Giving Thanks

We took a road trip to Lawrence for this year's thankful festivities. With really no options of where to eat lunch I finally gave in and let Amelia have her first Happy Meal. Mark and I were both convinced she would love it, eat every last bite, expect toys in all her meals, etc. She hardly touched the thing.... We took that as a sign of our excellent, healthy parenting. Ha. As we headed out of McDonald's I explained that we would be to GranAnn's house in two hours so she could either nap in the car or once she got to GranAnn's. Our well behaved daughter was asleep before we even got on the highway. Score yet again for us and our fabulous parenting skills (have we mentioned that Amelia has never been much of a car seat sleeper?). We were on a roll. We arrived in Lawrence to sunny weather and two girls who needed some fresh air. While Merrill and I got our nails done the girls headed to the park with dad and GranAnn. After a bit Amelia asked to leave the park. What? So not normal behavior for Amelia. Wednesday night was business as usual until my mom woke Mark and I up in the middle of the night because Amelia had a raging fever. So until Saturday we battled Amelia's fever that even crept up to 104 at one point.... We were humbled and had to admit that the McD's snub was because she had no appetite (which she really just got back today) and the car nap was her body starting to fight off her fever..... Finally we took her to urgent care on Saturday (her birthday) to learn she was on the tail end of an ear infection.

As for Juliet, she worked on her two front teeth coming in over Thanksgiving so she had her own set of issues...

Our holiday, while wonderful, didn't lend itself to many photos with two sick kiddos. Putting your "average" childhood ailments aside we are beyond thankful for our two healthy, wonderful little girls, family and friends! We had a great Thankgiving at the Praeger's, helped host a suprise birthday party for our good friend Randy, even saw a couple of friends (though not nearly enough of our friends) AND celebrated a third birthday which of course deserves its own post!

Good luck getting Amelia to take off her personalized M&M t-shirt her BFF Sophia picked out for her birthday.

The Happy Meal snub.....

Oh getting out of those car seats and playing with GranAnn never felt so good!



"Enabling" might not be in Amelia's vocabulary yet but she sure knows how to spot an enabler. After Amelia woke up Thanksgiving morning with a fever, EE turned on the Macy's parade, got her a cool rag, gave her endless cups of juice and completely soaked up a sick Amelia who couldn't get enough cuddling.

EE wasn't the only enabler.... What does a Grandma do when her fever ridden granddaughter finally says she is hungry? Well of course she gives her a homemade cookie and milk in her new tea set.....

Juliet on the other end of the spectrum inhaled all food put in front of her over Thanksgiving with mashed potatoes being a huge hit. Little miss has gotten very into "feeding" herself. She appears to be a natural....

Oh darn, did I miss Black Friday? Juliet tried to remind us by eating the advertisements. She is going to have to work harder on convincing someone to take her shopping on Black Friday as it gives me anxiety just thinking about....

Monkey Business

Our little monkeys had a grand time this Halloween season. They had three events to show off their costumes. From the neighborhood parade/party, their daycare parade and trick-or-treating they were the cutest monkeys I have ever seen! Amelia gets one piece of candy each afternoon if she has done a good job listening for the day and stayed in bed the night before. She bounces off the wall after each piece. I'm not sure how we will bribe her to stay in bed or (make a rather pathetic attempt at) listen once our Halloween stash runs out....

Our monkeys!!!

This is probably the third picture we have actually had taken of all four of us. Mark joked that with us both in Cubs hats were we going as disgruntled Cubs fans.

I suppose since we weren't giving Juliet candy she figured she would just have to eat the grass....

Naturally we had neither camera charged when we were getting ready to leave to trick-or-treat. Thank goodness for phones so we at least got a picture or two.

Yes, this picture is blurry but I thought it was a sweet picture. Our neighbor William was pretty patient with Amelia and his little brother Henry by helping them down steep stairs, waiting for them at each house, etc.

Here is Alain going to claim our little ones from a house. Neither Henry or Amelia could take a single step without a piece of candy in their mouth. Typically it was a lollipop (as evident in the picture) and they both would choose the most inopportune time to stop and open it. This is urban trick-or-treating and the sidewalks and front steps are full of people so if you stop in the middle you are likely to get run over. At about every other house one parent had to walk up to the porch and claim these two so we could keep moving. This was pokey trick-or-treating at it's finest.