On Friday, mama recovered from her self diagnosed "Grease Belly" to pull herself out of bed and make the trip to Uncle Kevin's and Aunt Elizabeth's for Seibert Thanksgiving.
We had a great time that included Uncle Kevin and his eagle eyes spotting a house fire and calling in the fire department (with a very unhelpful 911 operator), playing in the basement, and a night parade.
The Archbold Festival of Lights kicks off it's season with an awesome 45+ minutes night parade. Mama was skeptical about it, but now she never wants to go to a day parade again. Because, if you're going to have a parade in the dark, you really have to mean it. And all of the entries this year really meant it. We stole a couple pictures from the Seiberts' blog, but none of them do justice to what a fire truck decked out in thousands of lights really looks like.
Our favorite floats included the 15 foot tall cow, the helicopter, the working water fountain, the port-a-potty on wheels, the toilet on wheels, and the working steam engine being pulled by a semi (you could hear that one coming from miles away.) But the best was the dragon that actually breathed fire!
Head over to the Seibert blog to see the videos of the train and the dragon. It's worth it!
Besides Thanksgiving, we celebrated three birthdays! Natalie is 4, I am 3 and Oliver is 2! We celebrated with mini pigs in a blanket and cupcakes all hand rolled and hand decorated by Evie, Natalie and Madelyn.
We were all excited to blow out our candles and get down to eating our cupcakes.
Evie was a little sad she didn't have a candle to blow out.
But she cheered up once she got her own chocolate cupcake.
Natalie had her own special birthday crown that she wore all day (the party landed on her actual birthday).
Stinkers had a cupcake too, even though she was feeling sick (which happens every time we come home to see her. We think she's faking it so we don't kiss her too much.).
Sorry to everyone else, but mama has declared Oliver her favorite for the time being. She says she's like me minus the knees, elbows, screaming, and hyperness. He even let her cuddle him for almost 10 seconds straight. Plus she heard him say "Aunt Becky" and that's about all it takes (get working Tessa).
Later we had a mass present opening.
Natalie got a pony!
I got this awesome hot wheels playset from the Tallers. You push your car up the roller coaster and it goes down a huge hill, around a loop and through a shark's mouth! Sometimes it makes it, sometimes it doesn't. Oh and somewhere in there, a pizza flies out. I could hardly wait to get home to open it and I spent all day playing with it. And mama likes it too because I sit (sort of) quietly at the table and I won't let her put batteries in it. I told her the shark would scare me. She says that it looks like that shark has a lot of sass anyway.
Oh, and June and Tessa were there too, but they mostly sat onlaps and tried to stay away from the craziness, so mama tended not to notice them. Sorry girls. To be honest, mama didn't notice many of the kids because they were awlays down in the big basement. Mama instead got to spend time out shopping and unstairs enjoying herself. She did feel kind of bad that she didn't spend much time with the kids, but it felt almost like a real vacation!
On Saturday night, we went to a wedding where mama saw lots of people she knew in high school. (Did you get any good pictures, Miss Bridget?) Then we left stright from the wedding and drove back to Nama and PawPaw's house. We didn't get there until very late and got right back in the car four hours later. We wanted to leave early because route 77 is the main road through the mountains and the weather and traffic were supposed to be bad. We made it almost half way through Virginia before the traffic stopped and then it took up 90 minutes to drive 10 miles. Luckily we out of the mountains (and fog) by then and were able to get home on back roads.
Now we're just trying to recover and get the house put back together before our next guests arrive tomorrow!
Well, she's a sucker, because tonight things quickly escalated when she started on Henry's cake.
She got this far, but now it's 11:30 and she decided this is enough.
