Thanksmas

We had a wonderful thanksgiving this year with family coming from the north and the south! Ricks brother and his family came from Iowa to stay a few days and Nana and Papa came for a little visit from Tennessee. It was great! We usually celebrate Christmas together at Thanksgiving because we probably won't see them until next year. Nana has officially started to call this get together, Thanksmas. Everything all rolled up into one. I wanted to post some pictures we took of the visit.



The one of Aiden by himself is a picture of him finally looking and smiling at the camera (when everyone else is not!)
I promise, my baby does smile quite a bit. He just doesn't care about people dancing around in front of him yelling, "Aiden! Aiden! Look, look! Say cheese!" Oh well, what can ya do?
I have pics of the four of us but you will have to wait for the Christmas card. :)

Birthday girl

Last weekend my aunt celebrated her birthday. As a matter of fact, so did we!
As a surprise we met her for breakfast at Golden Corral (I didn't even know they served breakfast) and then we went walking around Independence Center. We all had fun. Even the carousel ride.

My pound puppy.

Aaron is finally getting old enough to go outside by himself. Hooray! The land we bought is starting to pay off! I can go about my business in the house and keep and eye on him through the window. Now I just have Aiden in tow. This is fine. I am really not ready for them to grow up on me.
The other day I looked through the window and I was not able to find Aaron. I went to every room to look out at every angle. No Aaron. I am nervous by now. I run down the stairs and go out the back door. "Aaron!" I yelled a couple of times.
"I'm over here mama!" He yells.
I kept looking for him but I don't see him. Then, my eyes scan over to the dogs pen. He is standing in there staring at me.
He surprises me everyday. I would have never thought to look in the pen with the puppies. He climbed the fence. Actually that is his favorite place to play and be "one of the puppies" now.
Everytime he wants to go out and play I have to stop for a second and think if the puppies were let out of the pen or not. If not, I let Sassy and Blue out so he can run free with them.

Great Weekend

We were super busy this weekend. I really enjoy that because I kind of feel like I got some things done. If every day could only be so productive!

The boys and I started off at Grandma Skinners house and she taught me how to make grape jelly. I was totally thrilled about it! Times have changed for me I guess! Getting excited about making jelly never used to be on the top of my priorities! LOL! Well, Grandma gave me the itch for making more jelly and I was hungry for apple. Since I didn't plan on visiting an orchard anytime soon, I found a recipe for fruit juice jelly. I made this batch with unsweetened apple juice. YUM! That is what I did this morning.



Also, since we are going to have our first hard freeze this week, my mom was bringing in all of her house plants. I took advantage of this, bought some potting soil and loaded up all of my empty pots and got about six or seven starts off of her plants. Now lets just see of I can keep them all. Should I have the boys ask God to give mommy the green thumb for our helpless little plants during their nightly prayers? *smirk* Anyways, my dad bought the boys some work gloves and they worked very hard running around and losing them! We managed to talk Aiden into putting his in his back pocket. He keep hollering at us, turning his back to us so we could see his gloves in his pocket. They were bigger than his pocket!

THE END!!!

Candy! Candy! Candy!

Here are some pictures of the boys for Halloween last night. It really wasn't too bad outside but there was a definite chill in the air!
The boys did great and were even polite to the candy givers. Aiden just would get the word Treat out and would leave out the word Trick. You know Aiden, always buttering up people!