Date Night, Thanksgiving and Decorating for the Holidays

When Matt and I went to the military ball earlier in the month we noticed that the local community theater was putting on "And Then There Was None". Since both Matt and I are big Agatha Christie fans we thought that would be a pretty fun night out. We conned our friend Rachel Carmody into watching our charming little gremlins and headed out for a Friday night performance.

As we looked at the program I looked down at the pictures of the cast and noticed that one of the actors was someone Matt knew from work (a flamboyant narcissistic co-worker). In fact it was the same flamboyant coworker who at last years military ball got up and sang Stand by Me off key. Matt visibly shuddered every time he spoke on stage and cheered very loudly when he was the first murder victim. It's the first time we've gone out to a theater performance since we've left Utah. We had a great time despite Matt's actor aversion.

Our Thanksgiving this year was lovely. We got so busy getting everything ready and enjoying ourselves that we didn't really get any pictures. These are the candy turkeys we made earlier in the month which the boys thought were pretty great. This year we had our friends, the Carmodys, as well as Dingwall over. Rachel's husband is in Korea for the year and she has four kids that our kids enjoy playing with. Ian announced after dinner, playing, and a walk that this was THE BEST THANKSGIVING EVER!!! Ian got to sit next to Bryant and the two of them had a great time. Miles and his contemporary Keagan did not even bother coming to the table. They just played. Thanksgiving is a favorite of Liam's. After all, what could be better than all you can eat turkey? We still had all of our pinecone turkeys this year and again sprinkled the table with candy corn for them to eat. The little kids all loved that.

Matt worked Thanksgiving night and so the next day the boys and I waited until noon (attempting to avoid some black Friday crazy) to head out and do a little shopping. We got some Christmas stuff from Hobby Lobby and then headed over to the grocery store to get chicken nuggets for lunch. Some kids dip chicken nuggets in ketchup, or cookies in milk, but this day we discovered that Miles dips chicken nuggets in sprite.

Our Hobby Lobby shopping included a small personal size tree for each little boy including their choice of decorations. Don't be fooled by the perspective sizes of the trees, they are all exactly the same size.

Miles decorated his with little peppermint style ornaments.

Liam decorated his with baseball ornaments as well as whatever other random items he could find.

Ian decked his out in little snowmen. He was the only one who veered from the traditional green tree and picked out a violent red one. As Ian will tell anyone who cares to know, his favorite color is red. This bedroom mini tree tradition that we started this year was a sensational hit. Each boy decorated their own tree all by themselves which makes it cuter than ever. We got the rest of our Christmas decorations up as well. That evening we kicked off our Christmas season by watching the boys favorite Christmas show, Home Alone. With such a good start how can we do anything other than make our last Texas Christmas our very best?