Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

This year we held the Thanksgiving feast at our house. We served potatoes and gravy, corn, stuffing, cranberries, poppyseed bread, and a 22 pound turkey. A little much for eight people. The meal was really good though. The first leftover turkey sandwich that night was great. The ninth sandwich I had for dinner tonight didn't really hit the spot. I think the rest of the leftovers may go in the trash tomorrow.
The best part of the day was the Packer v. Lions game. There is nothing better than overfilling your gut and watching football. Pecan pie and the 4th quarter go together like Black Friday Christmas shopping and A-holes in the parking lot (Aah, 'tis the season).
Anyway, just wanted to share some pictures of the feast and a few pictures of our Light Display. I'm kind of proud, it only took me seven hours to put up 1025 lights.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Baby Emily

We went to the hospital over the weekend to meet Russ and Katie's new daughter Emily. Brayden was really excited to see her, but was a little more happy to see Justin. He was asking about him all week and they played fairly quietly the whole time we visited.

Summertime

Dashing through the . . .

The leaves are falling, the skies are gray, and we put an extra quilt on the bed. The flakes are in the air and the plastic up on the windows. Winter is here. Sigh.
To take my mind off of it, I thought it would be nice to recap our summer with a new slide show. We were able to take a few trips in the last couple months. We went to Lake Mil lacs with Susie's parents for a week, and spent a weekend in Chicago with my parent's at the racetrack there. We were able to go to Sioux City in June to see everyone and we rode down to Kansas mid summer to see Brandon, Beth and Jameson. We also got to spend a lot of time visiting and going to Twins games with our friends here in the Cities.
Brayden really grew over the summer too. Looking back at the photos, he was a toddler in the spring and a kid in the fall. What a difference a summer can make.

At the play gym

Eagan Play Gym

Since I've started staying home with Brayden, we've tried many things to pass the time and give him a chance to interact with other kids his age. We initially went to a weekly play group with the At Home Dads in Apple Valley, but, unfortunately, they quit meeting regularly. We started then to drive to St. Paul to meet with another group, but that was quite a distance away. At the end of last winter, we found a preschool gym at the Eagan community center that holds open play twice a week. Brayden loves it, and it's only 10 minutes away. We just started going back since it's been to cold to play outside and he really looks forward to going now. They have giant tubes and slides in an area they call The Blast and a half gym with balls, mats, and a giant inflatable jumper (which was new today) that he couldn't get enough of. I started letting him climb up into the tubes by himself (mainly because it wears me out chasing him through that thing) and he does great on his own. He is also starting to play and run with other kids his age in the gym. It's really refreshing not to have to entertain him entirely on my own when we're out. The only problem is, when he takes off across the gym, and I'm standing there watching from afar, I'll get some strange looks from moms as they move in a little closer to their own kids.

October Fun

And so it begins. . .

It's been a very busy autumn. We just got through the birthday season and are gearing up for the holidays. Our biggest news of the fall is that Susie is pregnant. Brayden is very excited, he kisses mommy's tummy and is always asking about the baby. She's now about 8 weeks along and we aren't quite as petrified about this one as we were with Brayden. We are very happy about the timing, when the baby comes hopefully Brayden will be old enough to help out and (fingers crossed) out of diapers. Luckily we got him into his own room over the summer and freed up the nursery so we won't have to work on that in the spring.
This is our first posting and hopefully we'll get a lot of pictures on here for friends and family to see since I'm so bad at e-mailing anything. Hopefully we get a lot of visitors and everyone enjoys their time here.