Tag Archives: holidays

The Thanksgiving of all Thanksgivings

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This year Thanksgiving was especially awesome because Josh and I got to be with both of our families, all at once. Yay! Josh and I basically come from mirror families: both the oldest of six kids, with siblings all the same ages, Josh with all brothers and me with mostly sisters (and one awesome brother Cole we all love). So when Josh and I got married, our families got along great and became best buds. Josh’s mom was so nice and invited my whole family out to their house for Thanksgiving, and it was a blast! Thank you so much Lymans, and thanks for coming, Ellsworths! There was lots of good food, some great Just Dance 3ing, gingerbread houses, games, family photos, and fun.

We got to spend a whole week with the Lymans, too, which was a blast. Carson never lacked for attention, and it turns out he’s got some awesome uncles who love to hold him and make him smile and laugh. And Grandpa and Grandma Lyman, wow! They were the best. Carson was so good and happy all week.

Here’s some photos from the trip! Thanks again family! We love you all!

Halloween 2011

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Happy Halloween! For his first Halloween, Carson dressed up as a cuddly (or rather, cowardly) lion. I was Dorothy and Josh was the Scarecrow – yes, okay, mine and Josh’s costumes were recycled costumes from two years ago. A Halloween costume faux pas, perhaps, but hey, they were economical. (Actually, my Dorothy costume was recycled from several years ago…I think this is at least the fifth time I’ve been Dorothy in my life…oh, well…) Anyway, using recycled costumes was worth it because Carson the Lion was so cute. :) Check out more pictures at this post.

So dressing up was a lot of fun! I recently got a sewing machine, so I was going to attempt to make Carson’s costume, but I’m so glad we found a low-price one at Walmart instead. I know I’m not quite that pro yet. :) I did make a hat and some other improvements for Josh’s costume, so at least I did some sewing! (The nice thing about sewing a scarecrow costume is that you don’t have to worry about straight lines since it’s all supposed to look scraggily anyway.)

On the Friday before Halloween, Josh’s company had a family Halloween party that we dressed up for and went to. And holy cow! What a party! It really just consisted of waiting in line to take a tour through the intensely decorated building, but in line they had cotton candy, popcorn, ice cream, soda, jugglers, magicians, and guys with snakes and tarantulas as entertainment.

Yes, that’s a real tarantula, inches from Carson’s face. They guy put it up there before we could do anything. So there, Carson’s not cowardly at all.

Actually, Carson was too sleepy to be cowardly. He slept through pretty much the entire thing in Dad’s arms.

At the end he woke up, but by then he was ready to get home, get a bath, and get some food.

It was fun to get out, see lots of fun Halloween costumes, chat with some friends, and walk through the awesome building, which, seriously, was intense. Parts were more like a haunted house (but they always had shortcuts to skip past those. Good thing, because Paige Carson got scared). Lots of fun.

And we also celebrated Halloween this year with the very first pumpkin Josh and I have ever carved together! It turned out great, thanks to Josh’s pro handling of the carving tools. I was better at scooping out the pumpkin guts; that’s always been my favorite part, anyway.

So all in all, a great Halloween! Complete with leftover candy since we only got four trick-or-treaters last night.

Some Pictures

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…of our visit to Texas over Thanksgiving. We’ve got more pictures, but here are a couple my mom sent me. We had a blast! Highlights include Thanksgiving dinner, spending time with the family, playing Just Dance on the Wii, watching Texas high school football playoff games, playing Tron (not till 3 a.m., as we’ve done in the past, but still till late), eating delicious food, laser tag, and overall just lots of fun. Thanks, Ellsworth family!

Happy (late) Halloween!

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Josh and I were Waldo and Wenda for Halloween, from the Where’s Waldo? books. We made/assembled our costumes, and I think they turned out really well:

My work had a Halloween/food drive/flu shot party that we went to, and it was a lot of fun. People liked our costumes, and we got some funny comments like, “Don’t lose each other, you might not find each other again!” My favorite was one lady who said to Josh, “Now, I don’t see your cane and your cup, so I must have to go and find it…” I had totally forgotten about having to search for Waldo’s cane and cup! Anyone else remember that?

Anyway, the holiday was way fun, but making our shirts involved my first experience with Rit dye, and…well, let’s just say it might be my last. ;-) I tried to follow instructions from a friend and what Josh and I found online, but maybe we didn’t do things quite right because after we washed our shirts after Halloween they looked like this:

(On the plus side, it’s a pretty cute pink jammy shirt though, right?) Ruining the shirts aside, we now also have 3 purple dish cloths (instead of blue ones), 2 salmon-colored towels (instead of gold ones), two now-pink white undershirts (thank goodness we wore cheap ones), a pink ironing board cover, and a pile of pink rags. I promise I’m not as dumb as I sound…it’s just that some Rit dye ended up some places I wasn’t expecting. Oh, adventures in laundry. Sometimes I feel like I’m still finding traces of the stubborn dye around the house…so, yes, I’ll probably stay away from scarlet Rit dye from now on. ;-)