Thanksgiving 2010

Every other year, Troy's side of the family gets together for Thanksgiving. Each year we've been adding spouses and babies. It was a full house, but tons of fun. This weekend of fun is possible thanks to Troy's generous grandfather.

Troy's immediate family, spouses, kids and grandpa.

Grandpa with his great-grandkids.


How many father-in-laws do you know that will bust out Spice Girls on RockBand. "If you wanna be my lover, gotta get with my friends..."


Erica slept next to her cousins in the basement.

An awesome advent calendar from Aunt Alice.

Love the hat.

We also had a baby shower for Troy's sister Molly while we were there.

Erica "helping" unwrap gifts.

Julie "loves" animals, especially hairless cats.

Can you believe I actually helped to make this. Well, ok, I held the ribbon while Sonja glued it. Does that count?

It was COOOO-OOOLD!!! The first day we arrived, I think it was a high of 16 degrees. Plus, we had a ton of snow. This is Erica's first REAL snowman, as compared to her snowman from last year.

Troy and old fam.

Troy and new fam.

What is all this white stuff?

These sisters crack each other up.

Is this really frozen?

A Full House, minus Uncle Jessy.

Grandpa keeping warm.

Ahhhh, I love vacation.

Mom, can't we afford real Otter Pops?

I'm swinging in the snow, I'm swinging in the snow...

Relatives are the best!!

Good morning sleepy heads.

Sadie - Almost 9 months

I'm actually ahead on blogging. Does that ever happen? I just know that when Sadie actually turns 9 months, it will be between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I don't know that I will get around to the post then.

I don't have stats, but I do have a cute picture and video. Sadie loves to crawl all over the place now. She does more of an army crawl where she drags herself with her arms. She plays really well with her sister. She doesn't have any teeth yet. She loves real people food better than baby food.


She doesn't sleep great yet, but at least she is happy when she is awake. She says, "mama...mamamamamam" a lot. I don't think I can count it yet. She recently started pulling herself to standing on anything she can get to. However, she hasn't figured out how to get back down. We've had a lot of bumps, bruises and crying from dollhouses, chairs and other various things falling on top of her.


She is such a content baby. I really, really appreciate that. She is so easy to take anywhere or just to leave on the floor to play with toys. I can't believe babies like this really exist. For the first time, I'm almost a little sad to see this stage of life passing so quickly. I am excited to see her personality develop though.

Happy Halloween

(Thanks for the picture Sonja)

The actual costumes

Sadie's costume lasted about 30 minutes. No one even got to see her in it.

Erica was so excited to be a chicken this year. She talked about it all the time. I was really surprised she didn't want to be a princess. She got the chicken costume from her aunt a few years ago, but she can still squeeze into it. Her costume lasted about an hour and then she got too hot. Yes-too hot. This is Arizona. So we returned home for costume number two.

This lasted another hour. Not a bad idea. Do a costume switcheroo and you can hit up houses twice. Many of the houses were dark this year and it seemed like only 3 year olds or high school kids were trick-or-treating. Erica had a blast, even though she was a little scared of some of the decorations.

What do you call 9 people in a 3 bedroom house?

Answer: Our life in October.

Troy's brother is in his 4th year of medical school and he had a one month rotation in Tucson. We convinced him to bring his wife and 3 kids along. That made for 9 people in a 17oo square foot home. Some people called us crazy, but we had a blast. We would totally do it again.

They were great house guests. They left my house cleaner than when they came. The kids entertained Erica all day long. We had constant activities and entertainment. We miss them and we are so glad they came.

If you are interested, here is some serious picture overload of the last month.

Matching dresses


I was trying to get the girls to hold up their fingers for the year, "2010". It didn't work out so well.


Trying to crawl like Sadie.

What happens when you finger paint a rock and then let your baby eat it?

Flossing was a favorite activity.

I think they were acting as caterpillars.

Skyping with Aunt Sonja.

They loved it when Troy made forts (or "forks" if you are Erica...she also calls the game chess, "chest").

Snuggling up after swimming.

Noah wanted to take a picture of Sadie's messy face.

We went to open gym.

We went to the zoo.

Watched movies.

Went boating a few times. This was after a serious microburst of a storm. Everyone was drenched. (I missed this trip because I was in Utah.)

We decorated for Halloween.

They had fun together.

They played dress-up and danced and danced and danced.

They bathed together.

We will miss them. (Ha Ha Julie. I beat you to a post.)