Thanksgiving and Transitions

This month has just flown by! For Thanksgiving, we went out to Rob's parents' house and had the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. My mom also came, along with Rob's brother Rick who flew in from Alberqueque and Rob's grandmother from Riverton, WY was also there. Nothing too eventful, which is good because on most holidays, we rush around to two houses and have two large dinners, so it was nice being in one place all day.

This week also marks the end of the Kenzie era as this was my last week of watching her. Her mom is having a baby at the end of December and is now done with her job also. It's both sad and happy as I know Ashleigh will miss her good friend coming over three days a week. It will be good to be able to give more time and attention to Ethan now that he's almost mobile and will be starting solid foods next month. It was a good 13 months with Kenzie, but I'm definitely looking forward to the break and hopefully, won't get too bored. I seriously doubt I will be as the kids keep me busy. The kids and I went to Open Gym on Kenzie's last day, so I posted some pictures from there and my first ever blog video is at the bottom (no sound as it is from our digital camera and our video camera is not digital).

Rob worked every Saturday of November, on top of his 5 days/week, so December is looking better in even more ways. He still works the 1st Saturday of December, but is then back to normal days and no weekends in December. We're also planning a fun weekend trip to Crested Butte in December to teach Ashleigh how to ski and get some skiing in ourselves with my sister and her husband, so we're definitely looking forward to the weekend away! Pictures to follow in a few weeks...

Ashleigh and Kenzie having a snowball fight

Ethan grabs his toes now!

Ashleigh helping Kenzie on the balance beam with Kellyn behind them

Kenzie and Ashleigh playing on the bar

Kids' Halloween Costumes

Ethan's First Halloween at 4 mo

Kenzie (2 yrs) as Elmo and Ashleigh (3 yrs) as Cinderella

Janice, Ethan, and Ashleigh at the Harvest Festival

Ashleigh playing a duck game

Getting ready to trick-or-treat at the library

We celebrated Halloween this year at Pinecrest's Harvest Festival. I love that the kids have a safe and unscary place where they can go burn off some energy in the bouncy castles, playing games, and still come home with a bag of candy. They did a great job and had a walk-through-the-Bible theme to the games. Ashleigh went as Cinderella and my mother-in-law sewed her costume. For Ethan's first Halloween, he was a kangaroo. Although we only made it to the last half-hour of the festival as our new truck tires took longer than we expected, it was still fun and she got plenty of candy! We also did some trick-or-treating at library story time and the Denver aquarium last Saturday.

We also found a newer used car this week to replace the Daewoo we sold last week, a Kia Spectra. We got a great deal on it and it only has 21k miles, so it'll be a long time before that car is miled-out and we need to replace it with something else. With Rob's commute, he puts 28k miles/year on a car, so it doesn't make any sense to buy new. Hopefully, the Kia will be better than the Daewoo and it'll be easier to find parts as they are more common. One plus is that the A/C works on the Kia and just went out a few months ago on the Daewoo.

Rob's grandma and grandpa were in town last weekend, so we took a four-generation photo with Ethan - very special! They went with us to the aquarium to help celebrate Ashleigh's birthday with us too.

Four Generations!
Terry, Rob, Grandpa Don, and Ethan (4 mo)

Happy kid! I love this age with his shrieks and laughs