Happy Thanksgiving!

We went over to Jason's Mom's house yesterday for Thanksgiving dinner. She cooked a feast! Everything was soooooo good! We definitely left with full bellies!

Everyone brought their dogs so she had a house full of animals! Luckily they all handled the abuse from the kids beautifully! Here is Jason with Portia--

Jacob and Blake had fun resting on Lucy. Lucy didn't seem to mind!

Mom, do we have to get our picture made AGAIN!

This is how they will look when they are teenagers and I still take their picture in that chair!

I didn't take any pictures during dinner, but I did get this one shot after dinner. (Jacob got restless so I went to play with him in the other room.) Notice Mike sitting at the kids' table! He's such a great sport!

Ready for dessert -- ice cream, cupcakes, and pie! Every kid's dream!

It was great watching Jacob play with his cousins! I could relax and just let him explore a little more this year. He is growing up so fast and becoming more independent! We have a lot to be thankful for this year!

Family Pictures

We went to Kid's Kastle today to take our family Christmas card pictures. Thanks Terri for being our wonderful photographer and thanks Darby for letting us use your awesome camera! Here is a sneak peek. You'll have to wait to get yours in the mail to see if we use any of these!

20 months old

Jacob turned 20 months old today! Here is how we celebrated--

When I picked him up from the babysitter's house he pointed to his ear and said "ear". Normally we say -- Where is your ear?--and he will point to it or we will say --What is this?-- and he'll say "ear", but never has he just pointed and said "ear" so I knew something was up. He had a slight fever earlier this morning, but he was still active and eating and appeared to be fine. He has been coughing and has had a runny nose all week, but I didn't think anything of it. So when I picked him up at 4:30 I called the doctor and got a 5:00 appointment just to rule out an ear infection.

We got to the doctor's office a little before 5:00 and began waiting. If you have ever tried to entertain a sick child in a doctor's office, you know how hard it is to wait. When 5:30 rolled around I asked the receptionist how much longer it would be. (This dr.'s office is usually right on time, we never wait.) She said there were FOUR people ahead of us!! So I thought maybe it would be another 30 minutes. She gave us some crayons, a coloring book, and a ball to keep Jacob occupied. He was so excited and began to happily color. When 6:00 came and went, I was getting really frustrated and Jacob had already eaten all of his snacks. Finally around 6:15 they called us back. The nurse weighed him and took his temp and asked about his symptoms. She did a pulse ox? test to make sure he was getting enough oxygen and he was completely normal. Then about 15 minutes later the doctor came in. He did his thing-- listened to Jacob breathing, looked in his throat, looked in his ears..... He diagnosed him with an ear infection and a cold basically. So we have 10 days of antibiotics to go through! We left the office at 6:45 and headed to CVS to fill the prescription. Luckily the pharmacist felt sorry for us and filled it on the spot. I got Jacob home, gave him his first dose, fed him some crackers for dinner and Jason put him in bed.

Jacob was such a trooper. He did everything the doctor asked and was easily amused at my attempts to entertain him. Hopefully the weekend will be better! I am out of school all next week so I hope to get some time to relax!

We are getting our pictures made for our Christmas cards this weekend so check back late Sunday for a sneak peek!

Kids Kastle

This is my second post in 2 days so make sure you read yesterday's post about Jacob's cake obsession and his chalk paintings.

Yesterday Jacob and I went to Kid's Kastle. Laura joined us for some of the fun. Jacob had fun climbing up and down the equipment. He loved the swings and the slides. Some of the slides were pretty scary so I got to slide too! The weather was perfect and we ended up staying about 2 hours! I'm sure we will be spending lots of time there in the future! Here are some of the MANY pictures I took. Enjoy!

You can see how big the playground is in this picture. This shows about 1/4 of it!

Chocolate Cake and a Masterpiece

For Halloween, Mrs. Pam gave Jacob a pumpkin shaped cake COVERED in orange icing. I kinda put off giving it to him because I knew it would be a mess. Monday night we finished dinner a little early so I decided to cut the "white" cake. After the first cut I knew it was NOT white cake, but chocolate! I gave Jacob one slice and Jason and I ate the rest. Jacob LOVED it! He got his hands in it and made a huge mess. He made more of a mess than when he had cake at his 1st birthday party. It was so cute to watch, though. We don't ever have cake in the house so this was a special treat. Thanks Pam!

The weather this week has been magical! If I could move somewhere where the weather is always in the 50-75 degree range, I would go in a heartbeat! That's how it was all week. Jacob spent a lot of time outside with his babysitter and the other kids. They even went to the park down the street. Yesterday, Jacob found some Easter egg chalk so we decided to go outside and color the driveway. He had so much fun making a mess. He loves to color no matter where he is.

Future Monet??

Gotta love the rainbow butt!

Trick-or-Treat

Yesterday was full of ups and downs. After his nap, we got Jacob all dressed up in his cowboy costume to go to a Halloween carnival. When we got there it was soooooooo crowded that we turned around and came back home. There were cars parked in the grass and a sign saying that a shuttle was available if you wanted to park in a nearby shopping center. Uh, no, thank you! I was more disappointed than Jacob, he didn't know where we were going. : ) It just makes me mad that free things for kids are so crowded! It's frustrating!

The good thing was that I was able to get some great outside pictures of him in his costume. The weather was gorgeous!

Later on we made three stops during our trick-or-treating outing. We stopped by to see Jenna and Brayden in their costumes (and snuck some pizza from their neighborhood party).

Then we went to see "Mam", "Mahk" and "Dahbee". Jacob got to run around outside while we tried to get some pictures of him! I like this one of him and Darby.

Next we went to Laura's house. When we pulled into the driveway Jacob started saying "Bubba, Bubba". He wanted to see the dog so badly! When we went inside the little cowboy got to sit on a real saddle. He wasn't too sure about this.

By this time it was getting late so we went home and the little cowboy was tired of his hat and boots.

At each stop Jacob got a load of treats! He is so lucky to have so many people that care about him! He will be high on sugar for quite a while!

This Halloween was definitely a lot more fun than last Halloween! Below is a picture from last year.

Pirate Pumpkin

Look at Jacob's pirate pumpkin! It was a gift from his cousins Tyler, Kyle and Blake. Thanks guys! Jacob had fun helping Daddy unwrap all the pieces. The finished pumpkin looks so cute!

Jacob had a Halloween party at his babysitter's house today. He wore his cowboy costume without fussing! He even wore the hat! You'll have to wait until Sunday to see pics of him in his full cowboy gear!