With Christmas almost upon us, I thought I best get a bit of Thanksgiving recorded lest it gets superseded by Christmas. We had a lovely Thanksgiving. Balin was home, we had 4 days off of school and we had quality time with friends and family. The weekend started off with a birthday party for Sophie at Peter Piper Pizza, which was fun for all the kids. Sophie turned 6 this year and is in Kindergarten at Taylor Hicks school. We don't get to see Sophie quite as much as we used to, but when we do see her she's lots of fun to be around.
The following day was Turkey day and we headed over to my sisters for a nice quiet dinner with family. In years past, Thanksgiving had been the holiday to invite any and all who didn't have a place to go. We would have anywhere from our 14 to 30 people for the holiday, which was always fun and interesting. This year only family participated, which turned out to be a great time. Dinner was simple, fun and quiet.
Friday Balin went to the Crossfit gym to help "remodel" it and spent all morning there. The kids and I were happy to stay home and do nothing all morning as that evening we went back out to my sisters to celebrate my mom's 65th birthday. For her birthday this year we all chipped in and got her a Wii - every kid was excited about that. We have a long honored tradition in the Weatbrook family; the grandparents' house is the house with all the fun toys at it. ATVs, the Segway, remote controlled cars, helicopters and now the Wii. Our neighbor has a Wii and for a while there Sam was wanting to play on it ALL the time. Balin and I are strongly opposed to having video games at the house because we think it sucks your personality away and is very socially isolating. I am aware that many people would argue their case for having video games, but we prefer a video free space. We have been talking to Sam about video games and he came back with the comment, "All my friend wants to do is play video games. It's getting really boring and I want to play some of the other board games he has, but he only wants to play video games." Point made.
Meanwhile, back at Grandma's house, it's okay to go there and play video games for a couple of hours because it happens maybe once a month, if that. Most of the time, Sam and Perrin go running off into the woods where they have made their fort and have their world of make believe. Love that.
Saturday we headed off to UCYC, which is a local summer camp for kids. There we met up with the Crossfit gym and had a morning of obstacle course, pushing the "damn thingy", otherwise known as the prowler, and generally working our hiney's off. The camp provided lunch for all of us and then we took to the hills and had an afternoon of paint balling. We brought my nephew and his friend and they put up with the early morning workout just to spend time blasting people with paint balls. They had such a great time. I, personally, wasn't planning on paint balling as I had visions of welts and bruises, but a girlfriend convinced me it wouldn't hurt. Well, all I have to say is I was not created to be a soldier. Nope. I don't like the tension of waiting to be shot or waiting to shoot someone else. I did get shot, right under the chin, and I was done. Hands up in surrender and walked straight to the exit. It had only been 5 minutes. :)
We spent Sunday of the weekend getting our Christmas decorations out. I decided to keep things pretty simple as the house really looks beautiful by itself. We decided to get a real tree this year as well as put up our artificial tree. They both look beautiful and it's fun to have everything so Christmassy. We are having the Young Life Christmas Party at our house tomorrow. I'm thinking there will be about 50 people here, which should be a lot of fun. We're going to get the firepit roaring and hopefully people will flow between being outside and inside as I don't think there's enough room inside. But we'll see. With Balin being home for a while, I've packed our social calendar out to the max. There are so many people that we want to have over for dinner when Balin is home that I have to book him when he is home. So this week we have 2 dinner parties, the Young Life party, a date night for Balin and I and then we leave on Friday for the Young Life camp in Williams where we are going to be hosting some friends Friday night and Saturday. Lucky for Balin, he leaves Sunday morning early to go to Cabo San Lucas for a fishing trip with his FSR employees. I think it will be a good break for him and it will give me a chance to get all my activities wrapped up. Whew - we're going to need a vacation!
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