Family

My family is THE BEST.  All but one of my siblings have already come to visit me since we've moved here, some twice. I"ll give my little sister a break since she's about to have a baby.  Shawn's parents and my parents have visited a few times as well and since we can't go anywhere for Christmas Shawn's ENTIRE family is coming to spend time with us. My friends are always telling me how lucky I am because we have family visit all the time and I have to agree.  Basically my family rocks.  My oldest sister and her beautiful girls and Brandon came to visit for Thanksgiving and here are the highlights.  We're not that creative and do the same things with all our visitors so most people who have visited will probably recognize these places.

Our favorite breakfast place, the Pancake Pantry.  Oh so good and even though Bethy and Brandon didn't get the sweet potato pancakes I was nice and let them share half of one.  I know I'm generous.  They did seem to enjoy the dishes they got though.

We also played at the park.

We also headed over to the Adventure Science Center.   The girls loved climbing all the way to the top of the jungle gym and riding down the colon slide!

We broke out the Christmas decorations and of course danced to Mariah Carey while doing it.  Loved it!

We watched Cars 2 about 10 times, ok maybe only 3 but it is now Devin's favorite so thanks for bringing it!  Oh and we played with cousins ALL day long.  My kids were in heaven and so was I because my kids were happy.

Proof that my awesome sister was here in front of our newly decorated tree.

And lastly we checked out the Christmas lights at the Opry Hotel.  The kids held hands almost the entire time, adorable!

Shawn occasionally graced us with his presence and Graham was happy to have his daddy around.  Shawn and I loved hanging out with Bethy and Brandon watching movies, talking, and laughing a lot.  We miss them and can't wait to see them again!

Birthday Boy

Its the birthday season around our house these days.  Devin is next up in our birthday rotation and I think he had a great day.  I'm pretty sure if you asked him what his favorite thing was about his birthday he'd say it was having his cousins to celebrate with.  The second best thing was his chocolate cake.  I think we've turned our children into chocoholics.  We love our sweet Devin and even though its cliche to say this I really can't believe he's already 4.  Time goes by way too fast.  We love you Devin, happy birthday!

Blowing out his candle.

Having a blast with his rocket launcher.  Thank you Grandma/pa Funk!

Having fun with his train set. Thanks mom and dad!

Here he is doing his happy birthday dance. What a handsome little boy!

Gobble, Gobble

Yummy.  I love Thanksgiving. I love making food all day and watching movies and then eating at least 2x more than I probably should.  This year was extra great because in addition to the amazing food the Peterson's came to visit and we are having a blast with them.  Caroline and Mabel are spending every waking second together and having slumber parties every night.  Caroline will be talking about this for months.  The only thing that could have made today better would be having Poodle here.  Oh and Shawn but I've known for a while that Shawn would be on call and we barely made a dent in the food so we have plenty to share with him tomorrow.

Caroline helping make the cranberry salad.

And of course Devin had to  have his turn.

The Funk and Peterson cousins together.  Graham's face is awesome.

And its not Thanksgiving in out house without a post dinner viewing of Elf.  Let the holiday season begin!

The pie lineup for this year.  Chocolate, frozen limeade, apple, banana cream (made by Bethy and it was SOOOO good) and pumpkin banana mousse tart.  YUM! Stretchy pants here I come!

The Big One

Happy birthday to my favorite person in the world.  Thank you for working so hard, making me laugh, keeping me sane, spoiling me, being a great dad, keeping me sane, being so smart, making me better person, keeping me sane, (you do that a lot) marrying me and most of all being yourself.  Don't forget 30 is the new 20.  I love you!

The birthday boy and his death by chocolate bday cake.

Chattanooga

Shawn and I are trying to see as much of Tennessee as we can while we're here.  We had numerous people tell us how great and fantastic the aquarium in Chattanooga is so this week we decided to take the 2 1/2 hr car ride down there and check it out.  To be honest we were a little underwhelmed, but that may be because we've been to the Dallas aquarium and well its just bigger and better.  We still had a great time we just didn't see what all the fuss was about.  We also made it to the children's museum down there and had an absolute BLAST.  I thought it was a ton of fun and more importantly so did the kids, they actually had no desire to go back to see the rest of the aquarium.  The kids were great on the drive and we loved every minute of spending time together.  Even though the aquarium wasn't the greatest we've seen it was one of the best days we've had as a family.  We're excited to try and do more things like this in the future.  We took tons of pictures but I can't get them to come up so you'll have to settle for some other cute ones instead.

My kids LOVE to snuggle in my bed.

Usually this little one is the first one in, he tries to climb in my bed everyday, even when I'm not in it.  I can't blame him its way better than sleeping on the floor!

And finally pictures from our actual trip!

On our way, we were all very excited.

They are standing in front of a turtle shell that is about 100 million years old.

Now we're onto the children's museum pictures.  Caroline is about to send me something through a tube like they have at the bank.

Shawn found cars to build and had just as much fun as the kids.

Here is Devin digging up some dinosaur bones.  I thought that was really cool.

My little Graham dressed up like a beekeeper.

Hiding out in a shark cage.

Caroline and me swimming with the crabs.  Throughout the day Caroline kept on touching the glass and saying, "I"m just making sure that the glass is still there."

Checking out the penguins. 

Vacation!

I really don't want this week to be over.  Shawn is on vacation this week and it has been bliss.  It is so nice to see him in the mornings and have him around to help out.  The kids didn't believe me at first when I told them that he didn't have to go in to work for more than a day.  Caroline kept saying, "So dad has tomorrow off but then he has to go back in the next day right?"  My poor children, they have no idea what its like to have him around.  And since Shawn can't sit still without falling asleep when he's home he has kept busy de-cluttering our house. I now have shelves up in my attic and about twice the amount of space in my closets now.  Today I even went and had lunch with Caroline at school. I've been waiting for a chance to do it and did not want to bring Graham a long to see how he would destroy the school.  We have lots of other fun things planned for the rest of the week so hopefully I'll be better at posting our outings. I'm just glad my sisters are coming for Thanksgiving or I might cry when Shawn goes back to work.  

Jury Duty

I got a piece of mail the other day that I never thought I would get,  a notice for jury duty.  Yuck.  Shawn got called to jury duty when we first moved here but seeing as he's above that stuff.  he didn't have to go.  Unfortunately I don't think stay at home mom qualify as too important not to report.  Part of me think's a half a day away from the kids so I can sit and read a book wouldn't be too bad.  But then I think about sitting and waiting for hours in an uncomfortable building and not being able to leave and being home with my kids sounds much better.  Maybe one of my kids will get sick, or me even now that would be nice!

I Fail

Today was not my day.  I think I officially failed as a mother/wife today.  It all started this morning when Shawn went to put on clean stubs and had none.  Then as we were running out the door to take Caroline to the bus Devin FLIPPED OUT because I told him he didn't need a jacket (I promise it was NOT cold outside) he then cried all the way up the block so I then had my wonderful neighbor take Caroline the rest of the way with her son.  I then had to drag Devin home because he was mad he didn't take Caroline to the bus, I'm just waiting for CPS to show up at my door because I'm sure my neighbors think I abuse my kids.  I also forgot to have Caroline do her homework over the weekend and put her nap towel in her bag this morning so she had nothing to sleep on at school. And the list goes on I missed picking Caroline up from the bus because it was about 10 minutes early luckily no one kidnapped her.  And the cherry on top, Caroline had a 102.5 fever when she got home.  She stayed home from church yesterday because she had a fever but didn't this morning but I probably should've made her stay home anyways.  Like I said its not my day.  So now I'm letting Caroline watch movies and eat ice cream because that's what good mom's do right?  Really I have no idea because I am obviously not one today.

Candy Man

I"m trying to be a better blogger.  I have a goal to make it to 100 posts this year so I thought I'd post about Graham again.  I could probably post every day about this kid he's hilarious.  Today after dinner I let my kids have a piece of their Halloween candy.  They all took a piece from their bag and the two older ones put their candy back on the counter.  I went into another room for a few minutes and when I came back to the kitchen this is what I saw.

He had opened 2 lollipops, two smarties, and tried to bite through a butterfinger wrapper.  He sure loves having his own stash of candy.  He got really mad when I put everything back in his bag and put it up where he couldn't reach it.  I know I'm so mean.

In other news I had a conference with Caroline's teacher today and big surprise she's eating up everything in about school.  I have to brag a little about her.  She is one of the best readers in her class and her teacher is putting in an accelerated reading program.  Really she just reads more at home and will do some one on one reading with her teacher.  I'm really glad she has a teacher that wants to push her to learn more.  We got the veteran teacher and I'm so glad.  This girl really has a thirst for knowledge, lets hope it sticks!