Thanksgiving II and a Birthday

My dad's birthday was November 26th, and since we were in MO at the time, we all got together at my parents house the Sunday after Thanksgiving to celebrate his birthday and the holiday all at once. Jonathan, Becki, Cooper and Gabe were there, along with Becki's sister Bethany, and my cousin Dan and his wife Donna and son Devin.

Like every other dinner hosted by my mom, there was an enormous amount of delicious food, which is definitely okay with us because we always get to take home some of the leftovers as a parting gift. There were even three desserts from which to choose, but since I didn't want any one dessert to be left out, I enjoyeda piece of each: tiramisu, giant apple napoleon, and a Chamorro pudding dessert called latiya that Donna made. All were fabulous and I did not regret the extra calories one bit!

Cooper likes to go "grocery shopping" at Nana's house, and Tyler is a willing recruit when he's around. Each of them hop in their car and drive to the pantry to pick up some items. After a trip to the "store", they dump the purchased items on the coffee table. It's funny what they manage to pack in their cars. One of them had a huge jug of vinegar at one point. I'm not sure how they were even able to lift it, but these boys are resourceful...and strong!

Driving to the store

Cooper happily makes his selections

Tyler finds something worth buying

This is only about half of the groceries they ended up collecting.

Gabe browses for himself

Sheep

Tyler has this toy. It's the sheep from one of his favorite TV shows, "Word World". The letters have magnets inside so they stick together. Because of this toy, Tyler can now spell 2 words--his name and "sheep".

This video is from 2 weeks ago. As you'll see, he also knows all the letters that are in the word "car", but he hasn't quite got the correct order down yet. He seriously just loves letters right now. You'll also notice Nathan's rosy red cheeks, which appear every time the air gets dry and cold outside. Tyler's cheeks were the same way at this age. All we can do is keep Aquaphor slathered on them at night, which seems to help a little.

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Our Tree

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went to a nearby tree lot to pick out our tree. We always get a real tree, and this year Tim and I had some extra help picking which one should come home with us. After browsing up and down the rows and rows of trees, we, the grown-ups, narrowed it down to 2 and Tyler made the final decision. He did well because I honestly think it's the prettiest one we've ever had. It's very full and more symmetrical than our trees in the past. It is also the tallest we've had since we moved to NC--we had to trim the top so it wouldn't scrape the ceiling!

Boy on a mission

Keeping Nathan warm and cozy

"Can you guys hurry up and decide already?"

"We found the perfect one!"

Tyler liked watching the workers trim the trunks and net the trees.

This was the first year that we actually let Tyler be a part of the tree decorating process. We used to wait until he was asleep for the night because we didn't want him breaking ornaments and such, but we figured he would be able to handle the responsibility this year. (We still hung the lights during his nap, though, since those get tangled so easily). I'm glad we let him in on the fun because that's just what it was. He did an excellent job of carefully unwrapping the ornaments (with some close supervision from PJ) and he really liked hanging them on the tree. There was just one teency little problem. He wanted to hang all of the ornaments on the same branch.

Unwrapping the ornaments

Reviewing his work

I tried to explain that he could hang them on different branches, and in fact, that would be preferential. But, even after I'd remove the extra ornaments from the branch, minutes later 2 more would appear in their place. I just had to giggle to myself and of course I praised him for a job well done. One of his favorite lines is, "Mommy, I such a good helper?" How could I answer with anything but "yes"?

Like most activities Tyler and I do together, it would have gone much faster if I'd done it by myself...but where's the fun in that? I enjoyed telling him about the ornaments he unwrapped: what it was, who gave it to us, how long ago we received it. (Of course he was most interested in his ornaments. He is 2, after all). Each year, my favorite part of decorating the tree is remembering a special person or time in our lives that is represented by each ornament, and I got to share that with Tyler this year. I look forward to future Christmases when I can do the same with his little brother.

So even though it took a long while to get all the ornaments on the tree, the result is pretty great. Tim and I think it's the nicest tree we've had so far, and even if it wasn't, it would still be special to me because I got the chance to make a memory with one of my favorite people in the world.

Thanksgiving in Missouri

This will be a super long post with a ridiculous number of photos because I'm doing one post for the 6 days we spent in Thanksgiving with the Surface side of our family. It was a pretty packed visit, but both boys handled it fairly well. We flew to Missouri on Saturday and unfortunately had a layover, which made the trip that much longer. Nathan didn't enjoy the 8 hours of travel, but once we got to Jefferson City, he was his smiley self just about the entire time. Tyler, my shy little guy, loved spending time at Grandma and Grandpapa's house with his grandparents and cousins, but meeting all the extended family was a little overwhelming. Like usual, our visit to Missouri went by quickly and we all enjoyed the time spent with family.


On Sunday (before Thanksgiving), the Loesch side met at Tim's aunt Marlene's house for lunch. It was the first time in several years that all of Tim's cousins were together, which meant that there were lots of little people running around. I think there were 12 great-grandchildren, 9 of whom were 3-years-old and younger. Even though Marlene has a nice big house, we had to really watch where we were walking so we didn't bump into a toddler or baby.

Nathan and Great-Grandma Loesch

Grandma and Grandpa with all their grandchildren, spouses and great-grandchildren

The Surface and Yanskey cousins with Grandma and Grandpa

On Monday we stayed at Grandma and Grandpapa's house most of the day. Tyler and I helped Grandma make white chocolate covered pretzels, which were in Christmas shapes (bells, trees, stars). Tyler caught on really fast and was a great little helper. After dipping the pretzels very carefully, he sprinkled them with red and green sugar. As you'll see below, he got a little sprinkle happy with the red.

On Tuesday we went to Grandma and Grandpa Loesch's farm for a visit. Tyler loved seeing all the cows and running up the long drive with Grandpapa. I personally always love going out to the farm because it's so quiet and peaceful out there. Grandma Loesch always outdoes herself in the kitchen, making all kinds of yummy food--all from scratch, of course--and Grandpa always has interesting stories to share. This time we got to read a paper that Tim wrote in high school about Grandpa's life and how different things were for him growing up, such as keeping food in the cellar since his family didn't have a refrigerator.

Since we will be spending Christmas at our house this year, Grandma and Grandpapa gave Tyler and Nathan a few early presents to open on Tuesday evening. Tyler is definitely getting the hang of this whole present thing. He was very excited when we told him it was time for presents. Nathan, on the other hand, hasn't got a clue just yet, but he did have fun playing with his cookie jar shape sorter (and still does).

Kayla and Morgan didn't have school on Wednesday, so they spent the day with us at Grandma and Grandpapa's house. Tyler enjoyed having them around all day, especially since it was a nice warm day and they got to play outside for a while. Brooke joined us after preschool, but Tyler was still napping when she arrived. She just kept asking, "Where's Tyler? " She was so ready to play!



That night Christy and Kevin came over for dinner and we tried our best to get a decent photo of the cousins with each other and with Grandma and Grandpapa. (I'm still not sure we succeeded). It was definitely an ordeal, mainly because of Tyler, who would not stand or sit still for more than 3 seconds at a time. Nathan was great--he just kept smiling. What a sweetie.






On Thanksgiving Day we met the Surface side at Johnny's, a local BBQ restaurant, for lunch. Grandma Surface, who usually does a bang-up job hosting Thanksgiving dinner each year, recently fell down some stairs and is still recovering. Needless to say, we had to find an alternative since she was in no shape to cook her usual feast. It was another beautiful day, so we waited outside before being seated. Right out front were three or four deer figurines (strange, but true). Almost immediately Tyler made friends with one of the deer, the one missing an antler. At least we can say our son doesn't discriminate against the handicapped.

Here he is saying, "Dis deer is my best friend."

And here he is riding his new best friend.

After lunch, we all went to visit Grandma Surface, who was waiting at home. While there aren't as many great-grandchildren on the Surface side of the family, it was still a full house with all Tim's cousins present.

Grandma and Grandpa Surface with their great-grandchildren

Kayla and Nathan
Four generations of Surface men -- I think this is such a special picture.

We flew back home the day after Thanksgiving, which was a great day to travel because most people were probably out shopping. The airports weren't crazy at all, which we fully appreciated now that we have 2 munchkins to keep happy. After a 2-hour drive to St. Louis and an hour-plus flight to Memphis, we were all pretty exhausted by the last flight. Tyler finally passed out and even though Nathan did not, he sat contentedly on his daddy's lap for most of the way. From this mom's perspective, it was a nice conclusion to a fun-filled trip.

Updates are coming...

I promise. The computer I usually use (Tim's tablet PC) caught a fun virus, so it hasn't been working at all, which is one of the reasons why I haven't posted anything in weeks. Unfortunately, in order to fix the computer, everything I had saved on it will be lost. Hoo-ray. That's the bad news.

The good news is that we found a fabulous deal on a Dell laptop, so merry Christmas to me! It should arrive before Christmas, and while I would love to save it for Christmas Day, I will probably start using it right away. Not having access to a computer during the day has been hard because I have to check and answer all my emails late at night. The only reason why I'm able to post right now is because Tim happens to be running an errand, making his work computer available for my use. =)

While buying a brand new laptop may seem like an extravagant solution to the virus problem, we've actually been thinking about it for some time because the tablet didn't have much memory. Plus, my new one will actually have all the Microsoft Office applications I need (unlike the tablet PC, which only had the not-so-great knock-off version). And yes, I really do need Excel. As a former slave of the public accounting industry, I learned that a spreadsheet can be utilized for just about anything, and I do. With all the things I have going on with MOPS, having the "real" Word and Excel will make life much easier.

Tim is home and will need to get back to work, so my time is up. Updates are coming...hopefully before I get my fun new laptop. Did I mention it's going to be green? How cool is that?