Thanksgiving Trip

Grant in the middle of eating cookies.

Jackson got a remote controlled

monster truck from Uncle Evan.

In Which Jackson Pets a Goat

Tuesday morning we flew to Colorado. During our layover in Cincinnati, the boys (all 3) were playing on the moving walkways. They were just riding up one and back the other. Then Grant thought he would try something different and turned around. So now he was walking against them, like a treadmill. That occupied him for about 20 minutes before we boarded our plane.

We celebrated my dad's birthday Tuesday evening and Jackson got to help blow out the candles. Grant tried to help but he couldn't because he was 5 feet away. He kept trying to blow out a big one my mom has, but he just can't. It's pretty cute to watch him try.

Thursday we had a typical Thanksgiving, lots of food, family, and football. It was awesome.

My sister and her husband brought their Nintendo Wii with them. They brought a monster truck game for Jackson and he loved it. He couldn't actually play, but we pretended he did. I think he played for 2-3 hours straight on Saturday morning.

Saturday we went shopping, went to The Bee Movie and to a goat dairy farm. It's open on Saturdays so the kids can pet the goats and you can see where they make cheese. One goat tried to eat Jackson's finger. He had been eating candy in the car, so I figured the goat was just after the leftover sugar.

Grant's been sick the whole trip and he doesn't seem to be getting any better yet. He's coughing a little, but pretty deeply, his nose is stuffy and we fear an ear infection. So the airplane ride tomorrow could be a little interesting.

In Which Grant Eats Garbage and Brian Hits 100

Monday I took the boys to the Superior Dome for a play group. They had bikes, balls, and hula hoops in a corner of the indoor football field. Grant kept trying to run away. One time I saw him at about the 50 yard line watching some college guys play soccer. Another time he was climbing on the metal bleachers eating whatever garbage had been swept into a pile.

Thursday I got to go on a Mom’s night out. Downtown Marquette hosts Ladies’ Night. The stores stay open late (meaning past 6 p.m.), and they have sales and refreshments. It was great being able to go to fun stores without worrying what my boys would break. It was pretty cold outside, but well worth it.

Friday morning I hosted a breakfast club at our house. A bunch of moms and kids came over and everyone brought something to share. Afterward, I got another mommy break and went to a friend’s house where she taught me some tricks about digital scrapbooking. I’m excited to have a little change of pace from paper and to be able to share the pages more easily.

Friday evening we dropped the boys off with our babysitting swap friend, and Brian and I went Christmas shopping. We are pretty much done. We ended early and got to go to dinner, too.

Saturday the little boys and I went to a birthday party. It was a princess theme, with a few knights thrown in. The boys got to decorate foam crowns with foam stickers (the girls had foam wands). Jackson decorated both sides of his and was there twice as long as anyone else. Grant figured out how to place the stickers and made a very cool crown.

Brian hit the 100-page mark on his book/thesis about the homeless man, and he figures he’ll hit 300 by the time it’s done. He also has sent out a lot of other writing to magazines for possible publication. He sent a group of four poems to 35 magazines; unfortunately, he is 0-for-4 so far. He also has a nonfiction essay out to 19 magazines, and a short story out to six. We should hear back from most of them over the next few months.

In Which Jackson Makes an Aquarium on Meat Day

This week I decided to start doing preschool with Jackson. We do basic things like weather, letters, numbers etc. Jackson absolutely loves it. He asks if Grant is tired because we do preschool during Grant’s nap. We focused this week on the Food Pyramid; I was secretly hoping it would make him want to eat better, but no such luck. We made an aquarium using a box and some fish cutouts for Meat Day. He is so proud of it. He giggles when he talks about it. It’s great to see him love to learn. It’s been really good for me too. I feel like I have some structure to my day and that I am spending good, quality time with him. I was planning on doing it every week day. But we did it Saturday (he scrubbed the toilet for about ten minutes), and today we made something out of the Friend magazine because he kept asking to have preschool.

At 6:45 a.m. Saturday, Brian headed to Chicago with the youth to attend the Chicago Temple. He drove six boys ages 12-18 in the van, seven hours down, seven hours back. Other than being kicked in the shoulder by one boy who somersaulted out of the back seat, it was a pleasant ride. The temple itself was peaceful and beautiful, as it always is.

Saturday morning the boys and I went to a primary activity. We heard some veterans speak, the kids put flags on some veterans’ graves, and we went to a park and had pizza.

Grant has added a few works to his vocabulary:
“uck” for truck, “ya-ya” for daddy and for Jackson. Sometimes I think they sound a little different, but they are pretty much the same. He says “ah un” for all done.

We'll try to get some pictures of the aquarium posted this week.