Happy Thanksgiving, all! I feel kinda bad about not keeping up with this here bloggie of mine, but I stop short of apologizing...I sorta feel that when one has three young children, one shouldn't have to feel too badly about neglecting the things of lesser importance in life. And by that, I mean you. No, not really. You are VERY important to me...I can say this with almost 100% certainty, because I believe that almost no one except my immediate family reads this, SEEING THAT NO ONE EVER POSTS A COMMENT except my siblings and sometimes a parent. So you are important to me & I am thankful for YOU! See how I brought the conversation back around to Thanksgiving? Aren't I a skilled and cunning linguist? Ha ha ha. Say that fast 10 times.
Moving right along: we have just returned from Mom's & DC's in Dallas, where we spent a little "mini holiday vacay" over Thanksgiving. We did the following, not necessarily in this order:
--Made a FABULOUS Thanksgiving meal that we and about 7 other family/guests consumed with relish on the day of, followed by deep and weighty discussions about Black Friday sales.
--Some of the more enterprising of us (hint: not me) went out to said sales at different ungodly hours of the night and morning. Jeff left his warm bed at 1:30 AM to shop, and Mom & DC, not to be outdone, went at 5:30 AM.
--We took the kids to various "new" parks, always a popular activity.
--We went to "A Dickens of a Christmas", which was a sort of happening in downtown McKinney, complete with elaborate Christmas pageant & all sorts of family fun...carousels, pony rides, little petting zoo, etc. We consumed hot chocolate, corn dogs, a sort of Greek taco with lamb & Mediterranean ranch on it (which was really very good), and Mom's personal favorite, a (small) Santa sleigh entirely made of milk chocolate & filled with chocolate mousse! Yum!
--The following night we went on "the Polar Express", which we purchased tickets to a couple weeks before even going up to Dallas, as it was billed as a sort of wonderland for kids, complete with snacks & hot chocolate, a performance before & during the train ride, a Christmas tree maze, etc. Well, we dragged Mom & DC & Abi all down there with us, and to make a long story short, it maybe wasn't exactly what we had pictured. At least the kids loved it...they didn't care. There was the slightly tacky "intro show" which featured young girl singers, a la Miley Cyrus, belting out Christmas tunes with more vigor than expertise, dressed in what I can only describe as "Slutty Santa Chic". The "tree maze" was a walkway, slightly zig zagged, that led to the train itself. The train was old & quite neat....you had to climb stairs to get up into it, and it had these great old sleigh type seats, and they had decorated it nicely. The ride was fun because the kids enjoyed it so very much....they were really just jumping for joy of it. There was a loudspeaker over which a lady broadcasted a sort of running series of Christmas singalongs, instructions to the passengers (one of which was to have a man and woman get into the aisle and dance the Jingle Bell Rock, which Jeff obligingly did...I was proud of him!), and there was a terrific reading of "The Night Before Christmas" by way of an encore. Mom & DC & Abs were right there along with us, having a great old time, greeted by Santa when he came by, etc, and it was really quite terrific actually.
--I had a nice time talking & working out (gasp) and generally 'fellowshipping' with Abi the Beautiful and Gracious, who also assisted me quite a bit with the kids all weekend, Lord love her.
So all in all a very good weekend. I may have mentioned that Dillon broke our camera, but I took some pics on my phone, or the crapcam, to borrow a Dave Barry-ism. Enjoy! (The first ones are actually from Halloween & before.)
Zoe Boe saying hi from Texas
Halloween pics: Zoe was a ladybug
Noah was "clawman" (Wolverine)
Dillon was supposed to be Batman but the costume we got him did not fit, sadly. So he had to settle for Noah's costume last year, a spider. I think he was underwhelmed.
We went to the "Zoo Boo", and this was one of the attractions.
This was a drum with a fake fire in it, and I thought the picture came out nice.
This was the only picture we got of a day adventure we took to a Renaissance Festival, which was AWESOME. We may dress up next time.
And here's the Thanksgiving pics. 
