Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a nice, fun Thanksgiving this year. It was not too crazy and pretty relaxing, so I'm happy. We spent most of Wednesday getting ready, getting some pre-cooking and shopping done. Thursday morning we finished up our cooking and headed over to Pam and Dave's. David smoked 3 chickens, they were so good, and very moist. I made Brazilian Pao de Quiejo (cheese bread) and sweet potato casserole, deviled eggs, cheese and sausage dip, and sausage stuffed stuffing balls (Regan's favorite) with gravy. Pam had a ham, deer roast, fruit salad, and some pies. Matt and Kelly brought yummy greens and curried cauliflower and a chocolate pecan pie. Kris and Makayla came too, the rest were at Jen's family for lunch.

After lunch, Riley and Dave took off on their bikes to the park, they found this really cool bike trail and Dave got some good pics and video of Riley on his new bike.

Then we all played Cranium, guys v. girls, and guys won, but barely. It was fun, the kids played too and they enjoyed being included, and they did a great job! Riley did a great impersonation of Michael Jackson, and Regan had to draw "kiss" with her eyes closed!  So here's our day in pictures:

Thanksgiving 2012

Hanging Out

It was our Sunday to serve, Regan serves in the 2 year olds, she loves playing with the little kids! I serve with 2nd-5th graders and Riley does the Tech Booth in the class where I am, and David does Campus Support now (finally delivered from Parking Team, yay!) So after church, Riley went home with a friend, Regan and I went to lunch, and then home to wait on David. After our ritual Sunday afternoon nap, we thought we would take Regan to the bookstore to hang out for a bit before we went to get Riley. We thought we would stop at Garden Ridge first and check out the Christmas stuff.

They have SO much Christmas there, it's everywhere! We saw the biggest inflatable Snowman and Santa Claus ever! They were huge. We checked it all out, got a great present for a white elephant party we have coming up, and then went to the bookstore to hang out some. Regan is wanting this huge book called "Wonderstruck" and I don't know much about it except for it's HUGE and this is my dyslexic, non-reading kid. But, it might end up being a Christmas present. I want to encourage her to read as much as possible. She's been getting a lot better with her reading also.

 

Anyway, it was fun just hanging out. Brought back memories of sitting at the bookstore when the kids were younger and would play with the trains. Then we had a quick dinner at Chili's and headed home to get ready for the short week of school.

Veteran's Day Program

Regan auditioned for the school choir a while back, and made it (yay Regan!) and today the choir sang at her school's Veteran's Day Program.

They had the program outside of the gym, and the high school ROTC came and presented colors, and the choir sang, the 5th grade dance team had a dance, they had some kids read essays that they had written about Veteran's, it was a nice program. And the Girl Scouts of the school presented a wreath and flowers at the end, so Regan got to do that also.

She had to wear her Girl Scout uniform and vest, and she wasn't real thrilled with that, she's like me and wants to be all colorful, not in boring khaki and white! But we found a gold hair cone that is exactly like one I used to have in high school, so she was happy to wear that today, and one blue star earring and one red star earring.

Here's the video of them singing (I didn't get the whole song, but you get the idea) and some pictures. They did a great job!

Happy 14th Birthday Riley!

I can't believe he's 14 already! My baby bird has grown up. He wants a bike for his birthday so we are still looking for the one he wants, and we may have to order it, so for now, he hasn't really gotten any presents. The guys had a camp out on the hill at church over the weekend, so most of their weekend was spent doing that, or recovering from doing that! Then on Sunday, it was our day to serve at church, and that always makes for a long day.

Monday, on his actual birthday, Riley special requested Chicken and Arugula Pita Pockets for dinner. Regan and I had a Girl Scout meeting, so I made that for him before I left, and Regan made him some bacon-cheese fries for a snack, she's so nice to her brother sometimes! (Although, I think she wanted them more than anything!) so we didn't really get to celebrate much until Tuesday night, we went to dinner with Mimi and Papa at Chuy's, everyone's favorite place to eat. He really wanted them to come sing Happy Birthday to him, so they did, he loves being the center of attention sometimes!

And this came today, he doesn't know it yet, but we did get him a little something...

He is currently running for Student Council Vice-President, so he's been working on posters and his speech, and he seems to be doing really well in school so far. He made all A's and B's and is really liking 8th grade. I just still can't believe next year he will be driving!