Ever So Thankful

Snuggled up to watch
the parade

Mike is fulfilling one of his Christmas traditions tonight and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is on. It's ever so fitting since this movie is what keeps me up each year on the night before Thanksgiving. I live in fear every year of ruining the turkey - where it goes pffft when carved and everyone has to crunch away. Just thinking about it makes me anxious.

The good news - I didn't ruin the turkey and we had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend. My parents and sister came down, as well as my sister's friend Emily (Enchilada) and Emily's mom (Gramchilada). We had such a fun day together with good food, Quinn's blueberry pie, an authentic Texas pecan pie (courtesy of Gramchilada), and some serious Wii playing action. Fiona is a master sword fighter and I impressed everyone with my chicken flying skills.

Mike had to work the day after Thanksgiving (banks are open so everyone else can shop), so Mom, Dad, and I packed up the kiddos and headed to the zoo. It was a really mild day out and we were really excited to get to do the outside trail. We saw a baby tiger and its mom, the grizzly bears, and the moose. We had the most fun watching the baby tiger play and the mama tiger walk around - the kids just loved it. And Dec even tried to make friends with mama tiger.

Zoo with Gma and Gpa

We also put in some solid time at the zoo's outdoor park, conned Grandpa into buying cake pops to help small people push through to a late lunch, and then walked the Minnesota trail and saw the fish. We were disappointed that the wolves were not very active, but both Q and Dec touched a stingray in the tide pool.

Gma and Gpa left on Saturday to go spend time with Auntie. We spent the rest of the weekend outside enjoying the unseasonably warm weather and cleaning the garage. We also started putting up our Christmas decorations (only started - as being able to go outside in sweatshirts was impeding my holiday spirit) and I got to babysit my cousin's little 3-month-old baby for a few hours. We are so thankful to  spend the holiday with some of our favorite people - and we missed our other favorites and can't wait to get see them at Christmas! We enjoy Thanksgiving and the great reminder of everything we have to be grateful for.

So warm out for the end of November!

Q is Baptized!

We started out the holiday weekend with a very special event. Miss Quinn was baptized on Sunday. We were blessed to have a church full of family and friends to welcome her officially into God's family. And what a wonderful time of year - to celebrate our child of God as we remember the birth of our Savior.

Quinn is very blessed to have special godparents as well. My sister, Auntie Emmy, and our 9-year-old nephew Ben have agreed to guide her on her spiritual path. We were so proud of Ben and how serious he took the entire ceremony. Quinn is a lucky girl!

Godparents

And Auntie Tracey and Uncle Kyle were wonderful to host a little party after the service at their house. Which used to be my Grandpa's house. So my extended family was back at grandpa's for the first time in several years - just in time for Christmas. Big thanks to Tracey and Kyle for that special gift to my family. It meant a lot to them to see the place as a home for a new (and wonderful) family!

Finally, if you missed the event and want to watch it, here is about a five minute video of the baptism part of the service:

Santa!

New family game plan for our annual Santa date: pick the girls up a bit early from day care, drive to EP, meet Mom at the mall, and wait approximately 7 minutes to sit on the lap of the big guy! SCORE! Fiona was super excited to see Santa, but got a little nervous when it was our turn. She checked him up and down, agreed to sit on his lap with Quinn, but decided not to smile for the picture. She was very serious about the entire process and we could tell she was taking it all in. She rode home with me and told me that she "had fun, but I didn't smile. because I was done." So there you have it.

She asked Santa very nicely for a dollhouse and told him "thank you" and "Merry Christmas" when we were done. Quinn thought Santa had a very comfy lap and gave him lots of smiles and a bit of chatter. I think she asked Santa for a play farm!

To make the night even more special, we stopped at Perkins for pancake brinner [breakfast for dinner]. Quinn woke up before the food came and had a fantastic time playing with her feet, chattering, and smiling at anyone who would look at her. Fiona was happy, ate well, and shared a special french fry with me that she had dipped in ketchup, syrup, and chocolate chips. Yum ...

All in all, a very successful Santa date experience!

It's A ...

BABY! A beautiful, healthy baby!

We had our 20 week ultrasound this morning. The morning started off rough as a grizzly bear awoke in the toddler's room at 6:00 am. We left the house thinking "good luck, grandpa!" (Luckily her mood mellowed into the sweet toddler we love throughout the day). It was raining - which meant our drive to the perinatal clinic would take at least twice as long. And a couple semis and a truck/trailer got in-between Mike and me so I got a little mixed up on my way because we went a different way than usual. But we made it to the clinic with a couple minutes to spare.

The day looked up from there. The ultrasound showed a baby with a beautiful, healthy brain and heart, a fully-formed spine (!), and all other organs present and anatomically correct. Wonderful wonderful news! Baby weighs in at approximately 10 oz! (Fiona was a solid pound at our 20 week appointment)

I really wanted the gender to be a surprise with Fiona and Mike wanted to find out. Since he very unselfishly agreed to be surprised with me, I told him that he got to decide for number two. It only seemed fair. He decided that we'll be surprised again. So Baby V 2.0's gender will be unveiled August 13 - or thereabouts.

Also, if ultrasound cooperation is any indication, this one will give its sister a run for her money in stubbornness (say prayers for Mom and Dad!). But we love seeing that personality so early. We did with Fiona and she has been our constant joy since. We expect nothing less with number 2.

We are proud to introduce the beautiful addition to our family:

Not Great Gamblers

Kenny Rogers tells us that "you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" - and that's been our theme song of the week. For the next two weeks, our daycare provider, A, has jury duty. Not awesome for scheduling ... but we anted up and figured we would give it a try.

Then Sunday afternoon, A called and said her middle baby had strep so she needed to be closed on Monday. We held 'em and called our back up daycare where Fiona went over the summer. It's a great place - but VERY out of our way. But worth it to both go to work. So off we all went on Monday morning. Then mid-morning, we got an email from A that her youngest had a "highly-contagious" virus. We did what any red-blooded, two-working parents with no vacation family would do ... we folded 'em and called in the grandparents!

Mike's dad came down last night and stayed with the Little Bug today and tomorrow (at least). Sounds like health is returning to A's (hooray), but that jury duty bit is still hanging out there. We'll play it day by day for the next week - but there's an end in sight. And we already have Mike's mom on the hook for next week if we need. THANK GOODNESS for retired grandparents!!

While the week did not start off as we had hoped, we are grateful that we had a Plan B to go to. Even though we technically folded, we're going to call it a win!