Turkey Day 2011

Thanksgiving is a great time!  It's super awesome to have 5 days off to spend with family!  I totally appreciate how lucky we are to always have holidays and summer vacations off together.  Thanksgiving is also so exciting because we get to do 2 of our favorite things:  cooking and eating!  And then there's also the anticipation of Christmas and the black friday shopping.  This Thanksgiving was extra special because we also sold our house.  Our realtor kept telling us we'd sell our house when we least expect it.  I guess you could say that came true.  We sold our house off a open house on a rainy day, the weekend before a holiday.  What are the chances of that?  

So, on Thanksgiving day we were surrounded by our parents, our children and plenty of food.  We had a good time watching the parade in the morning, eating Kyle's magnificently moist turkey, hitting up the mall the next day, and going to see the new Muppet movie!  

Here are a few of the pictures from our wonderful break:

The Thanksgiving Parade

featuring King Pooh

Kyle Carving the Turkey

Wishbone Showdown

Vincent's already lost interest

Always proud to be a winner!

Impromptu Sack Races

    

3 little pumpkins @ Halloween

Halloween Mania is over, but it is one of my favorite holidays, which is why I uploaded about 40 pictures!  We've got quite a halloween tradition going.  It involves a trip to the Louisville Zoo's Halloween party, pumpkin carving on the front porch, and a 10+ year chili dinner/trick or treating/scary movie Halloween night!  Only since the arrival of kids, the scary movie has gone from scary/goofy horror flick to Mickey's villians or the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.  

Anyway, so I'll just clip on the pictures and narrate as needed! 

Halloween at the Zoo...Vincent is a puppy, although since he refuses any head clothing (aka hats) he would not to keep on his ears for more than 2 seconds.

That's a giant lego..you know we had to get our picture on that!

Barrel of monkey's indeed

It's nearly impossible to get 3 kids looking at the camera...wait till #4 arrives.

Isabella and Snow White

Can we take this home?

Great picture of Zach and the Harry Potter crew.

Popcorn anyone?

 In the hay bale maze

 

A gator at the boyscout party

Here are the boyscouts..wolf and tigers I think.  Since Kyle is the leader, it was our job to throw the party.  We did a pretty good job, but I think we can improve on it next year.  It was my job to come up with the games to play so I did an internet search and came up with several games that sounded fun.  Main lesson learned:  Don't dismiss a warning that suggests that the game may cause some children to vomit.  One of the poor boy scouts spent nearly 5 minutes at the trash can after the food relay.

Pumpkin Carving!

Vincents standard pumpkin, Isabella's dog faced pumpkin, and Zachary's toothy guy

Halloween night...chili dinner and strawberries.

Vampire Space Man

Do we have to sit for this picture?

As he pulls it off

Headed down the street to trick or treat.  It was absolutely perfect weather! 

Isabella's crazy cat pose

Trick or treat!

On the move...there will be no holding hands.

Looking a little haggard...checking out the treat bag.

A whirlwind of activity

These last 2 weeks have been exciting times!  About 2 weeks ago, we found out our new little baby is going to be a girl!  Isabella was so super excited!  The ultrasound tech gave Isa a big high-five when she announced the splendid news that Isabella was going to have a little sister!  We were all very excited for her too!

Then we all caught ourselves by surprise when we suddenly found the perfect house for us...only about 1 mile away from our current residence.  We've been casually looking for homes for a couple of years now.  We've been to a few open houses and nothing has really stood out.  I don't think it helps that we are limiting ourselves to a 1 square mile of homes...but that's where we want to live...close to our kids schools, family, friends, and work.  I always told Kyle and my mom that if we ever move it will have to be the perfect house!  We have done so many updates to this one that (most of the time) it didn't seem worth moving.  But I had a hard time envisioning how we were going to fit another baby in Vincent's room..and I cringed at the thought of the expense of waterproofing our basement and finishing it for extra room.  So when I saw this house on-line I liked it right away.  It had everything I wanted...it was updated, had a garage, 4 bedrooms and a finished basement.  But then I drove by it and didn't like it.  A friend of mine emailed me about a week later and sent me the link to the house.  Suddenly I was interested enough again to look at the pictures and I noticed they were having an open house.  Why not?  So, we stopped in on that beautiful Sunday, after our church's health fair, and realized it was the perfect house for us.  We put in an offer and they accepted it.

Now comes the very difficult part of getting our house ready and finding the right buyer in this terrible housing market.  I don't know what I will do if we lose our new home.  It is perfect for us and our growing family.  I can definitely see ourselves there until our kids are grown...maybe forever.  I'm praying that the right person comes along who loves our old house as much as we have.

Tomorrow we are having a major yard sale.  I thought I had a lot of stuff to put out until I saw my neighbors stash.  Everyone in the neighborhood will think we're hoarders!  It's going to be a lot of fun and hopefully we'll make some good money.  Isabella asked me last night if she could buy something with the money in her piggy bank.  I responded, what do you want to buy?  She said our new house.  It made me feel so happy that she's excited to move...but then sad too because I fear somebody else will come along and take it before we can sell ours.

I guess we can just pray that it all works out!  It's kind of out of our hands at this point.