Happy Birthday/Thanksgiving

Well, when you haven't posted in forever, you feel like you should post a really long post to make up for it. But I started typing and got too lazy, so I was in a tough spot. It occurred to me, however, that "a picture is worth a thousand words," so, in that spirit, here's a 13,000 word essay on what we've been doing:

That's right - it was Steven's birthday! He turned 4, so of course we repeated our tradition of burying all the presents underneath piles of balloons for him to search out. Then we went outside and played on the playset with all the friends who came over.

Poppa was nice enough to make some burgers and hot dogs for everyone.

Which everyone loved:

The birthday boy enjoying some of his presents:

And blowing out the candles on his cake:

Trying to figure out the pen/computer thing that Bobbie's parents gave him:

All of that happened on Saturday. On Monday, which was his actual birthday, Mommy took Steven and cousin Aubrey out for ice cream and a playtime on the McDonald's playroom thing.

The other big event to happen since we last posted was Thanksgiving. I asked Bobbie for a picture to post representing Thanksgiving and this is what she gave me. Food, of course.

In other news, I've been trying to supplement the family larder with my best efforts at hunting, which had proven a failure on the first two or three attempts. Finally, last week, I killed what I thought was a doe but turned out to be a small buck. Don't worry, we don't believe in killing things we're not going to eat. We've already enjoyed one meal of venison, and there are a lot more in the freezer.

I thought that we had missed our chance to see my Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Carolyn and their daughter Alicia when we had to shorten our trip, but they were able to come down for a visit here! We had a great time hanging out with the whole family over and Mom and Dad's house (remind me to tell you about how they got hooked up with a great house for their stay sometime).

It's been SO fun having the boys together with their grandparents these past few months. Here my mom is pulling them in the wagon as we all cleaned up the leaves from my in-laws' yard the other day.

And that will about do it. Tune in next week (or so; I promise I won't let it go this long again) for the latest adventures of the Wandering Family.