Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We have so much to be thankful for, it's hard to know where to start. I'm so thankful for my sweet, energetic little boy. He even smiled nicely for our picture! Ahhh!

I'm also thankful for my sweet neice, Madison. She is talking up a storm and learning so much all of the time. She loves to sing Jesus Loves Me, Happy Birthday, and Rock-a-bye Baby.

Here she is rocking out on the back porch.

She also loves to tap dance--she even convinced Meme to do it with her!

I'm also thankful for my wonderful husband. We all enjoyed a fun ride down to the lake in the golf cart. Both kids got to drive and they loved every second of it. The golf cart is one of Jackson's all-time favorite things.

We had a really great thanksgiving day up at Lake Texoma. Here's most of our group after we had all chowed down on some of the best food ever. Seriously...I'll put Meme's sweet potato casserole and dressing up against anyone!

Of course, our little turkey didn't eat the delicious meal and instead chose to eat half of a lunchable. Aunt Colleen caught him sneaking marshmallows, though, later on in the day:)

We all enjoyed watching the Cowboys and the Horns play that evening. Hook 'em! Maddie was sitting up so nicely in this chair until Jackson decided he needed to get in it, too. Her reaction is priceless--what?!

Thank you to all of our family--we appreciate each and every one of you and hope we show that to you throughout the year.

Happy Birthday, Poppy!

Poppy's birthday was a few days before Thanksgiving. We went to celebrate at a tasty little Italian joint called Aboca. Here's Jackson holding the card he got for his Poppy.

After dinner we came back to the house and enjoyed some delicious chocolate cake. Jackson supervised the candle lighting...

and made sure that Poppy was able to blow out all of his candles.

Then it was time for the good stuff! Madison sure did enjoy her cake:)

And so did Jackson. He likes to eat all of the icing first he told us last night, which explains why his piece looks so bare.

We really enjoyed celebrating with Poppy. Happy Birthday!

Thoughts by Jackson

Here are a few more quotes of Jackson's:

1. Yesterday after he got up from his nap he was sitting at the top of the stairs. When I went up there to talk to him, he laid down and said, "My legs are broken, Mama." Translation: Carry me down the stairs! (He got that by me asking him if his legs are broken whenever he asks to be carried!)

2. Whenever I put his socks on him, no matter how well I do it, he always says, "these socks are crazy." I tug on them a bit and really don't change their position at all, but it always seems to work and they are no longer crazy.

3. Sunday morning we're all sitting at the table eating breakfast and reading the paper. He looks at me and says with a straight face, "Mom, what's the forecast today?" He knows that it's in the back of the Metro section! I'm pretty sure that most other kids are not that concerned with the weather.

4. New favorite line of questioning is 'who built this?' For example, who built this house? Who built your car? Who built daddy's car? Who built our fence? He might ask these at normal times, like when we're in the car, but sometimes they are completely out of the blue. Last night we were laying in bed and I got the 'who made our fence' question!

And finally, what's a post without some cute pictures? Here's Maddie wearing Jackson's cowboy hat. She loved it!

Oh yes, and one more funny thing. The other night after the kids got out of the bath, Jackson decided he wanted to take some pictures with my camera. He took a few of us and then stood back, turned the camera vertical and said, "one more, mom." He proceeded to take the following picture of us. You think he's had to sit through some picture sessions?! The kid even knows that we must get two angles of every shot!

He is definitely my child! Good pic, Jackson:)

Kids say the funniest things

Jackson has been cracking us up recently. I finally decided to try and remember just some of what he shares with us on a daily basis. Here are a few quotes:

We fed the ducks some old hot dogs buns the other day. We went to dinner that night at Memaw and Poppy's and he came running out of the kitchen hollering, "Wook, Mom, duck food!" with some fresh hot dog buns in his hand.

Jackson was using me as his personal jungle gym last night and I told him to be careful because of the baby. His response--"Baby not in your wegs." Nope, it's not, but must you stand on them?!

This one just melted my heart. We were talking about people getting married and he said, "Mommy, I want to marry you."

I was rocking J and M to sleep last night and he lifted his head after a song and said, "Baby's asleep in your tummy--in her crib."

Jackson also really likes country music and has a lot of favorite songs. He loves it whenever they come on the radio or CMT and sings along with them a lot of the time. If he can't remember the name of the song, he will just say a line from it over and over until I get it.

Alright by Darius Rucker - Roof over my head according to Jackson

People are Crazy by Billy Currington - Beer is Good by Jackson - this one was so popular I actually went out and bought the CD. That plan kind of backfired on me, though, the day I had to play that one song 5 times in a row so as to avoid a revolt in my backseat.

Toes in the Water by the Zac Brown Band - the real version says "I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand" and they play it on CMT. It's been censored by the radio stations now, but Jackson still sings the whole line. Oh dear!

Big Green Tractor--loves to dance in circles to this one.

Happy Birthday--will sing this any time, any place...very loudly

And finally, his favorite thing to do (still) is clean. Anything--this cat will clean morning, day and night. No joke. A few weeks ago we heard him get up and come downstairs about 7am. He didn't immediately come into our room, though. We got curious so we went out into the living room and found him up on a step stool cleaning the fireplace with his cleaning rag. Just to prove that wasn't a fluke, the next morning he got up early, got the step stool (large, heavy, with two steps) out of the closet, carried it into our bathroom and began cleaning our bathroom counters with his rag. Seriously?! It was 7am, Jared and I were still trying to sleep and our 2 year old is busy slaving away in the bathroom!

See how happy he is with his broom and duster? In case you were wondering, the only thing on his list for Santa is a yellow vacuumer! Once he gets that, his collection will be complete.

Way to go, Shelley!

She made it! We went to the closing ceremonies yesterday afternoon to see Memaw and all the other 2500 walkers. They raised $7.5 million! Thanks again to all of you who contributed to this very worthy cause.

Jackson had a great big hug ready to give his Memaw!

So sweet.

Yay Memaw!

This weekend is Shelley's Three Day Walk. She began the weekend by arriving at the Plano Center at 5:15 am on Friday and started walking shortly thereafter. We all went out to cheer her on yesterday afternoon. Here's J holding his sign. Still sleepy from falling asleep in the car, but so cute that he's supporting his Memaw.

We waited for almost an hour until Shelley came through and the kids did great. They spent some time on shoulders...

and ate a few chips that the nice man from Schlotzsky's gave out.

Then Memaw arrived! And she came with candy, no less! I was so impressed that with her crazy day she thought of the kids and brought them smarties and suckers. Now that's a good Memaw:)

Memaw's cheering crew

She couldn't stay long, so she and her walking buddy were off again.

Good luck today, Shelley!

We're so proud of all of you!

Trick or Treat

It's hard to believe that all of the Halloween festivities are finally over. We had a very fun Halloween evening...here's a little recap. The kids took good naps in the afternoon, woke up, got in their costumes and came outside. Jared had been on a bike ride, so they both wanted to sit on the bike.

Then both sets of grandparents came over and we all headed down to the neighborhood pizza party. Jackson insisted on pulling Maddie in the wagon. It was slow going for a while!

At the neighborhood get-together, they also had a costume contest. Madison won Cutest Costume!

Jackson really had no interest in any of the festivities until it was time to go get the candy. Then he fell right in line! Even though he only said "trick or treat" one time, he practiced a lot. We would leave one house where he had been as quiet as a church mouse and he'd say "I'll say it at the next house." We'd get there and nothing again! Oh well...maybe next year:)

After we collected a lot of candy, we all headed back to our house for some yummy pumpkin cake that we made earlier that day. Then it was time for mom and dad to get ready for the adult par-tay. Even though we didn't get to go to the party on his bike, we still got some cute pics beforehand.

The party was so fun--here's our group. We've got a spider girl, tin man, scarecrow, angel, devil, us and the couple from Mad Men. There were so many good costumes!

Thanks Jenny for such a fun party!