Thanksgiving and Christmas Prep

This was our Thanksgiving Table

We got our Christmas lights up that weekend!

It looks so much better in person.

Picking out our tree for this year!

How many red heads does it take to decorate a Christmas tree LOL!

All done!

Once again we are doing our 25 days of Christmas / Winter books, opening one each night and reading it as a family. We are also doing the chocolate calendars we do each year. I had to get creative since they are not gluten free so I told Nixon each day after he opens it I will trade him a kiss for his piece of chocolate (A Hershey Kiss that is!)

We went downtown for a good old fashioned small town Christmas Parade!

Gotta love the Pirates.

That same night we went back downtown with our community group and handed out free hot cocoa for the lighted boat parade.

Nixon had the best spot up in a tree and could see it all!

Paige, Nixon and I went to see Paige's friend in the Nutcracker. It was my first time seeing it, something I have always wanted to see since I was a kid and never had the chance.

Simon and Paige had a Tackey Christmas Sweater Party with their youth groups at church. Umm I think my daughter might be Mabel from Gravity Falls (A Show on Disney Channel) LOL.

Paige's youth group had a sleepover and Star Wars Marathon. She took Obi-Wan Kabob-ie Lightsabers for a snack!

Tim and I went to a play. We LOVE going to plays. It was It's A Wonderful Life Live Radio Show.  It was so cool. The stage was set up like an old time radio station and then all the characters would play all the different people even complete with the guy at the table to make all the sounds with shoes and a bucket of water and door slamming ect. It really was great!

We enjoyed Simon's Christmas band concert. He really is doing well with the trumpet and going to try out for district band.

Opening Night of Star Wars!! It was awesome!! I don't want to spoil it for anyone.  I will say it is as good as the orginal 3!!  We loved it!

We have had 3 countdowns going on at our house. 1. To Star Wars opening night. 2.  To Grandma and Grandpa arriving here (only 1 day away, yay). 3.  To Christmas. I will post more later after Grandma and Grandpa get here and Christmas and New Years. We hope you have a wonderful Holidays!

Some Stuff :)

Nixon really wanted to build a robot....

So he did... Built the motor...

And tada! A robot. It was a kit so he had to put it all together including attaching wires in the motor. He was pretty excited!

Tim and I went to a CCTI dinner.

Through much hard work and tutoring, reading has clicked for Nixon and now he is reading for fun!!

Simon was reading Tom Sawyer for school and Tucker decided this was a good spot to rest LOL.

Paige ran her first 5k and did great, came in 29th out of 112 people with a time of 30:53. It was called the Glow Run and raised money for diabetes. They covered them in glow paint and glow sticks and started at dusk so when they all came in it was dark and you could see them all glowing.

That is one BIG Teddy Bear!

Well, the cake says what birthday it was for me! :)

I actually was pretty sick with a nasty cold virus Nixon and I caught. So instead of blowing candles out I improvised... Only took 2 claps LOL

Oh look a drink made just for them LOL

So, all that flooding back in early October was nothing compared to last Thursday! 1 day of rain coupled with high tides flooded us like we have never seen before!

We made the mistake of trying to run to the store and couldn't even make it to town. We had to turn back the water was so deep and people stuck everywhere. We tried to come back a different route which was worse. Kinda scary! It was like driving through a river.  It was over a foot deep if not 2.

We have a good friend whose daughters are in the local plays so we always go to support them! This time her and her daughters were in it! It was a great way to kick off the holiday season. The play was "The Best Christmas Pagent Ever". They all 3 did great.

Tim is now running with Santa shorts LOL!! He is so festive, I love it!

We are so proud of Nixon. He made honor roll for first quarter! All A's and B's!

He also got a Leader award.

He was very excited and it really boosted his confidence and shows him that his hard work and the extra tutoring for reading this last year really is worth it!

And here is a funny cat picture to end this post. I shall call it box fight! Because that is what ensued right after I snapped this picture. Tucker ended up in it. He uses his large size against Piper when he really wants something. He often will just go sit on her so she will move if he decides he wants to sit where she is. They bring us much joy and entertainment!

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!