This one's for you Jen!

I woke up at 9:30, after Madison had
her first 9 1/2 hour no waking up,
no crying, night!! It was heavenly.

You'll notice the blog isn't private anymore. When we decided to go private, we didn't realize how much work it was. Instead, we're going to moderate the comments, that sounds like a lot less work!!

A very unflattering picture of myself if I do say so. However, my friend Jen wanted to know if I could at least try to get fat this season. So, I'm giving it my best shot! (p.s. Stephanie wanted to remind Jen how hot Ricky Martin is.) Here is a picture of my plate of food before and after. I think I did very well. Not to mention I ate most of the skin off the turkey, had Steph not come over, I would have eaten it all by myself! I also had a big bowl of icecream afterwards!

Before we get into the Thanksgiving dinner bit, here is what Alexis took to preschool for her Thanksgiving party. I had completely forgotten about it until about 11 the night before, oops!! So, here's what we came up with: graham crackers with frosting in the middle and colored frosting on the top so they somewhat, with a good imagination, resemble turkeys! I must admit, the idea of graham crackers and frosting came from my sister-in-law Angie. We just added the turkey looking part.

Drew LOVED the frosting, I was unaware of how much he loved the frosting though. After we had finished, he snuck back in and was licking the bowl clean! Not with his fingers, but with his entire face in the bowl!

Madison was so helpful during the turkey making that as soon as we were done, she was too tired to stay awake! Too bad it was so fun, it would've been nice to have two hands to decorate with!

Now for the Thanksgiving Dinner: For Thanksgiving this year, we decided we were going to have our very own Thanksgiving. We've never done this, and every year because of late dinner starts or what have you, we always ended up separated so that we could visit both families. This has always bugged me beyond belief, so this year we decided to not deal with it. Can I tell you how wonderful it was?

My dad was kind enough to deep fry our turkey for us, it tasted heavenly! I cooked everything else, there wasn't any stress and we just enjoyed being together. Right before we ate, Stephanie and fiancee Ikani came over, and had dinner with us. It was such a nice relaxing day! John hung the lights on the house after dinner and then we drove the kids around to see the few houses that had theirs turned on. We also stopped and saw Grandpa Hakes and Max, they are always lots of fun!

As a side note, it's always amazing to me to see what the kids come up with. The other day they were using these straws as whistles. When they got bored with that, Alexis decided that the door needed a longer door stop.

For John's Birthday present, I bought him two pairs of Jazz tickets. The first of the two was Wednesday night against Memphis. Our seats were pretty high up, but we had a great time!! Everybody there loved seeing Madison. She was the center of attention. It was hilarious because she was being fussy, so we gave her a little taste of popcorn and she LOVED it! She kept whining until we gave her more, then she would hurry and down it and expect more.