"Deck the Halls..."

This is another Rocket Scientist catch-up post

The day after Thanksgiving.

We can officially start decorating for Christmas.
Yeah. I'm excited too.
Or in the throes of a pancreas rattling cough.
That's ok, the kids are still happy to put up ornaments.
Or wear them.
Last year most of the ornaments ended up on the same two branches at the bottom of the tree.
They got spread out a little better this year.
Grandma came out to give us a hand.
I don't think I stopped coughing long enough to get off the couch.
Decorating is thirsty work.
Cute Girl figures out what stockings are for.
And they're both really happy about it.

Now we have somewhere to put all my presents.

Handsome Face

In the middle of November the young women had an activity to learn how to make pie crust. The Rocket Scientist was going to teach them to make the crust but there wasn't going to be enough time to bake the pie too so we baked a pumpkin pie the day before. Handsome Face was really excited about the pie. He helped mommy mix up the filling and stood guard over it while it baked.

This is a pretty standard pose around here. I don't think we've had an alien infestation yet but you can rest assured that if we do, Handsome Face will take care of it with his astro-blaster in short order.

Thanksgiving

This is the Rocket Scientist cleaning off the camera and catching up the blog while the wife rests.

We hung around at home and had a pretty low-key Thanksgiving. It was so low-key that one of the highlights was getting a crazy good deal on the turkey (29 cents a pound!) My brother-in-law brought his girlfriend down from Utah for the occasion. We made a bunch of gyoza on the Wednesday night before that was super good. We fried up one batch and still wanted more so we fried a second batch out of the extras we'd stuck in the freezer. That still leaves us with enough to have for dinner tonight.

I have an unfortunate tradition of injuring myself during Thanksgiving; it is usually incurred playing football but last year it was a freak accident where a flake of metal from my belt buckle got shoved through my thumbnail. This generally leaves me incapacitated and incapable of providing any real assistance cooking, cleaning, or taking care of children. Pretty much the only thing I can do in my disabled state is play video games and watch football; it's an excruciating ordeal but I usually recover despite the dirty looks the wife gives me. This year, as the wife was 8 3/4 months pregnant, and we were all alone hosting and cooking the dinner, I was forbidden to hurt myself and so declined the traditional turkey bowl. I stayed healthy. but failed in the job of taking pictures because this is all we got of the meal.

I did still manage to get some pictures of the pies.

Including my apple pie in which, as per tradition, I carved an un-boring steam vent.

I didn't bother taking a picture of the wife doing dishes as that would just be boring. Much more interesting is what the rest of us were doing:

Talking on the phone...

...and watching funny youTube videos.

She's Here!

And getting more love than she can handle.

Pizza Pie

We made pizza for dinner last night and I recently discovered that the kids will actually eat their pizza if they get to make their own. Cute Girl's always liked pizza but Handsome Face doesn't eat dinner at all so it's nice to get him to eat something. Even if they do refuse the vegetables.

Lots of Random Stuff

I finally got my new camera after losing the old one. Hence the pictures on my blog. And we got a new surplus laptop from work so the Rocket Scientist and I have been busy updating software and such so we can actually use the new camera. We went outside and took some pictures of the kids just for fun.

Early Saturday Morning Love'ns

While Grandma was here, Handsome Face wasn't feeling too well. He fell asleep one day on the couch and we noticed that some clothing wasn't quite right. He looks for the tag to put in the back when getting dressed and this pair just happened to have a tag in the back and the front.

Cute Girl got watermelon seeds in Primary last spring. Here she displays the fruit of her labors (or her parents').

We made fun Autumn trees a few weeks ago. The colored leaves on my fridge are the only ones in the neighborhood since it's still 86 degrees outside. The trees don't lose their leaves here until Christmas.

Our Visitor

Our Grandma Crapo came to visit last week. We had so much fun! The kids loved having someone around to give them extra attention. She even took them on bike rides to the playground several times which is something I'm just too tired and busy to do very often.

We didn't do much because we are really boring hosts. It didn't help that the Rocket Scientist and Cute Girl had work and school every day. But there were a few fun things in there.

On Tuesday we went shopping and out to lunch. Cute Girl was not happy to miss the lunch. But on Wednesday we picked her up from school and headed to an old Catholic mission. It was really cool (and free!). The art inside the chapel was very interesting. I think the kids even enjoyed it - at least they behaved very well. And Grandma bought them an Indian fry bread for a treat. What kid wouldn't like that?

That evening we headed to the ward trunk-or-treat. Grandma was amazed at how many kids were there. It was REALLY big.

On Thursday we just hung out at home but we did make Cafe Rio salads for dinner. I got the recipes from Kristin's blog. All of the salad lovers affirmed that it was well worth all the work. We still have creamy tomatillo dressing in the fridge. The Rocket Scientist and I have been eating it with chips every night. Yum!

And then Friday was the most boring day of all. Handsome Face had been sick all week (high temps off and on and an achey tummy) and I caught it Thursday night. Lucky for me my fever only lasted over night instead of all week. But it meant that Friday morning, both Handsome Face and I fell asleep on the couches and took LONG naps while Grandma and Dad read/played on the computer. How exciting are we?!

Friday we had a babysitter and all the grown-ups went to a dinner theater. It's so fun! We had good pizza and watched a great Halloween show. I love taking people there. So, hint hint, come visit me!

Sadly, Grandma had to go on Saturday morning. I guess Grandpa needed someone to come play with him too but Handsome Face didn't buy it. He cried after Grandma left.