Happy Thanksgiving!

This year Greg smoked a turkey, he did a great job because it was super yummy!   Here is a picture of daddy’s other turkey (one of his many nick-names for Ava)  Check out this bubble dress, made by Dee-Dah, LOVE it!

Way to go Greg, smoked turkey turned out perfectly!

I think Ava’s main objective in helping me cook is getting the privilege of licking the bowls!  She was a wonderful helper.

Austin’s FIRST thanksgiving! 

Here “we” are last Thanksgiving- including Austin who was still cookin’-  what a difference a year can make!

Baylor was never far behind whoever had the turkey!  Paps gave her a few little pieces, how could someone resist that sweet hopeful face?!

Every Thanksgiving growing up we had decorated turkey cookies from Roselyn Bakery or Taylor bakery in Indiana. This year I decided to make the cookies myself, can’t get them from Indy, and they turned out just terribly!  I tried a combo of buttercream and royal icing and it was way too thick to use in my decorating bags.  I had already colored and bagged the 7 different colors of icing and didn’t want to remix it one by one to thin it out. I also ran out of brown icing so I put a layer of  Nutella on as icing too, hmmmm.  Ava had fun and that was ALL that mattered!

Ditty made the best apple pie I’ve ever had, she put a praline topping on it and it was “G”- Double-“O”- “D” good! 

So precious…..

We got most of the Christmas decorating done over the weekend.  Ava make me giggle because she was in her own little world stringing the lights on the tree.  She made up a song about Jesus decorating a tree, sound familiar to Jesus loves me?  

“Yes Jesus put up the “Wights”

 

Singing away….

Love my girl!!

I am not a fair-weather fan

So we are Colt’s fans true and true and we wear our blue and white proudly! I coached Ava a bit on how to defend her team before school one morning, here’s our pregame (or should I say pre-school day) speech:

Go Colts!

“Be Aggressive, BE BE Aggressive!!”  Okay, maybe not to the point of growling…. hmmmm…..

Santa Clause is coming to town..

….. in November!  Yep, we totally jumped on the opportunity to see Santa when he came to the Domain for the Christmas tree lighting this weekend.  It was perfect… five minutes in line and Santa spent a TON of time with the kids. Ava seemed a little shy but definitely looked pleased to hang out with Santa. 

“Kit Kats and Rio”

Boots never go out of style!

Here’s what happened when I stepped back, classic Santa picture, Ahhhh!

I especially love this picture, even Santa blinks sometimes! 

And done, at least for Austin…. mad cry turned into a whimper, aww baby… Ava’s still smiling at least!

So I’ve started snapping away without warning and I’ve found that I’m capturing the sweetest expressions.  Ditty and Paps took Ava to see Santa for the very first time last year so of course they had scouted out Santa this year too.

Ava never passes up an opportunity to dance!

One out for four with eyes open I’ll take it, I LOOOOOOOVE my family!

Making a Christmas craft with Daddy….

Sack of potatoes over Daddy’s shoulder!

I love telling Ava to “pose” because it is rarely dainty, love the silliness!

Austin’s surgery

Last week was Austin’s orchidopexy surgery, big ol’ word huh?  He did great, bless his sweet heart.  Here is his playing before the surgery. 

Before they took him back the anesthesiologist gave Austin a “baby valium” so he wouldn’t be upset when I had to hand him over.   Here he is trying to smile.  Okay, admittedly so we were bad parents at this point because we got the giggles a few times at his expense.  We took videos of him in baby la-la land, he was smacking his lips and making slurred slow “Da-Daaa-Daaa’s.”  A few times he tried to clap his hands and totally missed.  A little laughter ended up to be good thing to ease our nerves a bit while waiting.

“Baby Valium” working for sure….

The surgery went great, one of the nurses actually called my cell phone from the operating room half way through the 90 minute surgery to let me know that things were going really well.  It was absolutely the best feeling to be able to hold him while he was waking up. 

I was amazed at how quickly he recovered.  I had to hold him back from moving around a ton, even the same evening as the surgery.  His pain medication did make him super sleepy though so I spent the majority of the week snuggling his sleepy self, which I absolutely cherished.

Praise God for a successful surgery and thank you everyone who was praying for us! 

Thank you too so much Karo, who came in town to spend the day with Ava.  They had a wonderful time.  Karo let Ava pick anywhere she wanted to go and do anything she wanted to do that day!  Ava chose the McDonald’s across the street where daddy takes her to play on daddy dates and she had an ice cream with mini M&M’s! She also wanted to snuggle and sing with Karo most of the day.  Out of all the places to chose from Karo’s lap was Ava’s first pick, I love it!  Here is a picture of Karo and Ava (a blast from the past, when Karo was here to take care of us right after Austin was born because Greg was in Vegas on a work trip)

The book of the week was Eric Carle’s Brown Bear and check out the quilt on the floor, it is a  Karo Creation with all the Brown Bear animals!

Ava Claire LOVES her Karo!