November was busy too

In November, I won tickets for Kent and me to attend a gala for the Veterans Community Project. We bid on tickets for the Hip Hop Nutcracker and kept bidding long enough to get the tickets. We also bought a slew of raffle tickets for a quilt—there were several quilts, but I was only interested in the one you see here. Yes, we won the quilt too.

And we made our last trip to Yuma for Thanksgiving. We knew we were going to go for a hike so I (finally) replaced my hiking boots. Dad had bought me an amazing pair years ago, but they were destroyed when we flooded in Boston. These are the same brand, although not quite as nice.

Alison has taught herself acrobatics and flexibility moves. She is truly a pretzel (and didn’t get that from me, that’s for sure).

Kent, Ben and Jordan finally finished out their customized game of Risk Legacy. Jordan got that a couple of years ago and as you play, you settle the rules, and there are only so many games you can play until the board is full. This was the final year. Kent says it was a really great gift and I know he’s enjoyed playing it with Jordan and Ben.

We had our usual amazing food for Thanksgiving, made even more amazing by the fact that Ben and Jen and the family were moving to California the very next week. So we enjoyed the food, the fire pit, seeing all my family together again, and especially enjoying having Amanda as our daughter-in-law now. It was a great trip.

We got back late the Saturday after Thanksgiving, just in time for the blizzard the very next day. Yes, a real blizzard. But things cleared up enough for us to go to that Hip Hop Nutcracker I mentioned earlier—and it was amazing!

A couple more random photos from our trip

Sometimes when you're helping a grandchild sew, things get to a more complicated stage and you just have to finish the job yourself.

Here's a photo from last night's taco truck dinner (no people in the photo, just a sense of what it was like there).

Finally, our granddaughter finished the second Harry Potter book today. I love seeing her so engrossed in reading like this.

Sewing with a grandchild

We sent our middle grandchild a sewing project for his seventh birthday in April (you might recall I gave our oldest grandchild sewing lessons for her 7th birthday). Here's a sweet picture of Kent helping our grandson sew his new ninja costume:

Two funny stories

On Tuesday, our daughter-in-law told her three year old son that we were coming to their house for Thanksgiving. He got quiet for a moment then said with great sincerity, "I love Granddaddy. He's my boy."

I made a pork dish for dinner Wednesday night, only the guys didn't actually get pork at the store. They got a smoked pork butt with bone in -- also known as a ham. Now there's nothing wrong with ham, and as it turned out the dish was fine, if different. Our other daughter-in-law wasn't feeling very well that day (she got bitten by a spider and the bite got badly infected) and she was a little zoned out from the infection and antibiotics. She fell asleep on the couch before dinner but woke up enough to come sit with us and eat. She wasn't actually all that alert as the rest of us talked through the merits/disadvantages of the purchased cut of meat over what the recipe called for. I kept calling it a ham, while my sons called it pork. I'm not sure what roused Sophie but she looked up from her plate and very solemnly told me that this was the best ham she'd ever eaten.

Yesterday morning, I ran with my younger son. He's in great shape and thankfully he took pity on me and ran at my pace.This morning I am off to Jen's exercise class at the Y. Did I mention she's the instructor? And incredibly fit? This class is a weight lifting class so I just hope I can walk afterwards.

It’s like Christmas

Ben and Jen and the children get here early this afternoon and I am like a small child myself, just about dancing with excitement. This will be the first time they’ve stayed with us as houseguests ever—when they would visit the Kansas City area, they stayed with Jen’s parents in Lawrence. Honestly her parents have a perfect set up for houseguests with children and even then, we didn’t. Nor do we now but we’ve prepared as best we possibly can.

We’ve rented car seats, a booster seat and a baby bed and we’ve got some age-appropriate toys on hand for both kids. While we can’t entirely baby-proof our house, thankfully it’s a small enough place that keeping an eye on an avid exploring 16 month old shouldn’t be too hard. In fact our place is so small that we are staying across the street at a bed and breakfast, and they are staying in our apartment. So far the weather looks to be decent which means when the kids need to run around and get crazy, we can head over to the park about two blocks away and let them go nuts.

We’ve planned out all the dinners and Kent made a big excursion to Costco to stock up. Our fridge has never held this much food. In fact, it’s a little on the overstuffed side right now but that will change quickly.

I’ve been inordinately amused at the new things Kent’s had to do: buy diapers, buy baby wipes and of course the funniest (to me) of all, put two car seats in his car. That cracks me right up. Even if my car hadn’t been so damaged last week, we still would have had to use his car since mine is too small. I’m not sure his is big enough though, and I won’t be going with him to the airport. With luck and a whole lot of squeezing and shoving, they will get everyone and their luggage in the car.