Thanksgiving

Well, my Thanksgiving week is over. The one I have looked forward to for months. It always leaves you with a little bit of a hollow feeling to realize something you have been thinking about for months is over. But it was a wonderful time and I got my fair share of holding babies.  

   

Harmony and I doing one of her favorite pasttimes (walking around the room). 

 

Beebers (Stephen to the lay-person) and I lounging around.

(Top) Cousins meeting for the first time.  

(Bottom) Harmony so comfortable she's drooling.

If you are noticing there is a lot of brown couch in these pictures, its because that's where I spend most my time when I am home. We did go out shooting (I shot my first black powder rifle) to try out Steve's new .22 Walther, and various shopping excursions.  But our living room is my favorite place. We mostly sit and talk, laugh, and have discussions for hours in that room. Once and a while, we'll pull out a board game or head down to the media room (they have a projector and a huge big screen) to watch a movie or try out Wii Fit. 

 

Dad, Seaweed (Sarah), and I once again on the couch (just to prove my point :)

There is also a lot of watching babies now that we have them to watch. Harmony is 3 months old and so she is quite fun to watch. She laughs, smile, and "talks" constantly. It is absolutely adorable. Little Cameron is one of the sweetest little guys in existence. He's just a couple weeks old right now. I can't believe a baby can be so good-natured. He rarely cries and when he does it is so quiet he had to be in the same room with us or we couldn't even hear him. 

 

Dad and I fighting over who gets to hold Cameron (something that was quite a common occurence). 

And, of course, there was Thanksgiving dinner which was delicious . Last year,  the pumpkin pie I tried to make was a little umm...inedible. This year, everybody agreed the pumpkin pie I made was tasty (Dad helped - he didn't want to risk it) . Turns out, sugar is a key ingredient. Who would have thought? :) 

There is no way I can post all of the pictures that I have. Maybe I'll talk Ben into teaching me how to make a link to all the pictures I have. In the meantime, here is one of the entire motley crew (except for Jared, of course, darn him and his duck hunt).

On the top nearly breaking the couch in half is Jonathan, Sarah, Stephen, Matthew, and me.

Jenn is in front on the arm cushion by Sam and Cameron.  Mom and Dad are in the middle and then the other little family Ben, Tara, and Harmony are on the right. 

Whew - that's a lot of people. And getting bigger with time I am sure.  I remember back in the good 'ol days every time my mom said she was having a baby, I was delighted. I loved taking care of them and every single one seemed to add something to the family we didn't have before; good and bad, but mostly good. I feel the same way now as it keeps growing. The old cliche is true - the more, the merrier. 

My Turn

First of all, my first nephew, Cameron Joseph (Sam & Jenn's baby), was born yesterday at a whoppin' 8 lbs. 6 oz. We were happy to get him here well and screaming his head off. I'll probably be posting some pics of him soon as I will be going to see him and my neice in a couple of weeks.  I am, of course, more than excited about that. In the meantime, I haven't posted in a long time, so here I go.

Before I go any further - due to popular request - here is a video of my favorite duck, Alfredo. I know I've done a real nice job of posting it a month late. I'm sure the two of you who requested it have been checking every hour, on the hour, for it. :) 

Next up, Halloween. We neglected to get pictures of our annual pumpkin carving contest, and the 4 minute video of Jared making corny jokes and taping me carving (but not surprisingly, is actually mostly footage of the cats) is a poor replacement. But I did a skeleton pirate (my school theme this year), and surprise, surprise - Jared did a cat. 

You may have noticed a theme for the year. It mind as well be the year of the cat because it certainly is for Jared. He actually got me the collar, ears, and tail for my costume and told me to be a cat. Not my idea. As for what he was, that is still widely speculated about.  What he was telling people is that it is what he'll look like in 20 years after living in Texas. So, I can see the camo, the fat belly, and the grimace. But the mohawk? I think most Texans would agree that is a bad idea, maybe a mustache instead. The very next day Jared had me cut it off with this unbelievably horrible pair of scissors. I told him to go to a hair cut joint, but he said it was a waste of money. He's funny like that sometimes.

But onto the new stuff, speaking of spending money. Here is our new bedroom set. We ordered it about a month ago, and it has finally come in. We are pretty excited about it. We are going to change the bedspread because there is far too much brown in the room. We are thinking white/navy bed now with gray walls. But probably not for a while. As you can probably tell from all the posts, we have been spending quite a bit of money recently - computers, entertainment systems, Wii's, Nintendo DS's, finishing decorating the office. So the month of November has been deemed "save as much as we can month" because next month is the most spending we do all year long. 

Bedframe, nighstands, and ottoman (the one Meowfish is sleeping on).

As you can see, the cats are big fans of our new bedroom set. They have been doing nothing but sleeping in there (the office used to be their favorite - which is the only fully decorated room in the house). I think it just shows they have good taste. They're classy.

Our new dresser

Halloween

So we dressed up for Halloween for the first time in a long time.  Ben and Catherine were having a costume party and you weren't allowed in without a costume so this is what we came up with.  We were going for cheap and easy.  As you can see I (Jared) look nearly the same as in the last blog.  I just stuffed my waders with some pillows to add a few pounds and then for kicks cut my hair into a mohawk (which suprisingly is still there this morning I figured it would just wash off with everything else).  

Becky is a cat in case you cant tail (she does have a tail but you cant see it in the pic).  We didnt get any good pics from the rest of the night, just some blurry shots of Kellen's Hooters uniform being stretched to its limits and since he is still in the job market we wont post those.  So enjoy these pics until I can catch some more fish and spice up this blog.