I cannot believe it's less than 2 weeks until Christmas. We're doing pretty well getting ready for Christmas. With our trip to Indiana for Thanksgiving and missing that weekend after, we got kinda a late start. I actually had a really hard time getting motivated to get any of my Christmas decorations even out of the Rubbermaid tubs. I had a bit of the Bah Humbug attitude for awhile, but once I got going, it went pretty quickly, and it definitely looks and feels a lot like Christmas now. The kids, of course, are beyond excited. Owen keeps asking if Santa is going to come to our house any minute.
Speaking of our trip to Indiana, we did spend a week there for Thanksgiving. I was somewhat dreading the plane trip there with 3 kids. With the way things have been going lately with the airlines, I was expecting the worst, but we actually had absolutely no problems--no lines, no delays, no problems with luggage. The only problem we did have was with our rental car. We actually watched the minivan we were supposed to have drive off the lot without us. It was late, and it took awhile, but they got us a new car.
It was a good visit, although it flew by. The kids were so excited to be at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We did get a chance to finally meet our 18 month old niece, Brooke, or Brookey Sue as Hannah calls her. She wasn't too sure about us though. Hannah so wanted her to want to be with her all the time, and sometimes she would put up with Hannah and sometimes she wouldn't. Their cousin, Drew, however, couldn't get enough of his cousins. He was thrilled to have playmates.
We didn't do a whole lot other than hang out at the house. Of course there was a houseful for Thanksgiving--32 in fact. The kids had a great time playing with their other cousins. There were 2 girls Hannah's age, Tori and Emma, and they had the best time playing. Sharon even had Tori and Hannah read the Thanksgiving grace, and they did a great job. There were also lots of boys Owen's age. Justin was the odd one out, but he was fine because he spent the day playing his new Nintendo DS, which was an early Christmas present (Hannah got one too) to keep them occupied on the long trip. He had a great time getting through his Lego Indiana Jones games with Uncle Duane's help. I think Uncle Duane enjoyed it as much as Justin did.
After Thanksgiving, Justin, Hannah and I went through a little bout of a tummy bug, which put a damper on things for a couple days, but we did manage to still have time to take a little trip to Indiannapolis to the world's largest children's museum. We've been there once before and were amazed and were just as amazed this time. The best part of the museum is a fantastic dinosaur exhibit. The only problem was that we started there and Owen was extremely upset with us and threw a big fit when we made him leave that area. It actually was like that everywhere we went though. He would get caught up in something else and not want to leave at all. It defintely puts the Portland Children's museum to shame.
Dale and I did manage to get away a little bit to see a movie and to visit some of his friends from high school. He actually had a great time reconnecting with his 2 best friends from high school. Our only regret was that we didn't get to spend more time with Uncle Duane, Aunt Kari and cousins Drew and Brooke. The week just flew by. Uncle Duane was nice enough to bring his 4-wheeler and Ranger (4-wheeler on steroids) over to G'ma and G'pa's house and left them there all week so that Dale could take the kids out for rides whenever they wanted. I think that was the highlight of the week for them.
Well now that I've given you the play by play on our trip, I'll leave you with some highlight photos. The next post will probably be my annual Christmas Letter, which I promise to have done before New Year's this year.
