Thanksgiving

This year, Kevin and I hosted a full fledged Thanksgiving dinner at our house on Thanksgiving Eve. It was my parents and grandparents and Kevin's family (plus Basti!).
We woke up early and started the preparation: Kevin's AMAZING fried Cajun turkey, deviled eggs, sweet potato casserole, green beans, home made bread, creamed corn, stuffing, sweet tea, and desserts made by Kevin's grandmother. It was delicious!! I'm amazed I have no pictures of the food! Oh well. We have our memories, right? Of course, the Jones gang continued to hang out past our Thanksgiving day festivities and the other pictures are of our other dessert "party" at our house. It has been wonderful having everyone over.
Oh and Harper and Ella have become good friends / accomplices. I will often stumble upon one of their "conversations." Although I like to pretend they are being mischievous, I think deep down they are both as sweet as can be. Unfortunately, due to memory card swapping, I don't have the majority of the pictures with me right now...those are sure to come soon!

This picture absolutely cracks me up. Its an "out take" from our great grandchildren photo shoot.

Christmas Time is Here...ready or not!

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We have officially decorated for Christmas. Ella was pretty into it, carrying the bells that go on the tree all around the house and being "gentle" with the ornaments. She gently taps them all to see what they will do. She has also already ripped down all the little stuffed snowmen I had tacked onto our front table. Oh well. They were pretty cute. Here she is (above) putting the famous final touch on the tree. I cannot believe this is already the second Christmas with her! She is going to LOVE it!!

Ella just had to get on the shelf with all the decorations at Wal-Mart. Thats her looking at the fish too...one of her favorite words right now.

Time for another...UPDATE

This picture, in honor of my egotistical idea that you CARE about my measly life UPDATES!

* The idea to return to med school is looking bleak...I think I have decided to go another route, which may include one of the following: getting a masters and phd in public health; getting a phd in microbiology/immunology; OR phd in nursing...we shall see. So you know, my interest is in infectious disease...thus my possible future education and work.

*We have effectively CLEARED out / organized our closet, bathroom, GARAGE, TV room closets, AND JUNK DRAWER!! Woo Hoo...I will admit cleaning / organizing is my drug and therapy right now. I can't get enough. I "nest" anytime I am NOT pregnant apparently.

*I have been reading some more interesting articles about h1n1 flu. Including that many of the deaths have NOT been related to bacterial infections coming on after the flu infection, but from the enormous damage the flu virus is doing all by itself...scary stuff.

*Ella has a cough and I HATE coughs. Besides the fact that there isn't much you can do to help a coughing baby, they just freak me out when it's my little booger coughing...yes, I already took her in to the office and everything looks just great, but still...I HATE COUGHS!

*I have noticed that the sandwich maker people at Subway a lot of times get attitudes with you when you pause between the ingredients you want on your sandwich. I think they want to impress us with their ability to remember them all. It is an art to space your list of words correctly there, isn't it?

*Kevin and I went jogging tonight in part because I have toyed around with the idea of running the Nashville 1/2 marathon. This is despite the fact that I hate running, don't know if I agree with the idea of banging my joints around that much, and despite the fact that I have no idea when I will train for this...oh AND that my hips have been "popping" in and out of socket (or...something like that) since I was a cheerleader in 6th grade and have been getting worse...I will be walking and then...bang...I can't walk for a minute or two...anybody know a good orthopedist? Anyway, working out again felt good.

*There are so many thoughts that go through my head every day and I think "I should write a post on this." Of Course, I never do. That has caused me to think about Twitter...but I don't know if all those thoughts were meant to go public. That has caused me to not think of Twitter. We shall see.

Anyway, that's the end of my random update.

And, as my friend Jaime said in one of her post's (which I believe she was quoting from another post...), no blog is complete without a picture!

Sugar, Spice, and everything...sticky

Playgrounds

This past Saturday, Ella and I went to the ribbon cutting for the new playground, built in part by People for Care and Learning, down on the green way. The Chik-fil-A cow was there and Ella was not thrilled at first, but soon warmed up to him, mooing at him and even petting his head. The following pictures were taken before she was friends with him.

Fletcher helping Ella up the stairs

Uncy Justin decided to take Ella down the slide....What he did not know was the slide is super fast and slippery, shooting him and Ella out on their bums.

Then, to celebrate the beautiful day, we continued to play on nana and papi's playground. She bravely learned to go down the slide all by herself. I showed her how to climb up the little ladder, and she did very well, with only a very little help from mama.

Then, she got brave and decided to go down the bigger slide all by herself. I decided to let her experiment and she did, with a little added flip at the bottom...nothing a lot of cheering didn't help.

 

She had to sit in the wagon like this:

The table is better known as the jungle gym.

Whew...I'm tired after all that playin!

I'm Back

Yes, people. After trying for long enough to use iWeb, which came with my new Mac, I am oh so happily back with blogger. iWeb is super frustrating, very limiting, and most importantly difficult to keep up with - I have heard from many of you that it is hard to remember to read it if you use your dashboard to keep up with people. PLUS, most of my posts were not showing up correctly. BOO on you apple! You did NOT get this one right.