Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving this year was great! I'll be honest and admit that Thanksgiving is typically my least favorite holiday of the year. Of course I enjoy a good meal as much as the next guy, but I've never been much of a fan. This year was my mom's year to have us over. Luckily, my brother and sister in law (York and Jenny) are on the same rotation, so we spent the day with them, too! My mom made a fantastic dinner! She always outdoes herself. She also had a cute little craft table set up for the kiddos to make felt pilgrim and indian puppets. The kids went crazy! The highlight (really the low point) of the day had to be London's magical meltdown that started when she decided that she didn't want her drink in a sippy cup because "SHE'S NOT a BABY!" I decided that rather than have her freaking out throughout the meal, I'd remove her from the situation. I put her in a spare room with the instructions to be quiet and not to leave the bed. (I've said it before, but as defiant as that kid is, I have no idea why she always obeys the "stay in your bed" rule.) About 20 minutes later, Matt and I checked in on her and she was dead asleep. Classic London. At least she woke up happy, 2 hours later, and was ready to eat!

My favorite day of the year is Black Friday. I'm one of the crazies up at the crack of dawn ready to sacrifice my body for whatever toy or electronic item I've been assigned that year. I really do love the thrill of getting a good deal! We had pretty good luck this year, minus the fit I threw at the Walmart cashier. Overall, we had a great holiday!

Cammers and Londy making puppets.
Londy finally crashing!
Matt (well his arm) me, and York looking over the Black Friday ads

Grandma Jilly and Beck playing outside!

We're back!

We're finally home! Matt and I went on a fabulous cruise this past week, and we're finally settling down and adjusting to reality again!

We went on a Caribbean cruise with Holland America. Just for future reference, the average age on these ships is about 100, so we were like toddlers...There were seriously like 10 couples under the age of 40 on this ship. We were lucky enough to make some friends around our age, and it made the week so much fun!

Dinner on our first night

Us on the top of the ship on the windiest night ever!

Our first port was Key West. We'd never been, and so we rented bikes and just rode all over the island, seeing everything! What a beautiful island! I was just glad to be in the warm sunshine!

Our second port was our favorite; Belize. We'd been there before, almost 5 years ago, and were way excited to go back! We booked an excursion through a local company, and as fate has it, the only other couple to book the same one was around our age! We ended up becoming great friends with them, and hung out with them a lot during our week. The excursion was doing a series of zip-lines through the jungle, repelling, and then underground cave tubing. It was by far our favorite excursion! The saddest part was that we took a disposable underwater camera, because I was afraid to take the nice one on a zip line, and when I went to develop the roll yesterday, only 2 pictures of the entire roll turned out! So basically, you'll need to picture us flying through the rainforest...I'm so bummed! We seriously took about a million great pictures with that camera!

Our third port was Guatemala. This port was the reason we chose the cruise. We had planned on taking an excursion up to Tikal (the biggest of the Mayan ruins) for the day. I've been before, but Matt didn't get a chance after the mission, so we were excited to go together. Then we found out that it would cost an extra $1000 for the tour, and Tikal was out! We figure that for that price we could take the fam down and spend a couple of days there, and really see the sights! We ended up hiring a local to take us up to some amazing waterfalls. So, so beautiful! I have one other disposable camera that we used that day, so hopefully I can post pictures of this place! There was a lot of great shopping, so we bought most of our souvineers here.

The last port was Costa Maya, Mexico. We met up with our friends and spend the day snorkeling, shopping, and laying on the beach! It was a perfect beach day! Did I mention that our sunscreen exploded on the plane ride??? Super fun. Basically we were pretty crispy after the beach day!

We had 2 sea days, and made good use of them by playing trivia, reading, swimming, eating lots of yummy food, playing cards and Yahtzee, and doing anything that looked "active" on the daily activity list. We had the funnest time!

Pedicures!

Everyday, London and I have "special Mommy/Londy playtime." (That's what Londy calls it.) The day before we left on our cruise, we did pedicures. So much fun! She could have soaked her little feet for hours! I love that that day and several days after, she kept taking off her shoes and socks, telling anyone who would listen to look at her "hedicure." She is too cute!

A very late Halloween post!

Yeah, I realize that I'm almost a month late in posting Halloween pictures! It's been a very busy couple of weeks!

London had a darling Halloween party at preschool 2 days before Halloween. They had a little parade and then a party. The kids were all so cute!

Then, true to tradition, my mom held her annual Halloween party! It's always so much fun to be there with lots of friends and family and to eat all of Jilly's fabulous food!

(London is usually up for taking a picture; Beck however isn't a big fan...)