Thanksgiving Weekend

We packed up one week ago to make the 4 1/2 hour drive to Arkansas for Thanksgiving. Our trip was not without a few laughs since Eli decided in the middle of Kansas at 9 pm at night that he needed to go #2. So, we pulled off on the side of the road and... ahem.. let him take care of business. (He is going to love learning someday that I used our family blog to talk about this). :)

It didn't take Eli and Hailey long to settle into life at Nana and Papa D's once we arrived. There was lots of book reading and wagon rides throughout the weekend.

 We enjoyed celebrating Thanksgiving with my mom's whole side of the family. My mom had cooked and cooked for days before we arrived so we then enjoyed eating and eating our entire stay. Did anyone else feel like Hailey did after eating Thanksgiving dinner??? This girl can eat. :)

 One of my cousins was there with her little boy, Tucker, who is just a few weeks younger than Eli (and a good 6 inches taller than him!). They quickly became buds, but Eli kept forgetting his name and would just ask me, "Hey mom, where'd my friend go?"

All the girls with our Papaw. :)

We carried the fun through the whole weekend, but I have too many pictures to put up on here tonight. I will get those up in the next few days! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Bored?

Clearly I am not interesting enough to keep this little girl entertained. Lucky for her that her daddy will be home tonight. These kids will be so happy to see him tomorrow (and I'm pretty excited too!)!

New Family Pics

Here are some of the pictures that we took as a family a few weeks ago!

Thirty

Today, I officially entered a new decade of life. Although today is no different than yesterday, I somehow feel older. Marc is still out of town today so I decided to take a day to myself. I took the kids to school even though they would have normally been home with me. They didn't know the difference since they go four days a week anyway, but it was wonderful for me. I slept in until it was time to take them downstairs (remember we live in the same building as their daycare) and then slowly proceeded through the most relaxing morning I have had in a long time. It reminded me of the mornings in college when I didn't start class until 10 or 11 in the morning and could take extra long eating breakfast, getting ready, and reading my bible. I LOVE where God has me right now in life, but having a "day off" was something I have not done in a long while and I think it was needed. :)

Marc and I celebrated my birthday last weekend when my mom was in town and offered to watch the kids for us for the night. We went out for a great dinner and then stayed at a nice hotel in downtown Wichita. Marc was full of stories from the medical missions conference he had just gotten back from and we talked and talked the night away. I am so thankful for Marc's friendship and companionship. We have the best time when we are together.

When we got back to the house the next morning we decided to put Eli and Hailey in some Christmas clothes that my mom had bought them. We tried to get some good pictures of the two of them (which never happened) before Marc had to head out on the road again for his work week away.

What a ham this boy is!

They just were not having the bro/sis pics.

I do have some picture that I hope to get put up tomorrow that we had made recently. They are pretty cute. I can't put them all up because some will be arriving under trees this year as presents, but I will share a few. :)

Calling for Back-up

Marc has been out of town a lot over the past week for call nights, a medical missions conference, and now a week away in small town Kansas as part of his fellowship requirement. My mom has come to the rescue! She has been spending the past few days with us and we have had lots of fun.

On Saturday, we took the kids to the mall to get out of the house. We decided to go to Build-a-Bear and they had so much fun. Eli loved building "Fuzzy" and they have been pretty inseparable ever since. He even has a scrub outfit like his daddy does. :)

We have eaten lots of good food, found some new toys, had plenty of laughs... and the extra pair of hands have been so appreciated! Thanks mom for coming. :)

Sibling Love

Marc is usually out of the house each morning before the kids wake up. So, that leaves me in charge of getting everyone ready and out the door on time. I usually get myself ready before I wake up the kids, but there are some days that they wake up earlier than expected. Today, Eli woke up first around 7:15 and Hailey was up shortly after. I was still getting ready so I told Eli to go into Hailey's room and keep her happy until I could get to her. I walked into her room a few minutes later to find this...

Um, not exactly what I had in mind, but he did keep her happy. :)

We had lost the charger cord to our video camera and finally ordered another one off the Internet recently. I found this video from the beginning of October when I was going through some old files tonight and thought it was cute of Eli and Hailey. I tried to shorten it some but couldn't remember how to edit videos so I just put it all on here. Hailey would not eat her meat at dinner the night we taped this so we finally let her get down. Then, Eli started feeding it to her and she couldn't get enough. What a silly girl! :)

They keep us entertained ALL the time.

Random Stuff from Our Week

This past week it got COLD around here, and I pulled out my winter coat for the first time. I was quickly reminded of how much I dislike cold weather. I am sure there will be days in Africa where I will be dreaming of colder days like this, but right now I wish the warmer weather would stay just a little bit longer. :)

Eli was really excited to put on his new hat and gloves that I found him at Target. We bundled up one night earlier this week and headed out to get ice cream. Who says you can't eat ice cream when it is 40 degrees outside? Our family eats ice cream any day, any time. :) And we might have just used it as a bribe reward for Eli eating all of his dinner that night.

 Hailey is especially fond of ice cream!

Marc took Hailey and Eli in for their well child checks this past week. Hailey had her 12 month physical and Eli had his 2 1/2 year one. Marc had actually taken Hailey in for her shots a few weeks ago so she didn't have to get any of those this week. Their growth charts looked pretty similar. They are both 75th% for their height and 50th% for their weight. Hailey weighed 21 lbs. and Eli weighed 30 lbs. Hailey ended up having a pretty bad ear infection so she was started on an antibiotic. This is her first antibiotic! I think Eli had taken an antibiotic five times by the time he was Hailey's age. She has been so much healthier that he was as a baby. I nursed her 3 months longer than I did with Eli so maybe that is the difference.

We have been giving her antibiotic to her in a syringe. She takes it really well. We just say, "Hailey come get your medicine," and she comes right away. Today, I walked in to Eli's room and heard him saying, "Here Haywee. Come take your medicine." He was pretending to give her medicine with his play syringe and she was coming to him the same way she does with us. It was so funny that I had to take a picture. :)

Look how serious Eli is as he "administers" the medicine. Ha!

We ran by our old house today to say hi to our neighbors and take our renter some banana bread that I had made for her. She wasn't home but Eli was able to play basketball with the neighbor kids while we visited. We have had the best neighbors everywhere we have lived and we are already praying for who our neighbors will be in Memphis. When it is time to move we always find ourselves wishing we had done more to get to know our neighbors better. The medical group Marc will be working with in Memphis is very intentional on loving and serving their neighbors where they work and live so we are excited to get to be a part of that when we get back from Africa.

After that we headed to Target to look for some Christmas items that people can give the kids that we can take with us to Africa. Eli is SO good in the toy aisle. I have never had to deal with even one fit from him not getting to take the toys with us. I let him hold and play with lots of things, but he puts them back when I ask him to. I love seeing how our lessons on obedience with him are slowly paying off. :) He really is such a sweet boy. I think I came up with a few ideas for toys that we should be able to fit in our trunks! However, these trunks are filling up fast in my head, and I think we are going to be really surprised at how little actually fits by the time we start packing. :)

After Target, we went and grabbed some dinner at Logan's Roadhouse. We love that place, not because the food is anything fancy, but because we get in really fast and it is so loud that no one minds noisy kids. We had the best dinner with our kids and it seemed like the perfect way to end the day. Now, I need to go reset all the clocks. I'm sure hoping our kids know to sleep in an extra hour tomorrow!

Halloween

We had a great time last night trick-or-treating with the kids. Hailey was just a little peanut this time last year. :) We joked that she looked like a pumpkin because she still had some jaundice color to her skin. Now she is walking! Amazing all that happens in a year's time.

We took the kids to the College Hill area this year which is known for being a major spot to trick-or-treat. It actually has a street nicknamed "Halloween Street" and they block off traffic for two blocks. These people certainly go all out and the whole city must have wanted to see. By 7:00 the sidewalks were so packed we opted to walk in the street with the wagon. I mean there were hundreds and hundreds of people.

 Dianna and Gracie came with us for a little bit which was fun.

 The decorations on this street were INSANE. I can't believe people put so much time and money into this stuff. The theme of this house below was the Wizard of Oz. There was another house further down the street that had a Candy Land theme. There were also some pretty scary houses, but we tried to steer clear of those. I much prefer my sweet and innocent little Thomas the train and ladybug to the Scream costumes. :)

 We let Hailey walk up to a few doors, but she was pretty slow and the large costume was really throwing her balance off. So, she mostly sat in the wagon and tried to eat through all the candy wrappers while I trick-or-treated with Eli. :)

 We had a great time with these two. They were good sports even though we kept them up a little later than normal. And Marc and I enjoyed some of their loot once we put them to bed. :)