Thanksgiving 2012

We kept school pretty short and simple the week of Thanksgiving. We took time during the week to prepare for our guests, and enjoy the holiday.  On Monday, I read the girls a few books about Thanksgiving and gratitude, and then we drew some turkey pictures.

Mom's Drawing

Johanna's Drawing

Julia's Drawing

 

On Tuesday, I read a story about the history of Thanksgiving, and then the girls helped me make some "acorn candy" for Thanksgiving day.  The candy was very similar to the ones shown here, but ours had pretzel pieces for the stems.  They also helped me pick out some of the pictures for our fun Thanksgiving dinner place cards.

We had family arrive on Wednesday from Iowa to stay with us through the weekend, and we welcomed many other family members (totaling nineteen) to celebrate the day with us on Thursday. 

Here are some of our place cards.  These took a little time to make, but they turned out pretty funny! 

 

The tables are set and ready to go.

I bought these surprise balls for the kids.  They unrolled the paper, and discovered 10 toys along the way.  

The paper kept going.....

 and going......

 and going....

Yay!  We reached the end!

 Cory carving the turkey.

 Abby mashing the potatoes.

Grant and his cousin had a "poker game" going before dinner.

Julia playing with her surprise ball toys.

 Uncle Andy hanging out.

 

Heather and Cooper (who was obviously tired of waiting for all the yummy food to be ready! )

 Grandpa hanging out.

Here is part of our group ready to eat!

We had a wonderful day and much to be thankful for!

A Major Repair

 We have had problems with water in our basement since we moved into this house, and we have done a few things over the years to fix the problem.  Unfortunately, it has continued to get worse, so we decided to bite the bullet, and just get it done right.  This was a MAJOR repair, and a MAJOR mess!

This part of the backyard, all along the back or our house, was landscaped with beautiful plants, and a nice sidewalk.  All of that had to be torn up, and dug up to make way for a lot of mud and a really big hole.  (Make a note of the location of our screened-in porch on the left side of the photo.  It will be mentioned again later.)

To complicate the issue even further, every possible "line" you could imagine was buried in this part of the yard.  Multiple electric, phone, and multiple water lines for the irrigation system.   

Here are some of our sad plants.  Cory found places to plant a lot of the smaller ones.

Our AC unit was also in the path of destruction, so it had to be disconnected and moved. Just so happened that an Autumn heat wave came through that week and we had multiple days where the temperature peaked around 90 degrees F. 

Oh, air conditioning unit, how we love thee....

 
We were not surprised to find that the mudroom on the back of the house was not supported well.  So, once again, this created another complication, and more work that needed to be done.

Once they finished digging the trench, the wall needed to be power- sanded, and then coated with a rubber seal. Remember that screened-in porch I mentioned in the picture earlier?  Well, everything in that porch got covered with a layer of fine sand from the power-sanding.  Oh, joy!

A french drain was placed down at the bottom of the trench (this is actually a tertiary back up drain).

Below you can see the new wall they built to support the mud room.

The trench was then completely filled with rock, along with another drain pipe being placed just below the surface (the secondary "water catcher").

Next, a trench was dug for a drain pipe farther out from the house, and just a few feet below the surface.  This is the drain that will catch most of the water coming down the hill.

The trench for these drain pipes was then dug going all the way to our lake, where the water can run out all it wants, and not affect our basement in any way.

 

 

This step, which was very close to the path of destruction, suffered a casualty crack, but we will choose to think of that as a little added character.

Our backyard sat like this for a few weeks, as our concrete team needed to move to another job.  Once they returned, they filled all the trenches, graded it, and set up the forms to lay a new patio.

Soon, the new patio was poured and stamped and looked great.....

Except for one little problem.  They took a large chunk of our old sidewalk to match the color, and, well, oops!  Not even close! 

Now, they are going to try to stain the below section of our old sidewalk to match the color of the new patio.  If that doesn't work, they come back, bust it up, and lay a new new sidewalk.  No one wants that to happen!

There is still more finishing work to be done, but hopefully by Spring it will be looking great.

Spirit Week

Last week, Grant's school had Homecoming and Spirit Week.  Each day the kids could dress up as something different.  Monday was "crazy hair" day.  We spiked Grant's hair up, and then added some blue and green color. I forgot to take a picture of it in the morning, and by the time I picked him up from school, most of the color had worn off.  Tuesday was "famous person" day. I thought up a fun Superman/Clark Kent outfit for Grant that I thought everyone would be able to recognize. Check out the sweet glasses!

 
Wednesday was "50's Day".  For this he wore a white t-shirt and rolled up his jeans. We slicked up his hair a little bit, too.

Thursday was "spirit wear" day.  The kids all wore school shirts for this.  They also had a "parade", pep rally, and their Homecoming game (basketball)later that evening.  Each class decorated a shopping cart to use as a float which would be pushed down the hallway in the "parade" to the gym where they had the pep rally.  Grant's teacher asked me if I had any ideas for the cart, and from there I somehow became in charge of the cart.  Grant's school (the eagles) was playing The Saints, so together, Cory and I came up with an idea based on the New Orleans Saints Football team's fans when the team was really bad.  They used to wear paper bags over their heads when they went to the games so nobody would recognize them. This was how the finished cart turned out.

There were some other carts that were really good!  Our cart won "Best Slogan".  Grant's teacher was just very appreciative to have someone to help them put it all together.  

Grant really enjoyed all the fun festivities last week,and Thursday afternoon at the pep rally, Grant was voted by the teachers as the "Most Spirited" boy for the school. I think he was very proud of that!

They finished up the week on Friday with "pajama day".  Grant sported some fleece Ninjago Lego pj pants and slippers.  He also had a friend from his class for a sleep over at the house that night.  A great way to end a great week!