Thanksgiving

We went to my parent's house for Thanksgiving. We took with us our Becky from the basement and her mom. Hubby's dad and step-mom met us there. They brought with them a friend from Saudi Arabia - Jamie. My niece and her daughter were there as well. The only way it could have been better would have been if my sister had been feeling well and had been able to come, and if my two nephews would have been there.

Here are some pictures:

Me and my parents:




Becky and her mom:

Becky and the moms:

The moms:

Remember a few posts back when I posted pics of my fam with Hubby's side of the family and the attempts at getting a good picture? Apparently, the goofiness does not reside only on Hubby's side of the family:

My parents look fine in this one, but M. looks like she is asleep and J. is making some strange face and sticking her tongue out:

Now, all looks good, except M. looks like she is choking:

Again, everyone else looks good, and M. is making another face. She looks like she just won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. Or told that she can eat again.

This is M's "I'm really not making this difficult, honest" face:

My dad threatening M. My mom praying. J. getting a kick out of the whole thing:

This one is actually a good one of M, but now J's eyes are closed and my mom is checking on M. to make sure she is behaving. What would make her think otherwise??

My dad deciding he would take matters into his own hands. Literally. My mom praying that this will all be over soon.

M. sheepishly posing somewhat correctly.

Apparently, this picture taking challenge occurs even when my children are not in the picture:

'No, I am tired of taking pictures!'

We did finally get a great shot: Grandmother, Grand-daughter, and Great-granddaughter:

Hubby and his dad:

After eating, we went out and played some on the golf cart and 4-wheelers:

Becky and M:

J:

J. honing her driving skills:

Hubby telling me to put the camera away:

The 3 littles all snuggled up on the couch.

It did not take long for the silliness to start:

After eating and playing, we all got lazy on the couch:

Soon, the fake sleeping gave way to real sleeping:

Feeling refreshed!

I think I have decided that the goofiness originated in the male DNA:

That brown thing the dads are playing with was something my dad bought. It looks like a vase, but then it will stretch out and make a hat. I tried to do a movie from the pics of M. putting it on her head, not sure if it will work or not. If it doesn't play - you may need to manually drag the play bar across the bottom slowly.

When we got home, we decided to do Christmas decorations:

Ginger the cat was a big help:



I am working on a "wordy" blog entry next. It will have some pictures, but not as many as this. I always get more comments on those, so I am looking forward to that.

While you are here, check out this other blog entry (Dec. 11th) that Kristie alerted me to. (Pardon any offensive language, I did not write it.) Then, after you read it, come back here and leave me a comment.

Love you all and thanks for stopping by.

Camping trip

I realized that I never posted any pictures from our camping trip last month. So, without further ado, here they are.

Most of the clan that went:




For those of you that know my youngest, you know that she loves animals. All animals. Except for cockroaches, those freak her out a little. Here are her and her sister with a rabbit that was kept in the main office of the camp grounds.

Now, here she is snuggling up with the rabbit. She wanted to try to take it home. Naturally.

Here she is with a chicken. That she caught. By her self. She wanted to take it home.

Here is a huge grasshopper cricket thing that she caught. She wanted to take it home.

Here she is with a squirrel. A pet squirrel that one of the women there raised. She wanted to take it home. Notice a theme here???

(By the way, this picture was taken in the restaurant part of the office at the campground. Notice the dog sitting next to M. and the squirrel? It sat in the restaurant the entire time we were eating breakfast in the hopes that it would get some scraps. The bunny was right outside the restaurant part - in the store. There were a dog and a squirrel running around where we were eating. I'm not thinking the health department visits there much.)

There is actually a strange story about the squirrel. The lady in the picture came in while we were eating and told everyone to be on the lookout for an overly friendly squirrel. (Overly friendly? Is it going to come up and say "hi?" Is it going to jump out of a tree and land on our shoulders, causing much screaming and running to ensue? Does it have rabies and is going to come find us all and kill us? What are the characterists of an "overly friendly squirrel?") She apparently raised 2 squirrels from the time they were babies and one had gotten out that morning. She then proceeded to take off her jacket and this squirrel was on her back. (I envisioned the whole squirrel scene from National Lampoon's vacation at that point, but that is irrelevant. :-)) The squirrel that got away was named Nutmeg. Later in the day, this lady was wandering around the campground calling, "Nutmeg, Nuuuutmeeeeg." Needless to say, we would all get the giggles when we heard it. It was quite the strange situation.

The campground had a petting farm. The kids got to milk the cows. (We actually had the milk at breakfast the next morning - fresh from the cows, no pasteurization. Again, where IS the health department???)

(I felt sorry for this cow. There were so many pictures taken of it's nether regions and no one was looking at it's face. I felt sorry for it and took a picture of it's face. And then I petted it and told it how sorry I was that we were all up in it's personal space. She forgave me.)


Here is a picture of the scenery that you could see from our campground. Isn't it beautiful?? I just love, love, love autumn!

This picture is not from our campground, but from pretty close to it.





There were also built in trampolines there:




J. trying to help put up the tent. (Nice biceps, girl!)




M. walked out onto this tree that had fallen into the creek. She then decided to practice her beam routine one the tree. While surrounded by water.

By the way, notice the short sleeves? They were all well and good as long as the sun was up. As soon as it went down, it was beyond cold. One poor person on the trip woke up one morning with icecicles in her hair. M. and I ended up going and sleeping in the truck at one point. It was in the 30's at night. I don't "do" cold. Brr.

Scary self portrait of me sitting next to my baby girl.

Thanksgiving post and pictures are in the works. Hope to have that up before Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by!

Let me know you were here!