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.”