Thanksgiving

Hoping that Thanksgiving was a good one for you.

In keeping with tradition, Thanksgiving was at Aunt Linda's house. Linda and Rory did lots of good and yummy work in the kitchen! Even a double batch of cranberry salad! Is it a bad thing to be thankful for the big dish that was sent home with me? Again, Jess was a champion eater. Even going back for seconds of a few things. (Keeping in mind that as a tiny girl, she was very picky!) And Brandon, well we pretty much had a repeat performance on his part. It sounds terrible to say, but I packed him a sandwich. All the good food and he ate a sandwich... He is becoming more and more difficult to feed. He is SO picky now!! But he did realize the goodness of cranberry salad! I might even be willing to share!

It didn't take long to find the toy stash...


Jess playing peek-a-boo with Baby Ray.


Baby Ray's first Thanksgiving.


Daddy is working today. He had to get up at an unreasonable hour. But traveling quite far for today's job. Unfortunately, we are not sure what time to expect him home. Hopefully, if it is not too late in the day, we may get a start on decorating. The kiddos have been asking when we will put the trees up. I have not yet bought ornaments for the kids this year! We pick out an ornament for them each year and also a group for the family (like the jiggle bells that look like snowmen and have our names on them) For the ones that are not dated, I will add it. The kids like pulling the ornaments out and putting their own on the tree. We also buy ornaments from vacations that we have taken. Usually more than one, but it is so hard to sum up a trip in just one ornament! I think my favorite part is decorating the tree... I love the memories that come with each ornament. Maybe I will have to take pictures of some of my favorites to share... hmmm...

Oh, and I guess that you can check back later for Turkey day pictures. I have not yet uploaded pictures.

oh yeah, the blog...

Bad blogger, I know. We have just been going along. Brandon is all better. It seems like ages ago now. But he is better. Jess had a follow up with her urologist. She was happy.
I do have a cute story while at the hospital. While waiting for the doctor to come in to talk about the xray, Brandon had to go to the bathroom. Leaving Jess, we go around the corner. The bathroom was a very popular place. Someone was in there, we were waiting, another mom with little girl also comes over. I see that the doctor has come around the corner heading towards our room. The doctor and her nurse both see me waiting down the hall and stop there. They are both now waiting for me to come to them. What do I do with this 4 year old that has to go to the potty? I tell him that he will just have to go in by himself when the lady comes out. I will be right over there. Hoping that the other mom waiting with the little girl is understanding. So while the doctor is talking to me about the x-ray, I keep looking back to make sure that Brandon does indeed go into the bathroom. What I see instead is everyone looking down towards me because it was "his turn" but was refusing to go. I call down to him that "it's okay buddy, it's your turn. Go ahead." So he in turn yells back down the hall, "I'm letting the little girl go first!"
What a nice boy!
Jess in turn got the whole day off school. I was hoping that I could get her back for the second half of the day. It just didn't work that way. By the time that we got back to our side of town and lunch, it just seemed silly to take her to school. Three day weekend for her.

Saturday was Thanksgiving with the Jones family. By this I mean the WHOLE Jones family. All the aunts and uncles, cousins, and cousin's children. Everyone brings a dish (or two). It was all so good! Jess ate like a champ! Brandon had crackers, roll, and fruit salad. On the way home he asks if he can have "a litte something to eat."

All is going well in the Jones house. The kids are wanting to get the Christmas trees up. We will probably work on that this weekend. Or maybe Friday. I don't see much shopping going on for us! Way to crazy! Although we did take the kids out, armed with pen and paper, to get some sort of wish list going. That was interesting...

November 17

Happy Birthday Grandma Anne!

Much better!

Thank goodness! This boy is on the mend! Yesterday was a good day. Although Brandon woke up earlier than I thought he would, he acted much more like his old self. Ate better for each meal. I tried to explain to the kiddos that they needed to play separately. "Brandon stay away from Jess. Jess leave Brandon alone; you don't need to get his sicky germs" I can honestly say that is probably some of the best playing together they have done! No bickering, no fighting. Maybe I should tell them that they cannot play together more often!- They play nicer together that way. Go figure!
About an hour before their regular bedtime, I wanted them to spend a few minutes cleaning up. The plan was to have them ready for bed when daddy called. (Daddy has been out of town for a few days)Then after talking to daddy crawl into bed. BUT that was not the way of it. Melt down on Brandon's part just at the cleaning part. Major melt down at getting jammies on. So I got the medicine doser and we went on up stairs. Jess was so nice trying to calm him down and read him a story while I FINALLY got him to change his clothes. He was in bed at 8:00 and asleep when I looked in on him 5 minutes later.
He slept until 8:45 this morning.
Brandon is getting more to his "old self" more each day.

It's Official-

He is sick. It is not just an "I don't feel good" or low grade fever kind of sick. He has strep. Poor kid has barely eaten anything. Seeing his hand shake while trying to eat a bit of oatmeal last night just broke my heart! And the fact that he didn't even keep down the water he wanted in the middle of the night was just the final straw to get him to the doctor.
I was able to get an appointment right away; and was late for because he was actually still in bed when I called. Dr. H swabbed his throat (which he did not like) and the test came back as a positive very quickly. It could not have been the five minutes that she it would take.
Brandon has actually been doing very well this afternoon/evening. He did actually eat something more than crackers! YAY!! And has been playing today! Not just a heap in the chair buried under a blanket. Now lets just hope that one round of antibiotics will do the trick! (he can be sorta stubborn sometimes, hope it doesn't include fighting infection also)

And on a happier note, Jess is doing just fine. We can all collectively cross our fingers to keep it that way!

Brandon is Sick

Well, that pretty much sums it up... The boy is not well. He woke up with a low grade fever Saturday morning, but seemed pretty much like himself after breakfast. We went ahead with our plans to go to my mom's house. I did not plan to spend the night, just make a day of it. Good thing too. We arrived at lunchtime. He did not eat. That is a tell-tale sign that something is wrong. His fever came back, but I did think to take ibuprofen with me. He took a nice long nap; again, something he never does and woke up in time to eat an oatmeal bar before we left to come home. And slept pretty much the whole way home and straight up to bed.
Brandon seems to be feeling a tiny bit better today. He did eat a few animal crackers for breakfast and a very small bowl of cereal for lunch. He even got down on the floor to "play." That didn't last too long, but at least he still moves around! On a good note, he does keep asking for something to drink so I know that he is not dehydrated. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day!

Overnight Guest

We had an overnight guest on Saturday. Baby Ray not only trick or treated with us on Friday, but came back to spend the night. Boy, oh boy- Jess and Brandon were super excited! Ray came over after dinner and had a little bit of "play" time. (I use that term loosely as he could hardly crawl anywhere because the big kids just wanted to love on him.) After a quick bath I was able to get some pretty cute pictures while Jess and Brandon helped daddy with strawberry milkshakes. The look on his face when the blender started cracked me up! But the sweetest was when Ray had fallen asleep after his night time bottle and Brandon wanted to kiss him goodnight. SO CUTE!! He wakes up such a happy boy. His momma was here much too early to pick him up Sunday morning, but I guess she missed him...
But just so ya know...he is a welcomed house guest anytime!

Trick or Treat

The kiddos had a blast going trick or treating! The hardest part was just to get them ready. They were so wired that they were pretty much going in circles. Adding to all the excitement is that Grandma and Grandpa come over to our house. They are nice enough to come over so that daddy and I both get to take the kiddos. Not to mention that they don't get too many trick or treators in their neighborhood. AND to add more for our already excited kiddos is that Baby Ray had his first Halloween and spent it with us. Once out the door, Jess was all business- "come on Brandon- this way!" Of course we always have to start at our neighbor right behind us. They are such a nice family. They have a special Halloween treat for our kiddos-one pound chocolate bar EACH! At the end of the evening Jess and Brandon "trick or treat" our own house.