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.