Happy Thanksgiving

We were blessed this year to have Nana and Pap-paw and Uncle Jacob and Aunt Elise and new baby cousin Finn come visit us for Thanksgiving day!

Everyone arrived Wednesday night and we spent some time making sure we had everything we needed for our Thanksgiving feast the next day. We also got a crash course in how to brine and roast a turkey that night (thank goodness for Aunt Elise! :) and Dad worked on his signature dish, homemade cranberry sauce.

On Thanksgiving day, Mom, Aunt Elise and Nana worked hard in the kitchen to pull together a great Thanksgiving meal, if I do say so myself. ;). The kids got a chance to play with Baby Finn which they throughly enjoyed (what a cutie!) and hang out with Nana and Pap-paw.

We also took some time out to let Pap-paw practice his photography hobby on us (thanks Davy for the great pictures and Cathy for the outfits - they will come in really handy at church over Christmas too!). The kids were very cooperative and patient which was a real surprise, especially since it turns out that Marshall was getting sick. If you look at the pictures closely, you will notice that Marshall is covered in what we thought at the time was really bad hives.

The back story on this is that we had Marshall allergy tested and he tested postive for corn and oat allergies. The allergist asked us to both from his diet for a few weeks then add it back to see what happened. We had just started letting him have corn again on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week at the school Thanksgiving party. Then, on Thursday, we saw this rash come up all over his face and then spread to the rest of his body! We choked back tears (corn is EXTREMELY hard to avoid!) and started administering alot of Benadryl. After several days of Benadryl to no avail, we found a Pediatric clinic that was open (isn't this starting to sound like the story of our lives? ;) and discovered it was not hives after all; it was something called Fifth's Disease. Fifth's Disease is just another childhood virus and had NOTHING to do with a possible corn allergy. Yay!! Hooray!! Yay!! Yippee!!

So that's the story of our Thanksgiving. Nothing like a little good food, good family and good drama. :)

Happy 4th Birthday Addison Marshall!

Marshall turned four this year and boy, did he do it in style!



It all started when Granny offered to buy the decorations for his party in lieu of a birthday present. My mom is a talented hostess so when you combine that with her 30+ years of experience as an elementary school teacher, you get a really good party!

Granny and Marshall spent a week before the party working hard to get things ready. By party day we had lots of dino activities! They filled swimming pools with sand for the "Dino Dig" in which the kids got to dig for "real" dino skeletons and bones. They built nests, filled them with eggs and hid them throughout the house for the kids "Dino Egg Hunt". They even built a dino cave for the kids to play in and draw cave paintings inside and they blew up lots of inflatable dinosaurs for decoration (and for play too! ;). They also put out lots of coloring supplies and dino stickers for Marshall and his friends to do.

And all their hardwork paid off. The result was a party that in the kids' words was "The best birthday party ever!".




I can't believe my little baby is 4 years old already. How time flies when you are having fun! :)