Catch up

So here I am and still no camera. I can not find it anywhere. I had Matt bring his camera home from work so that we could use it to take pictures of Katheryn as she participated in the two local parades here with the dance studio she attends. The parades were on November 22nd. The Greencastle parade was held at 9am and then the Waynesboro parade was held at 2pm. It was a very long and very cold day. The weather temp in the van flashed at 28 degrees that morning. Luckily Brian had spent the night before with my parents so we only had to worry about keeping Ethan frostbite free. We bundled him up with layer upon layer and finally draped Katheryn's coat over top of him while he sat in his stroller waiting for the parade to pass by. It seemed like forever but finally we saw the dance group make the turn by the tree. Yay! We kept pace with them to the stopping point so we could get Katheryn and go. I know she had to be cold..she had on long johns and just a sweatshirt and dance pants. She did have gloves and an earwarmer but the wind was just awful. She was thankful to be in the warmth of her coat. We then left from there and picked up Brian. We grabbed a few warm things from WalMart before dropping Katheryn off for the second parade. This time she kept her coat. The temp in the van said it was warmer...32 degrees...however the wind was unwilling to cease. It felt worse than the morning. We drove across town to the end point to park and found a place on the side of Main Street to plant ourselves. I had stuffed "HotHands" into Ethan's pants to attempt keeping him warm but the moment he stood up, out they came from the bottom of his pants. lol. The Waynesboro Parade seemed to be a lot better than the Greencastle one. There was more to enjoy. After about an hour, it was really starting to feel cold. Finally, the dance group peaked the hilltop. Again, we rushed to the end point to meet with Katheryn. We didn't stay for the parade, it was way too cold. So we then went to Franks Pizza and ate ourselves warm. It was nice to be warm that day. lol. And later that week we found out that the parade had been judged and the dance group received 1st Place. Katheryn was excited about her ribbon she received at dance class later that week.

Coming down the hill

A&B Dance Dimensions

Katheryn dancing in the parade

A very cold Ethan

The following week was Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun and for once it was stress free. My brother came home with his girlfriend and we celebrated her birthday the night before at a local bar/restaraunt. My friend Wendi joined us and her kids watched my kids while we were out. We played some pool and from there went to a local bar in Waynesboro...lol...Pappy's Pub. Not a really nice place, definately has all your "locals" and let me tell you, you were taken back to the 70's in this place. Funny thing is though, since we have been here, I really haven't run into too many of my friends from when we lived here before and all of a sudden at Pappy's, I run into a handful. Matt decides he's going to get Wendi and I drinks and heads to the bar. He comes back with a minature drink that we just kind of laughed at and he also came back with tequila shots. Wendi downed hers and I followed afterwards. We went to sit and all of a sudden Wendi is having a tough time staying awake. lol. It was pretty funny. Anyways, we got back home and the next morning I started cooking. We had so much food. I always make butternut squash soup for Thanksgiving and it's a long process. I really enjoy the soup and I just found out this year that Matt really doesn't care for it. I don't know if anyone else really enjoyed the soup as much as I did but oh well, more for me! I just know now to make less of it. Dinner was wonderful, we had the usual turkey and ham. I tried out a new dressing recipe that was absolutely delicious. It was called cornbread pomegranite dressing. I got it off of Martha Stewart's website. Delicious!!! I can't wait to make it again. With Thanksgiving out of the way, it was time to set up for Christmas. We put up the tree and brought up tubs of decorations from the basement. They seemed to have sat for about a week before we actually did too much decorating. Matt put the lights up on the porch roof and maybe this week he will finish the rest of the house in lights. I put up some garland around our porch and bought wreaths for all our front windows...10 to be exact! I tied a red bow to the bottom and we got those up...it looks really cute. I then decorated the door to look like a present and you can see our red door when you drive over the hill by the school. It sticks out and looks really cute. We bought little candle lights for all the windows and timers too so when dusk hits, all the lights automatically go on.

Katheryn sorting the ornaments

Brian hanging an ornament

Katheryn hanging an ornament

The trio

Matt was back to work the Monday after Thanksgiving and the kids had off from school. To keep my sanity, I decided to take them out for some Christmas shopping. Katheryn had her money and Brian had his wallet. He was so proud of his wallet. We couldn't let it out of his sight, not for a minute! He was determined to buy 5 trains with his dollar bill. As we were going to the shopping center traffic started to become heavy. Great, the interstate was closed at this particular exit. Thankfully though we were able to immediately get off at the next exit and we went to the mall instead. Brian loved the train table display they had set up and it was hard to pull him away from it. Matt and I had talked earlier about letting the kids each pick out an ornament from Hallmark and starting this tradition so that when they are ready to venture out of the house and spread their wings, they would then have a decent starter set of ornaments. My friend in NC does the same with her kids where they can each pick out an ornament each year. Well, we get to Hallmark and Brian starts pouting and screaming that he doesn't want to go to Walmart. lol. I don't care for Walmart much either but it was funny to hear him say that. It took some tugging and I told him that I was sure they had trains in the store trying to just get him to come along. We go to the ornaments and I couldn't believe the ornaments start at $15. Yikes. I would have been okay with just one but I had to buy three! One for each kid. They looked and looked and finally we had ornaments. Ethan picked out the Little Einsteins rocket ship (which plays their theme song), Brian picked out The Polar Express and Katheryn chose a set of three which features the old Minnie, Mickey and Pluto. We left out of there and toured the mall windows and left and headed to Target and Michaels. We were headed back out to get to the shopping center that I had originally wanted to get to and traffic was still heavy and the interstate was still closed. I decided to just head home. We had done a lot for one day and I was happy that there weren't any hard to deal with tantrums. Oh, I will post pictures on here soon. Matt did bring his camera home and somehow the USB cable for his camera is missing. It was here, I know it was. I think Ethan must have found it and hid it somewhere. It's been missing now for about 2 weeks. ugh. lol.