weekends ago, and it was actually for the second time in less than a year. Does that move me from novice camper to the status of amateur? I am sure that is debatable- although much to my credit I nearly single handedly put up our 9 man, two room tent, on my own. Luke who had to work until 6 on Friday, had to join us later, so we had to get there early to put up the tent. Luckily, we had friends with us, and we all pitched in to get camp set up before dark. It was much more of a challenge this second endeavor into the camping world, for Jack was not walking the last time we went, and this time, it was as if a whole new door of possibilities had been opened to him. He certainly kept us busy the whole weekend, and wanted to do whatever his older sister and the bigger kids were doing. He had several little girls who took him under their wing and were a big help in hoisting him up onto the playground equipment ( which I must say, has definitly not been investigated by code enforcement any time in the last 2 decades- lets just say, that the monkey bars were somewhere in the range of 10 feet high - not kidding.- it was a little bit of a shady playground situation- but the kids enjoyed it immensly) Our camp was actually directly in front of the playground, which turned out to be the hangout of the entire camp facility. The kids loved being outside all weekend and getting VERY dirty. I think that every time I looked at Rylie she had dirt all over her face, and I mean all over. We finally figured out why. Everytime the wind would blow her hair in her face, she would take her hands, which had been digging in dirt, and wipe it away. Hence, the dirty face. But, hey, we were camping. Sleeping was pretty good, except for the first night, when our air mattress had a leak, and we ended up on the floor around 2 am. But thanks to Luke getting a patch the next day, Saturday night we slept great. Most of all, the kids slept awesome, and that is something to be very excited about. Since I was anticipating not-so-great-sleeping, since they were away from their norm, but I think it was due to such sheer exhaustion that they literally passed out, and slept all night both nights.

I will say that there were an unnerving amount of spiders at this campsite, and for anyone that knows me, I am only a slight arachnaphobe ( slight- meaning- huge, paranoid, borderline schizo- when it comes to creatures with 8 legs). Remarkably, somehow, I did not crawl out my skin, when I came within 2 inches of walking straight into a web, which held a nice, big, fat, brown spider. Amazingly, I did not faint and pack up our things and head for the nearest Hilton, when a party of 3 spiders decided to greet us in the sink on our inaugaral visit to the restroom. No, somehow, although, I do think it took a lot out of me, I reached down to somewhere within and resolved to be a "big girl" and " get over it- bugs are part of camping" - and actually once I stopped noticing and looking for every creepy crawly, I instantly had a much better time.

Now, there is definitely nothing that compares to that Westin Heavenly bed, and I am not going to be giving up my hairdryer any time soon, but I will say that the quality time spent with family and close friends, was unbeatable. It was wonderful to be out and enjoying God's creation, and have a weekend unplugged from the TV and internet for a change. I don't know, might I be on my way from amateur to pro? If I start asking for camping gear for my birthday and christmas, someone shake me, please.

Sugar High

Here is the much anticipated and promised new post to the blog. I hope that it will appease those of you who have been sending me gentle and not so gentle messages about updating! Last night was lots of fun, as you can see from the pictures, we had no melt downs and nobody refused to wear their costume- although Jack wouldn't wear the cute hat I made for him! We had some friends over to eat hot dogs and then we all hit the neighborhood for trick or treating together. One of the streets was closed off to traffic, with police barricades and everything. They get pretty serious about it over there. It was a lot of fun and the kids had a blast going from house to house yelling" Trick or Treat!" Even Jack with his Elmo trick or treat bag, got some of the action. By the time we made it halfway down the street, Rylie had to empty her bucket into the back of the wagon, it was so full. Don't worry, she didn't lose steam though, after a quick pick-me-up brought to her via a Pixie stick, she was raring to go back down the other side of the street for more goods! Meanwhile, Jack was still going full blast too. He thought he was so big getting to walk down the street. After we finished in the neighborhood, around 7:45, we could have and should have gone ahead and called it a successful Halloween evening, but no, because we are gluttons for cranky, over stimulated, and tired children coming down off of their sugar rush which was brought on by the large number of high fructose corn syrup based concoctions they had ingested-we went ahead and ventured over to our church's Fall festival. It was a huge success, in just numbers alone. There were literally thousands of people there. We only stayed a short while, enough to fulfill Rylie's desire for a pony ride- which she loved, Jack rode too, although we are not really sure what he thought of it. We also played a couple carnival games before the children began to slip into sugar enduced comas and we decided it was best to call it a night. Now, all we have to do is figure out what to do with the mounds and mounds of candy we presently have sitting on our counter! Well, I guess I will know where to look if I can't find Rylie!