So after we came back from Austin, my parents came back to Tyler, too. So we spent Monday, Tuesday, and part of Wednesday pretty much hanging out at their house 3/4 of each day. Came home just to eat dinner and clean up the mess from that and do some laundry. The kids watched a lot of TV, playing on the in-the-garage gym, and generally tried to avoid the outdoors as it was both chilly and overcast. I spent my time recording home videos from vhs to dvd. Tuesday I had to take Ben in to the dentist to have his tooth checked, as it had started to hurt over the weekend and was still painful. Found out he needed to have it drilled on and filled up sometime next week. Wednesday afternoon my parents drove back to BCS, Nick came home from work early, and we worked on our portion of the Thanksgiving food for Nick’s sister’s house. That is not a pumpkin pie, it is squash. It was very yummy. 🙂
Thanksgiving we got up and watched the Parade. Just watched it. Didn’t have to run around doing anything else. It was lovely.
Then around 11am we left and went to Mandy and Mark’s house. The kids got to play with their cousins. Seen here tyring to decide what to do; they eventually played Chutes and Ladders.
I hung around the kitchen and helped Mandy.
The menfolk had snacks and watched some sort of sport for a while (I thought I had a picture of that, too, but apparently not). Then finally we ate. The kids table:
No, I don’t know why David looks miserable. Sometimes he just does. He was perfectly happy at the time, I assure you. They all were. There were rolls. How can you be sad when there’s bread products on the table?!
The adults table:
Me and my fabulous spouse, together in the same spot!
After dinner the kids watched a movie (I can’t remember which one)
and the adults sat around the table talking about good sermons we’d heard lately at our various church experiences (which is helpful because then we know which ones to order online to listen to on days we’re traveling or something).
There was, of course, basketball before we left. No trip to Aunt Mandy & Uncle Mark’s would be complete without it.
After we went home, someone made this sign and other people embellished it:
And later, much later, we had our own little reheated-from-leftovers-from-various-feasts Thanksgiving dinner (we had invited the new neighbors over, but they ended up driving back to San Antonio for the day after all, so we were off the hook).
The next day we got up, Nick went to work, and the kids and I did a big, giant clean up of the garage. BIG, GIANT. We took an entire van-full of stuff to Goodwill, set aside a couple big things for people that wanted them, and then made a huge pile for the recycle center as well. We took all the big stuff out and all the boxes on all the shelves. I am still appalled at the number of plastic sacks sitting around on the floor. Anyway, I completed my goals: a much more organized and thought-out shelf layout, a “workbench” type area for Nick right next to the kids smaller workbench, and the coup de grace: space for my van! 🙂
Yesterday was church and basically uneventful. Today Nick worked again and we cleaned up inside the house (laundry, lots of it). Now he’s off at Barnes and Noble meeting with his mom in preparation for speaking at her business communication class tomorrow night. The kids are watching TV and I, well, I’m finishing up a bunch of half-written posts and hitting the Publish button on them. Yay, me. 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 