Thanksgiving 2008

What we are thankful for:

• My family
• Wood-smoked memories and family (this refers to Thanksgiving Day in years past at Uncle David's farmhouse, which was heated by a wood stove)
• Family
• Flies, Cockroaches, and Worms
• Quacky ducks that kiss me
• Trees
• Legos
• Minivans with automatic doors, brothers who play so well together, 3 boys who make me laugh
• Snarf and glarf
• The internet, coffee, and my family
• Mario Kart (a game played on the Wii)
• Having the privilege of loving my spouse!
• Music
• Family, food, housing, friends, a job, and love to all
• Dazzling sunshine
• Family being together and indoor plumbing (again referring to Uncle David's farm with the "two-holer" privy)
• Family and V-8 (engines, not juice!)
• *Family getting together and staying in touch

After our guessing game, Zach announced, "I should have said I was thankful for underwear!" Everyone agreed that we ALL were thankful for underwear!!

Each year our family writes down what they are thankful for. The notes are read aloud and we try and guess who wrote them.

A few funny sayings at our house:

After calling the boys to dinner, Zach pipes up from his room: “Mom, I just can’t come right now. I’m in the middle of something very important. When I’m done, I’ll come eat.” He was building something with Legos.

Adam on the way to school:
“Why is my school so far away?
Me: “Well, I guess that’s just where they built it.”
Adam: “Did you live far away from your school?”Me: “No. In fact, I walked to school.”
Adam: “Because they didn’t have cars back then, right?”

We had to run errands to Target, and Adam and Zach asked if they could take their wallets and buy something. I agreed, giving them a $10 limit. No surprise, they headed straight for the Lego aisle. Adam showed Zach where to find the price and how to read it. Adam quickly discovered that $10 would not buy much. Zach picked out his box, which was $4.79. I told Zach he could pick another box the same size and still be within the $10 limit. So he picked his two little boxes and was happy with his selection.

Adam spent about 20 minutes looking at all the Legos. Adam figured out that if he could talk Zach into getting certain boxes of Legos, he might be able to get two boxes that he liked. He started negotiating with Zach, “Zach, look, if you buy this box and I buy this box we can have TWO ships (or a good guy and a bad guy).” Zach stuck his ground and didn’t give in to any of Adam’s suggestions. I finally suggested to Adam that Zach was not going to change his mind, so we should go on with our shopping.

Halloween 1998

Halloween 2003

Halloween 2008Man, times have changed.

Zach had an incident with the goalpost at the soccer game this morning. The goalpost came out of nowhere and clocked him in the head. Everyone heard the “ping!” and the crowd all gasped “oh!” He was a trooper…cried for about 5 minutes and then played the rest of the game. He came “this close” to scoring two goals after that…both times the ball hit the goalpost! You can't really see it in this picture, but he did have a goose egg on his forehead.

We had another interesting political conversation. Adam informed me that George Washington, President Bush and John McCain were all running for president. When I questioned him he said “oh yeah, I forgot that girl.” So I had to explain that George Washington was the FIRST president a long time ago (to which he said…”like in the olden days when they didn’t have color”) and President Bush is the CURRENT president. Then he remembered the “other guy” who was running too…Barak Obama.

Wow. It’s been a while since I posted anything. I guess we’ve been busy. Zach had is five year appointment this month, and received five shots. Yes, five shots. The first two were fine. Number three and four hurt and little…number five did him in. “I never want to come to this doctor again!” he said. He is 40 ¾” tall (12%) and weighs 37.5 lbs (30%). His favorite thing about preschool is recess ("I like the monkey bars and tire swing") and painting.

We’ve had several soccer games…one game we got creamed by a team whose coach liked to yell “Shazam it!” when her team was near the goal. Rumor has it she has practice three times a week. Both Zach and Adam scored goals this week. Scott is out of town at his own “old man” soccer tournament.

Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch at Prairie Pines. The boys enjoyed riding the little train, going through a kids haunted house (the boys told me there were funny green space men in there), and playing on the playground, which also had a little wooden playhouse.



We rode a hayrack ride out to a corn maze. Then we picked our pumpkins. We had already picked some pumpkins for carving about two weeks ago, but someone stole them off our front porch. So, I let the boys pick whatever pumpkin they wanted to carve (within reason). I didn’t realize how heavy they were going to be. As we were walking back to the main entrance, I dropped one and it split in half! Luckily, there were no tears, and we all laughed about it.



Adam asked me “how come everyone is so excited about this presidential election?” I asked him if he knew the names of the candidates running for office. He did, and pronounced them perfectly. I asked who told him about the election, and he answered “I just know.” Either he picks it from the news, or they are teaching politics in Kindergarten.