[youtube]1MEsh9Gv-o0[/youtube]

It’s been another busy, but great week. My sister and her husband came in for the holiday and brought along two of my nephews. They stayed the week with us and then we hosted Thanksgiving at our house. One night my parents even kept all the boys so we “young people” could have an adult night which we used to have a nice meal out and play trivial pursuit. Did I mention yet that I won? Rachel was ahead most of the game. She expected to do the worst, so it was nice for her to do well. It was the two trivia kings Patrick and Frank who I was happy to beat! Sorry guys—but how do you know all that stuff anyway? We also had a never ending game of Monopoly Vegas edition a few nights later that my oldest nephew got in on despite it dragging out until 1 in the morning. A pretty enjoyable week.

Friday after our guests were gone the three of us decide to see just how crazy Black Friday really is. And it turns out it isn’t that bad. Or at least from 10-12 on a cold and drizzly day it isn’t that bad. We stocked up on some plate in our china pattern, some sheets and badly needed new jeans for me. Saturday we did some more running around then came home to a cozy fire.

Today I got the idea that after years of not having a real christmas tree, it was time to get one. I have always preferred the real ones, but the last time I had one was in ’99 or 2000 when I lived with Kelli and Eve. I hate the way artificial trees scrape my arms when I try to put them up. The year I was pregnant with Brenden and we’d just moved home, I put up two artificial trees by myself and swore I’d never put one up again. Somehow, I forgot that last year though.

Anyway, we went out to buy a tree this afternoon when it was again cold and drizzly. We had fun picking out our tree and getting it home. I just hope being out in the cold so much has not hurt Brenden who has been sick for over a week now. We’ve got him on an antibiotic that gave him a great initial improvement, but now I haven’t seen anything for a few days. We’ve been keeping him bundled up. We even bought him a new winter hat this weekend—man that was hard. Even though I knew his head was in the 90+% for size, I never thought it looked disproportionate to his body. But we actually had to go to regular kids sizes to find a hat to fit his head because those wimpy 2t’s just weren’t cutting it.

He’s gotten both his upper and bottom molars in now. I thought those uppers were going to kill us all. He kept waking up in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep. Actually, the night my parents took all the boys was wonderful because the two nights before I’d only had 10 hours sleep between them. And my parents were up with him from 2:30-6:30 when they had him. That seems to have passed for now, but I’m probably jinxing myself.

Here are a few pictures.

Modeling his new puppy pjs.

Being cold while hunting for our christmas tree where he learned the word short.

While waiting for Patrick to pay for the tree I took the above photo of Brenden. A man who just happened to be a photographer saw me and offered to get both our pictures. It was so nice of him, I didn’t feel like I could tell him “No, I’m sorry, I look like a bum, just get the kid.”

It was 13 years ago on this day that Patrick and I went on our first date. We went to see The Road to Wellville which was a horrible movie. Patrick let me pick what I wanted to see and I picked that movie because it had John Cusack and Matthew Brodderick in it. Afterwards we went and had ice cream at Braums. Ahhhh.

It has been a crazy busy couple of weeks around here and we are looking forward to settling down a little bit this weekend.
Two weeks ago we went to my sisters wedding in CA. It was absolutely beautiful. Brenden loved being around all his cousins and aunts and uncles, etc , being out in the nice sunshine and going up and down the stairs in the big rent house we stayed at.
I celebrated another birthday just days after being asked if I had given birth to Brenden between first and second period, because I looked like I was still in high school. It was quiet but nice. Had dinner made for me out at Patrick’s Dad’s and happy birthday sung on my voicemail by my parents and sister. Then later in the week Kelli came and spent the night with me and we hung out.
Then Brenden turned 18 months old on the 30 and went to the doctor and celebrated Halloween on the 31st. His doctor’s appointment went well. The doctor didn’t hear the heart mumur this time. Brenden got two shots, one of them the flu shot, and was not very happy about it, but quickly got over it. Much more quickly than some of the older kids in line behind us did!
The stats:

24 lbs 8.7 oz      30%
34 1/4 in            92%
Head 19 1/2 in   90%

He’s tall and skinny with a big head! No idea where he is getting the tall and skinny part but hope he keeps it up! But judging by the fact that his favorite foods seem to be pizza and french fries, I just don’t know.

Halloween was fun for us, but it took Brenden a long time to get into it. As you saw from the pictures in the previous post, we dressed him as  dragon because favorite book is That’s Not my Dragon. We had planned to go to a few houses on our block, hand out a little candy at our house and then head over to Jim and Mary’s because they had asked to see Brenden dressed up. Luckily we didn’t kid ourselves about Brenden marching all over the neighboorhood, because he only went to 4 houses and then he was done. We had thought of going to the downtown area where they have trick or treating on the square, or even the Allen outlet mall but those events ended before Patrick could get home from work and he really wanted to be a part of the first trick or treating. So after that pitful attempt at trick or treating in our neighborhood we returned home to hand out a little candy. Brenden did like seeing the kids come to the door. Then we headed over to the grandparents who had a nice big bowl of candy waiting. It took Jim putting a few pieces of candy into Brenden’s bag for him to catch on, but finally he got it. Got it so well he emptied most of the contents of the bowl into the bag one piece at a time.

I have lots to write about, but it will have to wait until after school tomorrow…which really means after Brenden goes to bed Friday. For now, Pete’s dragon, or puff the magic dragon or as since Patrick and I can’t seem to get the theme song out of our head, dragon tails.