Thanksgiving in Baton Rouge

We descended upon Baton Rouge for Thanksgiving. Uncle Miller, Aunt Sarah and baby Rowan made the drive down from Memphis, Uncle Dane and Aunt Debbie came from down the street, Ms. Kay and her son, Joseph, his wife, Amanda, and their girls, Juliet and Charlotte, came from Dallas. We all feasted and took turns holding baby Rowan! He's a delight :) Just content and happy and smiling all the time!!

We had a nice, low-key Thanksgiving and have so much to be thankful for!!

Exciting times

I've been keeping the boys busy the past couple of days by having them do packets of Thanksgiving-related worksheets from school. Jack had a word search that took us both working on to complete!

I pulled Jack's super loose front tooth this morning. It was gory and I almost chickened out a few times, but we got through it and now Tabitha the Tooth Fairy gets to come back tonight!! Jack was so brave :)

Cooking class

My Mom's club got together a group today at Young Chef's and I was thrilled to take the boys! We don't get to many activities with them both being in school now. They made turkey quesadillas and pumpkin white chocolate chip muffins. Jack devoured both and Theo only liked the muffin. Welcome to my world :)

Here they are mixing and dicing the ingredients. Tons of friends were there and it was just really fun! A great way to start the Thanksgiving break :)

Viva Las Vegas

Dave had a work meeting in Las Vegas all last week and I got to fly out to join him on Thursday. A HUGE thanks to Gigi and Dada for keeping the boys for me so I could make my first ever trip to Vegas! I had a blast and got to play with Christy and Aunt Kittie, who were attending with their husbands as well.

Christy and I did some shopping on the strip and got our makeup done at Nordstroms. Awesome!! All the wives got massages at the spa (heaven!!!) on Friday and were treated to a private comedy show after dinner. Some of us stayed around and went to see an 80's cover band at the resort. They were so good. I danced and danced :) And Dave got in trouble for asking all of his relatives how old they were when the particular song came out (they were high school aged and Dave and I were usually in elementary school). Ha ha.

We wrapped up the trip by having dinner inside The Mirage and seeing Jay Leno perform. Dinner was amazing, especially sharing it with family and new friends I met this week! Jay Leno had us laughing late into the night. I never did end up playing any slots or anything. Just took a picture with one :) Maybe next time!

Pack meeting

Jack's cub scout pack met tonight to issue awards and badges. He got to wear his full uniform, including Dave's cub scout pants circa 1982!! They were a perfect fit on Jack and matched his shirt perfectly. Our scouts all earned something tonight and they were all so cute in their uniforms.

Thanksgiving baskets

I'm on the Missions committee at church and we fill up Thanksgiving food baskets for about 60 families each year. It's a pretty big effort, collecting food from the congregation, storing it in a POD, counting it, moving it out to the gym and then divvying it out to the families. Two ladies from Missions head up the Thanksgiving and Christmas projects and do a phenomenal job each year!

I took the boys up to church this afternoon to help out. We've been doing this since Jack was a baby! The youth group also came and did all of the heavy lifting and transferring. Theo moved chips to their rightful home and Jack was in charge of cereal. They counted up jello and then put oil in each box. Tomorrow is the big job of picking up the perishable food and moving all of the items to the individual boxes. I love that the boys got to help out today. I had them walk through the room with 60 empty boxes and had them take note of how many there were. I explained how these families were going to bed each night with hungry bellies and how they needed to take a moment to be thankful for the food in our pantry.

Renaissance Fest

Dave and I were thrilled to carve out time to go to Renaissance Fest yesterday. November tends to be a hectic month and sometimes time gets away from us and the month-long fest is over!

We met up with our friends John and Tara and their kids and just had so much fun! We ate a turkey leg, saw juggling and stilt walkers, jousting, glass blowing, candle making, period costumes, ax throwing, amongst other things! The people watching was divine :) Jack finally got a boomerang after months and months of talking about one. Theo got his own sword and shield after his little voice said "Jack never shares his sword and shield with me. I need my own". He got his own and it complimented his Knight costume well. We brought those back from Old Sarum and knew they'd be PERFECT for Renaissance Fest! Theo even wore his crown ;) We were all worn out from tons of walking and playing, but what fun it was!