Thanksgiving

Here is the only picture I got on Thanksgiving day. I have been forgetting my camera a lot lately...my brain is getting old I guess. Anyway, we had a nice little dinner with just the four of us. Notice how we have to jam all the food to the one side of the table because Lucas has a very long reach! Just as we were sitting down to eat, Buck put the turkey on the table and about 2 seconds later, Lucas had the whole dish on his tray and he was pawing around in it. It wouldn't be too much of an issue but he seems to find it hilarious to throw food while eating. Not funny to me and I hope that explains the state of my kitchen floor to anyone who may have been grossed out by it on any given day. After the 5th time sweeping in one day, I have been so tempted to get a dog just to deal with Luke's food hucking issue. Tempted, but not sold on the idea....yet.
Our day started out at the zoo for the feast with the beasts. We saw the elephants smash up and eat a 1054 lb. pumpkin. The crowd for it was so big that we just decided to walk around to see the other animals at our leisure and if we happened to come across another feeding, then we did. The only other one we coincided with was the tiger and he wasn't tempted enough by the meat treat in his pumpkin to want to bust it open. We got to see him up really close though. Most all of the animals were out and doing something so it was a good trip.
After the zoo we came home and gave the kids some lunch of their own and I started on the turkey part of our day. Everything finished cooking about 3:30 and we were eating around 4-ish. I made the whole meal myself and so I was pleased to have most everything turn out okay. I have seriously never made real mashed potatoes before so those were my biggest accomplishment...it's always been fake ones out of the can for me.
I am so thankful for my great little family and all the wonderful blessings that I have in my life!

What are you implying?

I've had these thoughts rattling around in my head for a few weeks now. I'm just not sure what people are trying to say...A few people from Buck's work have made comments to him lately (after meeting me for the first time) that they were surprised how cute his wife was. Then last night there were about 7 other teachers from his work at the same showing of our movie. I went and said, "Hi" to one of them that I had met before several times and he introduced me to the rest. One of them (who had been my teacher for 2 years in Jr. High and had no idea who I was...I guess they only remember the trouble makers, right?) said to me, "We're just all staring at you because you're cute." What?!? First, I didn't notice any stares. Second, is your view of my husband such that you think he's only capable of securing the affections of some wart-covered hag? "Hi, nice to meet you," just seems more like your typical greeting in this situation and their inner monologue would go something along the lines of "Oh, she's cuter than I would have thought." I'm sure the comments are well intended and probably meant as a compliment but they just come across strangely to me. Well, I guess they're expecting that he would have married this girl:

Oh, wait. Ha, ha, ha. He did.
To my credit this photo was posed. Those were my dad's (huge) old transition lens glasses and my brother and I bought that hat from the swap meet because everyone needs a foam-front, mesh-back hat in their possession, right? Let's just say that my first year of college was rough on me physically. Here we are now and I think we're a good match.

(Photo taken by Aubrey Bolton Photography)

He won me over

We went to see Twilight last night at 12:15 a.m. and I really liked it. I was so disappointed in the choice of Robert Pattinson as Edward but he changed my mind last night. I thought he was a great Edward. I'm ready to go see it again today, I liked it that much. I think having read the book made the experience more enjoyable since Buck compared the movie to one you would see on the Lifetime Channel. I didn't think so at all except I thought that some of the special effects were kind of lame and he thought those were the best part. I guess since I'd read the book, I could fill in the gaps that the movie had to cut out as happens in most movies.
Stephenie Meyer had a quick cameo in the film and I wonder if she'll be like Stan Lee and Alfred Hitchcock and be in all the films. She does not look quite the same as the picture on the cover of the book though... I almost didn't recognize her except that the whole theater cheered when this random lady was on the screen.
So I had kept my expectations low because I did not want to be disappointed by this movie. My expectations were exceeded for sure! Now I just need both kids to take a nap at the same time today since my mom called at 2:22 and said that Grace had woken up at her house. I ended up going to sleep there for the night except Grace didn't go back to sleep until after 4:30, maybe 5 and so I only got like 4 hours of sleep last night. I could use a nap today! The other thing that amazed me was the whord of people waiting for our theater to empty out so they could go to the movie at 2:40 a.m. Wow.

echo...echo...echo...

What I said: "Oh, my gosh, Luke! If you don't stop screaming at me I'm going to put you in your bed!"

What I heard from Grace immediately after: "My goss! Yuke, stop skweeming. Go in bed!"

It has been amazing to see the progress in Grace's language skills since she's been in preschool this year. She is making huge improvements every week. It looks like she's going to be as big of a boss as I am.

In other news, I bought our Thanksgiving turkey this morning and I'm getting excited for the day as I make the plans for my meal. I'm just cooking for 4 this year...but should say 3 as Grace will probably only eat the rolls and nothing else.

The other good news is that it is nearly the end of the month and I have about $50 more than usual left in my grocery budget thanks to the fact that Grace is only wearing a diaper at night now. Hooray! I have been so ready for this and I'm glad she finally is too!

4th picture

So this tag is where you post the 4th picture from your 4th file on your computer. Anyone recognize it? This is the sleeping garbage man (hard to see him) from my garbage man post so long ago! I tag Amy, Aubrey, Shauna & Lauren.

old coat, new coat

Old coat.

New coat.

I LOVE that Old Navy carries stuff in tall now (online anyway) as it allows me to buy the right size of top to fit my body and long enough sleeves to fit my freakishly long arms!!!

the flood, part 2

The guy that came to pump out the crawl space said that he pumped about 250 gallons out. Wow. More than I imagined.
If you click on some of the hard to see pictures, you can see them better when they're bigger.
Here is the beginning of the road/pipe repairs. They now have a hole about 5 feet deep and twice as long as what you can see here.

That is what the road looked like after they finally got the water shut off.

The water is off here but they are trying to drain our driveway so they're digging out the gutter.

Here's what was left of the water in our garage but you can see how high it got on the bottom of the door.

More of the soaked garage.

These are the first pictures I took so they are harder to see because it was so dark still.

You can tell the driveway is flooded all the way up because of the cars' reflections.







It's too dark to see much but here is some video of all the water that was coming up. I should have turned on my porch light. That probably would have helped it show up.

Soaked! Again!

My phone rang at 5:04 this morning and it was my neighbor telling me that the water main had broken in front of our house again. Who knows how long it had been broken for because there was a ton more water than last time. It went clear around the block again and flooded 2 or 3 more houses on the other side this time too. The water also was flowing into our crawl space this time, which it didn't do last time. I took some pictures but the computer is not picking up my camera so I haven't been able to upload them...which brings us to another issue. We are going to need a new computer soon as this one is slowly dying one bit at a time.
Since I was up, I tried to log in and do some work but the computer guy obviously picked last night to reset the passwords because I can't get on to my computer. I've been waiting for a reasonable hour to call him and ask for my new one....
I'll add any of my pictures that actually turned out when I can get my computer to work.

First Snow

Grace was begging me to play outside in the snow today so I finally caved in and took her outside. The flakes that were falling were so huge. I was trying to capture them with my camera but I don't have a fancy camera nor any real photography skills but some of them turned out pretty good. She had lots of fun making her first snowman complete with a carrot straight from our garden.

No children were harmed in the making of these videos...

Luke practicing his "Flashdance" moves...

you just never know!

The trouble with an election is that you just have to hope that the right guy wins. No matter who wins, as soon as they make a mistake in office, you ask yourself, "Would the other guy have been better?" I think I voted for the right guy in this instance but you just never can know for sure and that is so frustrating to me! I always liked math better in school than English because there was only one answer rather than something that was open to interpretation. I guess we'll just have to see how things turn out.
I do know one thing for sure. If a guy lists himself on the gubernatorial ballot under the name of "Superdell", you DO NOT vote for him. I will be interested to see how many votes that lunatic actually gets.

Banana Phone

Buck played this video clip for Grace on Saturday and she has been singing it all weekend. Everytime I am at the computer she comes and asks for the banana.