A big couple of weeks....

There has been way too much going on lately, so this will probably be a really long blog. We'll start with Thanksgiving. I have great in-laws that take my kids for a couple of nights so that we can prepare for Thanksgiving. We have it at our house and ended up with about 23 people. We always have plenty of fixin's including a fried turkey, roasted turkey, and smoked turkey...

Olivia loved her Thanksgiving meal!

We had a few special guests in from out of state. My brother-in-law's sister, Kelly made it in from North Carolina and my cousin, Christy came in from Florida. The kids always love seeing her.

Jack, Brooklyn, and Cousin Christy playing cars.

This is always the scene after dinner is done. The gamblers play poker downstairs and the rest of us play board games upstairs.

After everyone left, the kids and I loaded up our stuff and went back to Dunlap with my parents. We left Zac with the mess. I got up at 4:00 am to do the Black Friday shopping. Zac joined us later in the evening after going to the state football playoffs - his yearly tradition. While at mom and dad's, we celebrated my mom's birthday. My niece, Emmy, and nephew, Tyler, made grandma a cake and cookies in their Easy Bake Oven. They were delicious!

There is always so much fun stuff to keep everyone entertained at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The kids ransacked the cupboards and found all the plastic cups and built towers.

Once Emmy and Tyler arrived for the party, everyone took turns bowling them down. Sorry about the bad pictures, I love my new camera, but always forget to put the flash up!

On Saturday, all the runners in the famly braved the cold and ran the FOLEPI race in East Peoria. This included Zac, mom, uncle Dave, cousin Christy, brother-in-law Brian, and his sister, Kelly. Everyone seemed to have a good run. Glad I'm not part of that crew, though!

We decided to make the most of this holiday season and decorate for Christmas on Monday. Last year wasn't the most pleasant experience which is a story in itself. We vowed to make this a better one. So we all loaded up in the car to go get our tree! Well, we picked the perfect one and asked the man to drill a hole in the bottom to fit it onto our tree stand. No problem, but not until tomorrow. Jack completely lost it and we experienced a huge tantrum. Needless to say, I didn't get any pictures of our happy little family getting the tree.

The nice man delivered it Tuesday and Brooklyn and I carried it downstairs. We decorated when Jack got home and all's well the ends well. I totally understand why people choose to get artificial trees. I now think Olivia is allergic to the tree, so she will stay out of the downstairs for a while.

Last, but not least, I took Olivia to her 15 month check-up. She's up to a whopping 19 lbs. 7.5 oz. and 30 in. long. She got to switch from her Pediasure to whole milk which will be nice on the budget. We are also trying to stop her Prevacid for acid reflux. She got 5 shots, which she was less than thrilled about, but hopefully will keep her healthy! A good report overall to end a good couple of weeks! Until next time...