Thanksgiving trip

We hopped in the car again to see some friends of ours, Julie & Dan and their three kiddos: Nicholas (4 1/2), Evelyn (2 1/2), and Caroline (8 months). We were able to spend Thanksgiving with them & had a FABULOUS dinner. The kids got along great (okay, well they did after a couple of days of NOT getting along so great!), and the adults had lots of time to catch up due to Julie & Dan's HUGE basement play area. Here is a pic of the kids playing with Mr. Dan. He taught them to sit in a circle with their feet touching so this "crazy motorcycle", as William calls it, could bounce around inside:

From Trip to Nick & Evy's

Here are a couple of shots of the kids at their Thanksgiving dinner (us smart adults ate after they were done!):

From Trip to Nick & Evy's

From Trip to Nick & Evy's

From Trip to Nick & Evy's

The kids even got to see some outside time as the weather hit the upper 40's most days we were there. Here is a snap of William climbing up one of the rock walls at the park in Julie & Dan's neighborhood, as well as a picture of William & Nick belly-crawling through their magical tunnel (i.e., bike rack for those of you without any imagination!!):

From Trip to Nick & Evy's

From Trip to Nick & Evy's

And, finally, we capped our trip off with a visit to The Durham Museum , which had some pretty neat train displays (note the ones of the kids sticking their heads out of the windows of the old train car) and also a spectacular holiday show that included the lighting of a huge Christmas tree. **Click this picture to see all the pics from the museum!**

Trip to Nick & Evy's

Happy Early Turkey Day

The boys had their Thanksgiving program and dinner at school tonight. Daniel's class learned two songs for the program: "Jesus Loves Me" and "Hello, Mr. Turkey". I've got a video of them singing the second one. If it's hard to hear, the lyrics go like this:
Hello, Mr. Turkey, How are you?
Hello, Mr. Turkey, How are you?
With a gobble, gobble, gobble, and a waddle, waddle, waddle.
Hello, Mr. Turkey, How are you?

Daniel is WAY over to the left almost on the end, but he was way too fascinated by the audience & everyone singing around him to sing, much less to do the motions!



William's class learned three songs: the two listed above as well as "Little Pilgrim", which is to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Here are the lyrics:
Little Pilgrim dressed in grey on the first Thanksgiving Day.
Little Indian dressed in brown came to visit Plymouth Town.
They both came to eat & pray on that first Thanksgiving Day.

William is directly in the middle & he gets into the motions on the second round:



Here are a few snaps of them at dinner. Daniel is dressed as a turkey (that's a beak on his head!) and William is an Indian.

From Thanksgiving program

From Thanksgiving program

From Thanksgiving program

Home alone.....again!

So, the saying goes, "Alone at last", but that is definitely NOT how we're feeling these days. We drove to Altus to see Katie & Phil & the girls and then Katie, Claire & Maddie came home with us for a few days. While we were in OK, we also got to see Megan, Steven, Joshua & Caroline (Josh's little sister whom we hadn't met yet). They were stationed with us in WA & just moved to Altus a month ago. All in all, it was a very nice trip & great to see them all. Here are a few highlights from the trip:

William & Claire dancing madly to some "princess tunes" from Maddie's book. They were great about taking turns pushing the buttons & even managed to keep track of whose turn it was!



Kiddos looking at the snapping turtles in the reservoir down the street from Claire & Maddie's house. We walked there almost every afternoon to feed the turtles our stale bread:

From visit with Claire & Maddie

From visit with Claire & Maddie

Kiddos at one of the parks in Altus where we let them run off some excess energy one BEAUTIFUL morning:

From visit with Claire & Maddie

From visit with Claire & Maddie

We got to see Claire take her horseback riding lessons &, of course, William & Daniel HAD to ride Yankee. Claire & her instructor were nice enough to share. And, Maddie was brave enough to take a trip, too!

From visit with Claire & Maddie

From visit with Claire & Maddie

From visit with Claire & Maddie

And, a pic of Josh & Claire in the HUGE tree in front of Megan & Steven's house. Josh is quite the agile little monkey & managed to talk Claire into climbing up there with him (I don't think he had to try to hard!). William, being his little cautious self, went nowhere near it!

From visit with Claire & Maddie

And, lastly, a pic of the kids watching videos back at our house not long before Katie & the girls headed out.

From visit with Claire & Maddie

We were far too busy on this end to take many pics. The second night everyone was here, Maddie got sick in Wal-Mart & then Katie & I apparently had a touch of it because we spent all day Friday hardly able to get off the couch. None of the other kiddos got the pukes, thank goodness! By Saturday, everyone was better & we were able to do some shopping. Sunday was a quiet day & then they took off for home on Monday. Here's to hoping we can do it again ;-)