Happy Thanksgiving

With the focus on food, family, and friends, Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday.

This year, we were supposed to head to Bryan and Adam's for the day.  Unfortunately, Bryan had to change plans last minute and head to family out of state.

With Daniel's high-maintenance tastes (I tried to think of a better way to say it, but the guy wants what he likes, how he likes it, so I think high maintenance is the best description), I had thankfully bought nearly everything for our traditional meal, and Bryan gave us the turkey and rolls he had.  However... Bryan had planned to smoke the turkey, and being that his smoker wouldn't hold a full sized turkey, he had bought a center portion, and then purchased the legs and thighs separately.  While I have cooked turkey many times, I wasn't sure what to do with pieces, so I did what I knew, and assembled one full turkey out of three different packages.  My brother, Ryan, originally called it Zombie Turkey, which I thought was great, but later came up with an even more fitting title- FrankenTurkey!

I spent Wednesday getting as much food prep and basic house cleaning done as was possible, with Daniel helping out tremendously with a Walmart run.  Though behind closed doors our house would not pass even our usual standards, I think we did alright for a low key Friendsgiving.

I was worried about getting all the cooking done with our crazy Potatoes under foot, but Adam came to the rescue!  He had offered Daniel and I a night out before the guys leave, but we asked if, instead, he would come over on Thanksgiving and assist Daniel in entertaining the bro while I was occupied in the kitchen.

Closer to food time, we were thrilled when Matt and Andrea came over.  It was a good break for them, because they have spent the week moving into their amazing new home (yes, I was their Realtor!).  They brought their two pups, Jet and Lily.  Zoey was surprisingly unsnooty to the visiting pups, until Jet found her bone.  There was a small growl, but otherwise she was an angel!  Lily added her own excitement to the day, having a tiny poop in the kitchen as soon as she got there, but luckily, Potatoes spotted it immediately and announced it in time for us to all jump to cleaning it up before he could grab it.  It was so nice having a house full of friends, food, and fur!  A perfect day in my book.

I failed to get any pictures of the amazing spread, or of us around the table being truly grateful for yummy food and even better company.  I didn't think about the camera until we were all half into a food coma, looking through Black Friday catalogs.

We ate, watched football, took a stroll through the neighborhood; all the best parts of Thanksgiving!

Milestones:

Our family welcomed Adam, or 'Agho', as Alexander's Godfather this past week.  While we felt this was a big request, and were hesitant over the level of obligation, Adam accepted with a clear sense of honor.  We are blessed to have a such a strong figure to help us raise Alexander with God.

In true Agho fashion, Adam rounded up our Thanksgiving with a special treat for Potatoes.  He brought him a few gifts, each of them with special meaning.  A Yoshi doll to go with our Halloween costumes, a combo of the Little Critters books, because that guy is just like our little guy, and a yard marker to remember our football game fun.  Potatoes is no fool.  He immediately said, "push over," and began knocking into the yard marker.  Crazy guy!

He likes making Yoshi knock it over

We tried to take a family picture, but Zoey couldn't stop making silly faces

Happy Thanksgiving Y'all!

Staycation

As we prepare for Daniel to leave for work again, we had a big milestone to recharge.

Daniel and I took a staycation while Alexander spent his first night away from both of us.

My mom came and stayed at our house with the littles while we went to Pensacola.

It was a fun-filled weekend, starting with the TEAM w/ Paula Sherman sponsoring a Ruck 22 in awareness of the 22 Veterans a day who commit suicide in our nation.

Xander loved the emergency vehicles that were set up.

After a quick lunch, we headed to Pensacola.
Daniel planned the perfect day away!  He found the UGA alumni club for the panhandle and we joined their viewing party for the Georgia-Auburn game.  I knew we were in the right place when Harry Dog greeted us at the door!


Bryan came to join us, and even donned red and black in honor of the dawgs!


The game was miserable.  Our season strong dawgs simply crumbled against early missteps and could not recover.  Once upon a time, this would have ruined my evening, but when an adult-only evening is so hard to come by, a quick walk through downtown Pensacola and a delicious pumpkin milkshake, and I was ready to shake it off!
The alumni club met right across the street from Pensacola Bay Center, where we had tickets to an Ice Flyers hockey game.



We had a great time watching a high scoring game- SEVEN goals in the second period!  And the Ice Flyers got the win!

We met up with a couple people Daniel knows from work.  What surprised us was seeing another person from his work sitting just behind us AND I ran into Alyssa and James as we were in line for beer!  Their seats were in perfect view for me to see James catch a t-shirt!

We scored a t-shirt too, when Daniel got closest to one of the targets in the Chuck-a-Puck game.  I felt like a high schooler at a carnival, with our dates winning us the prize! 

After the game, the zamboni does a quick lap and then the rink is open for ice skating

It was a redemption moment for me....back when we first started dating, Daniel and I visited my brother in New York and Daniel wanted to ice skate in Central Park.  I REFUSED!  I am terrible at anything with my feet not on the ground, and used to get very hard on myself, so I simply chose not to try.  It was a real disappointment for Daniel.  I've grown up a lot over the last 12 years and now I would rather try and fail, and laugh at myself, then sit on the sidelines.

We had a blast and I only fell once!

Bryan and Daniel were pros- They could join the Ice Flyers!

A kid even told Daniel to slow down

Our evening ended with saying goodbye to Bryan and heading back to the hotel where we had met the alumni club.  It was amazing not having a pup or a toddler to disrupt my sleep.  I slept until 8:30!

The next morning, Daniel was ready to get back to the crew.  I insisted on being fed first.  We had brunch at this neat little place downtown and then hit the road to our precious family.

Of course, the crazy began as soon as we walked in the door (terrible twos are real, y'all), leaving us to wonder if it's easier just to trudge through without taking the time to remember what it was like before....just kidding!

My mom and Potatoes had a great time while we were gone.  She took him for his first visit to the Gulfarium.

He loved it so much, when we drove by it a week later, he started talking about all the sea creatures he saw there!

The next morning, he woke up at 4am wondering where his parents were, but after a quick tantrum, he finally let Gammie get him out of the crib and they headed to the park.  She was sweet enough to take Zoey too!  I know that's a handful to have both...

Mayhem

Oh what fun...

Potatoes got 'suspended' for the first time.

He has been going back and forth between the one and two year old rooms as the numbers allow since he isn't technically two yet, but has the energy and language of a two year old.

While in the one year old room, he got so frustrated with a little girl, he pushed her down and she busted her nose.  They called Daniel to come and get him, which is school policy for high aggression, but neither he nor I were able to.  In lieu of typical punishment, they made him stay home the following day.  True punishment- I was sitting an open house, so he got to go to the office with daddy.  I'm sure he learned his lesson....

I was pretty upset by this course of action until I took him to school the following day, and they explained that they had added a second teacher to the two year old room so he could officially be moved up.  I appreciate that they saw the cause of the aggression and found a solution so quickly,

Leaha made the joke that she better start preparing for him in her 3 year old room, because at this rate, he will out grow the twos pretty soon!  Tehehee I can't wait for him to have Aunt Leaha as his teacher!

Boos and Twos

Alexander had two major milestones last week.

On Tuesday, he had his first experience with Trick-or-Treating.

We felt very honored to have Leaha, Bryan, and Adam all join our family for this monumental evening.

Because he was the only kid in our group, he didn't quite grasp the concept and needed reminding to say, "trick-or-treat," despite the fact that Leaha and I practiced with him all afternoon before we headed out.

He did not understand why he kept getting candy, but we weren't letting him eat all of it.

We only went to about six houses, and Zoey ran inside two of them!  Thankfully, we know nearly all of our neighbors from our walks, so both neighbors laughed at our puppy intrusion and we were able to quickly get her back to us.

He got a bit giddy as we walked home, and pulled out his true MarioKart skills with speed boosters.  He got all of us running down the road at one point or another, which was especially funny with the balloons trailing behind the MarioKart characters.

I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked, but the picture of us in front of the dragon feels pretty classic!

Another major milestone that Potatoes had this week was moving up to a new classroom!

On Wednesday, Leaha sent me pictures of Xander playing in the two year old room.

When I picked him up from school, three people, including the director, stopped me to tell me how well he did with the big kids!  They even moved his cubby into the new classroom that day!

The mental exercise of learning all the new routines wore him out!  That evening, we could tell he was tired, so we let him eat dinner on the couch.

He fell asleep while eating!

The next evening, Daniel was with him while I was at a spouse's fair.  The Two's wore this kid out so bad, he was acting a fool through the evening.

I am so excited for him to be in this room.  I love the teacher (I have loved all of his teachers so far).  Ms. Stephanie runs the class with a lot of structure and is very disciplined.  Xander is already practicing with scissors, learning to walk in a quiet line through the halls, and moving from one center to the next with the group rather than having free reign of toys.  

Stephanie said Alexander is learning very fast!  Apparently, the Ones joined his new class to walk to the playground, and Xander started running and being loud with his bestie Mia (she'll move up very soon).  Stephanie said one stern saying of his name, and he snapped to attention and found his place back in line with the Twos!

There is a special bond between Xander, Eric, and Mia at school.  These three all came to the school at about the same time, so they have known each other since Xander was 10 weeks old.  He talks about them all the time, and was so excited to rejoin Eric when he moved up to the Twos.  I know Ms. Stephanie will be in for an adjustment when she has all three of the amigos!

We enjoyed watching his future school, Choctaw High School, 

annihilate the Bay team from Panama City

He loves his daddy so much

My work costume- The Black Eyed Ps

(in honor of our TEAM w/ Paula!)

We won second place!