Friday, November 24, 2006

Friday Frenzy!

What a busy day! But first, let me tell you we had a lovely Thanksgiving. We went to Mom and Dad's for dinner. Gariann and Kirk, Tyler and Kathy and their boys were there. Kyle came after he got off work, and Travis stopped by for a short time. Zach and Wyatt brought a whole big bag of matchbox cars, and I caught Kyle laying on the floor playing with them, but he rolled away just as I snapped the picture.











We had a delicious meal and then played Tripoley until time to take the little boys home for bedtime. Zach played, and enjoyed betting and even winning some poker hands. In the picture, Zach and Wyatt are counting out the pennies for the game. We had ten players, and each started with 100 pennies. I finished the game with only ten cents!
Just before we were ready to leave, we saw two raccoons on the deck eating the birdfood. Tyler had the gun, and when Dad opened the door, Tyler blasted them.
Zach came home with us, and he and I got up early this morning to go to Farm and Home for some big bargains. We waited in line for forty minutes! We then went to Gate City Seed "Candy Land" and bought several kinds of candy. When we got home, Wyatt came over to help put up and decorate our Christmas tree. I warned them that it would be a big job, but they wanted to do it, so we worked all afternoon. First we cleaned and moved furniture. Then they helped carry everything down from the attic, and we "built" the tree. That's what Wyatt calls putting the artificial tree together. We finally got the tree up, decorated, and all the furniture re-arranged just as it was getting dark outside. Since the boys had seen our neighbor, Lanny, burning leaves earlier in the day, they wanted to go out and burn leaves. What they really wanted to do was play with fire, but we called it burning leaves. We had quite a blaze going for a little while. It was a nice break from being inside doing all that decorating! Believe it or not, it was almost like summer today. Way too hot to be putting up Christmas decorations! Anyway, we came in for supper. Of course, you know we had something with turkey in it! I fixed turkey and rice casserole, and Wyatt ate it, mostly because he had no choice. Then we decorated the wildlife.
Now it's showers and off to bed. Both boys are staying overnight. Tomorrow we're going to play Monopoly. Zach has it set up already so we can start as soon as we wake up.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Coralville Comments

I believe everyone enjoyed the annual shopping trip again this year. This trip was the first for Landon and Chris. Hopefully, Chris will make it an annual event! Landon, however, won't be going next time since next year he will be past the age limit for children. As the "rules" are now, the only babies permitted to attend are those who are under one year of age. Technically though, Landon was there last year with Golda, just as Emily was there this year with Amy.
After lunch at the food court in Coralridge Mall, we all went in different directions to shop. I found these girls taking a break near Santa. People were lining up to pay for pictures with Santa, but we figured that they could stand nearby with Santa in the background to get a free picture. Santa saw what we were doing, so he came over to give us a photo op! As you can tell...the girls were enjoying themselves, but look at the difference Santa made when he actually joined them for the picture! What a difference! This (I believe) is Emily's first picture with Santa.
After perusing the stores throughout the mall, we checked into our very nice rooms just across the street at Holiday Inn Express. If only I knew how to post a video clip onto this post!
Here you can see some of the reaction to watching the classic video "Goat Boy"...starring Timothy S. Porter!
We ate supper at the Olive Garden which was just next door. While there, I learned the right way to toss salad, and after stuffing ourselves way past the comfort point, we went back and just hung out visiting. At about 9 PM, some of us walked across the street to the Stone Cold ice cream shop! Never in my life have I seen such an array of delicious sounding choices. Since I was still feeling full from the Olive Garden, I decided on a small (like it) serving of pumpkin pie ice cream. It was wonderful! Here we are...except Golda and Landon, in the hotel lobby.