I'm a Bad Blogger

Okay, I am such a bad blogger. I apologize to all those who come to see if there's anything new and all they find is my depressing last post. Plus, did I ever get those Halloween pics up? No! If you want to see the kids in their Halloween outfits, go to my best friend Annaliese's blog and check it out. We always get the kids together to get pictures of them, although with six kids and 2 of them being under 2 at the time, it was not an easy task. You will have to either scroll way down her blog or click directly to her Halloween post since she is a much better blogger than I and has many posts since then. If you can't tell, Hannah was an all-american cheerleader (she just wasn't going to be another princess this year), Justin was Darth Vader, and Owen was the adorable frog.

We have moved waaayyy past Halloween and, can you believe, past Thanksgiving, and Christmas is upon us. For Thanksgiving, we traveled to Indiana to be with the Lough family. We were actually there for 9 days. We flew out the Monday before and returned the Wed. after Thanksgiving, which made it a nice break and not such a crazy harried trip. Hannah and Justin have always loved flying, although I think it has lost some of its luster for them, but we were dreading having Owen on a plane. He is just so much more active than the other 2 ever seemed to be at that age, and we didn't know how we would get him to sit contained for 6 hours. He had his moments, but all in all, he did better than we expected. It definitely made for a long plane ride though. He also had a bit of trouble adjusting his schedule at G'ma and G'pa's. Finally on the last night we were there, he actually slept in the crib rather than between Dale and I. Thankfully though, he got right back on schedule when we got home and is sleeping better than ever. As far as the trip, it was pretty low key except for on Thanksgiving Day when there were 29 people in Dale's parents' home. Hannah and Grandma counted 8 kids and 21 adults. It was good to see everyone. Hannah and Justin of course were thrilled to see G'ma and G[pa and monopolized their time constantly. It took Owen a little time to warm up, but in the last few days, he felt pretty comfortable and was running around like he owned the place. Dale and I took many opportunities to get away a little--most times to a coffee shop in a town 20 minutes away where we could get a good coffee (I missed my Starbucks) and surf on the internet. It doesn't take much to make us happy. The other major part of the trip was meeting our nephew Drew who is a few months younger than Owen. He and Owen didn't really pay too much attention to each other, but it was neat to see them together. Kari and Duane are expecting another baby in May and are really hoping for a little girl. Here are some pics from the trip.

Owen and Drew in matching pj's

Okay, so there is a cute story to tell about these photos. I bought Hannah and Justin disposable cameras to take on the trip and Justin was carrying his around all day on Thanksgiving and came up to me and whispered that he wanted a picture of everybody--some sitting and some standing--and that I had to tell them. So we got all 29 people (I haven't actually counted to see if they're all there) to squeeze into the front room (it was really cold outside, so we weren't going out there), so Justin and mommy could take pics. We couldn't get everyone in one shot, so we did a panorama of 3 shots. Justin does love taking pictures. He's my budding photographer.

All the grandkids in the matching sweaters we bought.

Seefood anyone? Sorry. I just had to put this photo in. It's after Owen smashed his face onto the cool whip lid to eat it and then had a mouth full of something.

All right. I guess that's enough for now. The past few days we have been feverishly getting our tree and other Christmas decorations up, so hopefully (no promises) I will post more about that soon.

TTFN--Ta Ta For Now