Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we stayed home and had dinner with the Usserys and Smiths. John and I were happy that we still qualified to sit at the kid table! WHOO HOO!!! We had a lot of fun catching up with everybody and trying to force feed Jack all of his food since he hates food now. He would only eat the cranberry salad, which is mostly Jello and fruit. Thanks for the recipe, Grandmom!!! On Thanksgiving night, my parents came down for the weekend which was fun.


This is Trevor, Jack's uncle. I wanted to put a picture of him on the site because he's a devoted blog comment writer. Thanks for noticing us, Trev! He got the task of carving the turkey this year. We were both surprised to see how much meat is on those birds! Amazing, really. Kind of makes me respect turkeys a little more than I used to. Which was none.


This picture was taken Thanksgiving Day. Jack wanted to tell everyone that he's thankful for his wagon, remote controls and Cheerios.



It's been a while since I posted the last butt shot. This is a butt shot in action. Jack can get into his housework a little more when he's 'free.' He's vacuuming the house with his Cookie Monster/Elmo vacuum cleaner that either says, "Ah! Me love to vacuum with you" or "Cleaning crew coming through!" Fortunately this is one toy that Jack has not found the ON button to yet.



On Saturday after Thanksgiving, my mom and I decorated the house. John and I went back and forth on do we get a tree, do we not get a tree. We're going to be out of town for Christmas and didn't want the fire hazard of a real tree being in our home over our vacation...and with having a 15 month old running around pulling all of the ornaments off it would be tough...and with Scout trying to drink the water from the bottom...etc. So, we decided on a prelit fake tree that we can use in the future in Jack's room. John and I both love real trees, but it just wasn't worth the trouble this year. (You can tell I'm still trying to convince myself we did the right thing.) Well, if you're used to only having real trees, a prelit fake one just doesn't cut it. No matter how I try to look at it, it always reminds me of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree but sadder. Not only is it pretty ugly, but we can't even decorate the bottom half because of Jack's curious hands. I would put a picture of it on here, but it depresses me. So, here's Jack being tempted to yank the candles out of the window, which he's already done a few time. He'll grab the candle and stand there saying, "hot, hot, hot...."

Hope y'all are doing well!

The Tarheels play Ohio St. tonight at 9 on ESPN. GO HEELS!!!!

MIMI TURNS FIFTY!!!

On November 10th, Jack's Mimi turned 50! Can you believe it? She doesn't look that OLD, does she? Jack and I were able to make it to Greensboro to celebrate with her. We went to her surprise party with lots of our relatives. Everything went perfectly, and Mom was surprised 100%.

After the party, Mom, Dad, Matthew, Melissa, Jack and I headed to the mountains for the 2nd surprise of the weekend. We enjoyed the beautiful scenery and ATV rides (as you can see). Mom even wore a helmet and risked messing her perfect hair up! Incredible! Happy Birthday, Mimi! We were thrilled to spend your big day with you!

John, Jack and I took a trip two weekends ago to Atlanta. We went to the aquarium, which was awesome. Jack loved looking at the fish, pointing to them and saying "fith" which is his version of fish. He picked out a stuffed penguin, which he originally referred to as "Bubby", but now calls "bir" for bird. I'm considering taking him to see Happy Feet, the new animated movie out. I think he'd like it, but he wouldn't be the most quiet movie goer. The above picture was taken in Jeffrey's dorm room at Georgia Tech. Jack liked sitting on his bed and throwing the whiffle ball at Jeff. Jack attempted to say 'baseball' for the first time, which came out like "bay-baw." Close. We got to see Jeffrey several times while we were there, which was great. John and I reminisced about our first dorm rooms and what we missed about college, but again...Jack brought us back to earth and reality with another blowout. I guess a college dorm is about the best place to disguise a blowout. They both stink.

Jack learned in Atlanta how to hold the phone to his head and 'talk.' He walked around most of the time with his Clifford backpack and the phone. I want to apologize if you get any strange phone calls from our home. Jack has already managed to call Gigi on speaker phone by himself, and some random lady in Delaware! AHH!!! The phone bill may come out of his piggy bank this month.

This picture was taken this morning at the beach. After StrollerFit, we headed down to Follyfield Beach with some of the gang from class. Despite the cooler temperatures, it was beautiful. The tide was out and the beach wasn't crowded except for one girl who was apparently from the north and thought 55 degrees was warm enough for her swimsuit. Jack chased the birds talking in Jackese, which is this new language he walks around speaking in. Hilarious!

Jack's New Tricks:
-Words include: Mama, Daddy, dog(gie), hi!, bird, fish, cookie, please, ball, ear, no!, keys....I'm sure there's more, but I can't remember
-Dancing. Anytime you turn on music, Jack either starts turning in circles, waving his hands, or bending his knees. He's definitely a white boy.
-Putting the phone to his ear and pretending to talk to someone.
-Pointing to his ear, hair or tongue on demand.
-Mommy: "What do you think about duke?" Jack will stick out his tongue and blow. We're working on a cheer for the Tarheels.
-Eating books. That's right! Eating them. Requires talent!
-Picking up stuffed animals, blankets, anything soft putting his face in it and saying, "Awww"
-Eating a bite of food and saying "Mmmmm!!!"

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!!!

Little Shark of Horrors

This shark outfit is how we chose to torture our son this year for Halloween. The tights are how I chose to torture John. So Halloween was fun yesterday. Jack and I went to a party with StrollerFit friends. He hated wearing his costume there, probably because it was 80 degrees out. Everyone who arrived at the party when Jack did knew that he was a shark, but everyone who came after Jack had shed his shark skin wondered why he was walking around in white tights. It was pretty freaky. He had been reduced to just a boy in tights. This picture above was taken last night when Gigi and Papa Johnny came over to do the trick-or-treat thing with us. The costume lasted longer with the distraction of his glowing pumpkin and his red wagon.



We found out that either all of our neighbors love their candy or don't like children because there were only 4-5 houses (including ours) that had their lights on. We went to all of the lit houses where Jack collected candy for John and me. But he did enjoy a Milky Way or at least the wrapper!

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween! Enjoy laughing at these pictures!