Happy Birthday, Ushi!!!

Today, we wish our baby Ushi a very happy birthday! On this day, three years ago, we fell in love with him and brought our little guy home. Happy Birthday, Ushi-boosh!!!

Make Way For Stars & Strikes

G and Typifer on the roller coaster machine.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We took advantage of the week off school and went to Tellus Museum with Danielle, Lily, and Quincy; and Terry, Derek, and Ryan. Here are G and the girls outside, in front of the giant tractor and in front of the museum, and a video of all of the kids panning for gemstones.

G really liked the way his toy cars all fit together and thought they looked like a big puzzle.

We were all excited for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV and hope to see it in person one year. Chip decided that all of his animals would like to watch, too, so he brought them all down from his bed. It was a good thing, too, because Spiderman and Beary (from Build-A-Bear Workshop) saw themselves on TV.

We are THOSE kind of people, who are fanatics about their favorite recipe. We use this recipe, which involves brining, variable heat, and aromatics. Here are before, during, and after photos of our bird.

We went to Jack's, Jen's, and Baby-In-Belly Kelly's house for dinner with Bun and Papa, and Jen's parents and brother. We had lots of great food, wine, and dessert and played a few games. The favorite game of the night was Euchre, for which it is hard to find players here in Georgia. It was a great day, and we hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too.

Soccer Video

This was taken the last game of the Fall '09 season.

Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

Well, the fall soccer season is over, and what a fun season it was. We had a bee-yutiful day for our last game, and then we had a fun party at Steak 'N' Shake. We can't believe what a fun and interesting group of people we were blessed with as teammate families.

At school, Wednesday was Goofy Glasses Day, to celebrate their letter of the week, G. Of course, G is our favorite letter, too! He chose to make his sunglasses into Santa glasses, and he even thought to make the beard removable so he can put the glasses back together as sunglasses.

Our soccer team banquet was on Tuesday evening, our usual practice day, at Steak 'N' Shake (but we'll still call it a banquet - it was delicious). I was Team Mom again this season, our coach was Tara, and our assistant coach was Heidi. We all thought that we had a relatively close-knit team this year - both the kids and the parents all got along so well. We think it was a sign of the great group of people that every single family attended the banquet (except for one due to illness). We can hardly wait for next season. Go Raiders!

We are realizing that for elementary school, Thanksgiving is a really, really big deal. They have been doing Thanksgiving-themed activities since November first, and yesterday they did Thanksgiving centers through all of the kindergarten classrooms (centers are educational activity stations). All of the kids had the opportunity to have their faces painted. We really like how Chip's turned out, and we wore it all day, even through his trail dance class. Today is his Thanksgiving show, and we are so excited to see him in his first recital.

Speaking of dance class, we found a dance studio and will tell you all about it soon. He will start the Monday after Thankgiving. We think he is going to do great!!!

Fall Climb

It's such a beautiful, warm and sunny autumn day, that we decided to enjoy Kennesaw Mountain.  We have great views of the colors, and the animals are in full frolic today.

Falling Into Autumn

It doesn't seem like so long ago that "Bun" and "Papa" were "Mom" and "Dad", and Jack, Laura, and I were jumping into big piles of leaves. This is one of those special things that I'm glad Chip can do with them. We just wish we'd been there instead of at home, cleaning up our Halloween decorations!

BINGO!!!

Friday night, we had a family Bingo night at school. I helped serve the drinks; actually, G helped too by setting out the cups for me and we both got to wear plastic "glubs". It was a really special night for us. We sat right in front and had a great time playing together, each of us with our own card. We had pizza, cookies, and drinks, and played Bingo for about two hours. They also raffled movies and birthday parties at the local skate rink. The Chipster paid attention from start to finish, and he even helped to play my card for me at the beginning while I finished up with the drinks. He was a pro - after a while, he was even able to multitask, eating and playing at the same time. None of us won, but a couple of G's friends - Quincy and Jordan - did. We love that our school, and especially the PTA, do such special things for us. We really had a great time and can't wait for next year. Here are some photos, so you can see what a fun event it was.

Gloved and ready for customers

Pouring the water, fruit punch soda, "lemonade-ish", "Sprite-ish", and "Coke-ish"

The ball of destiny... for two hours, anyway

They didn't end up using this board; they wrote out the numbers, instead, but wouldn't it have been neat?

Our principal and the event organizer from the PTA

Our three stacks of cards: five cards for each of us

Excited to learn a new game and practice his number recognition!

Getting close to a Bingo!

Our principal/ball lady, our assistant principal/caller, and our assistant administrator/Vanna

Focusing on the raffle numbers - what a cutie

Kroger Math

We are at Kroger for our school's Math Night.  G is using the grocery store to do addition, subtraction, comparison, and shapes.  This is really fun, and it is giving us ideas how to work teaching moments into our grocery trips (as if he needs more teaching moments from us).  Lots of teachers and administration are here to cheer them on, and at the end, a big reward:  a cookie and apple juice!