Thanksgiving Recap

Hope you and yours had a great turkey day.

Ours was wonderful. We were successful in the 3 "F's" of the Day.

1) Food
Anyone who knows how my mom cooks, knows that no get-together is complete without a feast. This year was no exception.

2) Family
We almost had everyone there, dad is overseas...but Chad made it home from his 3rd tour in Iraq the weekend before Thanksgiving. Todd traveled 4000 miles to make it there (he'd been in Portugal). And of course, Heath and Pearl drove down from KC for her first Thanksgiving as a Wilson. The cousins were all together and had a ton of fun playing together, and unbelievably got along really well this time.

3) Friends
Although brief, I did manage to party in "the Chuck" a few nights. Got to catch up with some of the old gang...Micki (one of my dearest friends for over 2 decades), and a large group of my best guy friends (Derek, Justin, and company--practically a high school reunion). They had their annual "Pumpkin Party" (with a keg of Pumpkin Beer from our local brewery). This year it was out in the country, there was a huge bonfire, a tractor led hayride (possibly my favorite part of the evening-well that, and the "dance-off") and enough stories from the past to keep us laughing 'til next year.

We have so much to be thankful for...

Super Bug

Every night on news (both local and national) there are stories about the latest "health scare" (remember Sars, West Nile, Bird Flu, Mad Cow). The illness "du jour" happens to be this MRSA staph infection, aka "Super Bug". MRSA kills more Americans annually than AIDS (yet the federal AIDS research budget is over 13 times larger than that for the whole field of antimicrobial resistance)...kinda crazy. How do I know?

I had this MRSA staph infection last year (where were the news reports then?) I got it in the hospital, after I had Brooke, and let me tell you...the staph was WAY worse than delivering any baby (trust me, I've done it a few times). At the time, my doctor said it was the worst case he'd ever seen. I had eight different spots on my body that were infected, 4 of which had to be drained and packed with gauze every day/other day for nearly a month. Yes, lovely visual, I know. I made it through 3 pregnancies with no stretchmarks on my belly, now I have 2 big ugly scars like eyes on each side of my belly button...nice. It was an awful experiences and the worst pain I've ever had. Of course, my immune system was down as I was recovering from childbirth (double whammy) and I had my 2 other children that never slowed down.

I love that doctors refer to it as the "cockroach of bacteria".

But the flu kills twice as many people than MRSA each year, it's weird what the media will focus on.
Don't get me started on the whole Britney thing again.

Halloween Pictures

As promised, here are the munchkins...
Miss Tinkerbell
Scary Spidey'man
Lil' Ladybug



The trio with our spiderweb cake!

Blurry October

Does anyone else seem like October passed in a blur?

I guess I have a lot of catch-up to do.

First, we sold our house (the one that burnt down). That actually happened in September. The house is beautiful inside. In fact, I kind of wish we would have put a second story on it and moved back in.

I've been allergy tested...twice. And basically I'm allergic to everything. I'm a mess. One of the things I'm off the charts allergic to is Birch trees. Now this is pretty ironic because I grew up on Birch Tree Drive (my mom still lives there) and we have the only Birch tree on the whole street in our front yard. Crazy. Also says I'm allergic to pretty much everything they tested for (except mold and cockroaches). You can see I pretty much reacted to everything. They did that on both arms...twice...and told me not to itch...that is one of the hardest things to not do.

We took our annual visit to the Pumpkin Patch in Bixby. Took Riley's best friend Jack and his family with us. It was like 90 degrees...totally not pumpkin patch weather, but that's Oklahoma for you...the weather is like a box of chocolates...(you know the rest).

If it's a Saturday in October it means were out on the soccer field cheering on Riley. She's gotten so much better as the season has gone on and is having a lot of fun with her little friends on the team.

October brought visitors to T-town.

We got to meet our newest little nephew, Clark who is just precious. Of course Katie and Wesley were here too, Wesley had a job interview (and got the job), which means they'll be moving back soon.

My dad who had to come in the country on business and got to swing by Tulsa for a few days before heading back to the Middle East. He got to help take the kids trick-or-treating and we really enjoyed having him here. Sampson has been moping since he left. Sampson got A LOT of attention that he hasn't gotten recently due to our increasingly busy schedules.

Jarrod and Paula came up from Dallas with Brody for his 1st trip to Tulsa.

October also brought some old friends for the big Homecoming game.

Levi, Clarissa, and their 2 boys stayed with us and we always love hanging out with them. More than any other of Wade's college friends, Levi and Wade are the closest to "twinkies" as you can get. Wade nearly wet his pants waiting to talk business ventures with Levi.

Homecoming brought back some of my favorite sorority sisters too and we took a tour of the DDD house and couldn't believe the changes. Not just the decor (which is WAY better than my tenure there), but (for example) they don't have phones in their rooms. We used to send messages to the whole house via voicemail on our phones. I asked how they took care of that now, and she looked at me like I was a dinosaur and said, "we do email for that" (duh)...email was just beginning in popularity when I started college. They all have cell phones so they don't really need room phones. Wow.

Brooke has become a climber. She likes scale anything dangerous...including tables and bunk beds. One morning, I found her on the top bunk playing up there with Cade. This has happened twice so now we have to take the ladder out every morning.

October is full of fun Fall activities and I accompanied Riley's class on it's first field trip to the pumpkin patch. Here's a pic with her Kindergarten teacher, Miss Baker.

We went to Main Street Broken Arrow and celebrated with their fall fun night. Some may remember the video I sent last year of Cade shaking his toosh in his little Incredibles (Dash) costume. Same event.

And of course Halloween always closes out October, and just like any other kids, my kids LOVE trick-or-treating, candy, and all things spooky (not real spooky, just sort of spooky).I'll put out individual pics of the kids in the next few days...unfortunately the pictures don't do them justice.

But they were the cutest little trick-or-treaters.

I hope to get back to more regular blogging, but life has been getting in the way.