On Wednesday evening, Abigail was my designated helper. She's getting old enough that she can actually help do stuff and it's not more trouble than it's worth to have her around. Yes, it takes a little longer but not a significant amount of time. And hopefully, these will be things she'll remember because I know I will. We had fajitas for dinner so she helped with the guacamole and afterwards, she and Benjamin helped out with the pies. There was one casualty--our salt and pepper shakers look like eggs with legs and while I was getting stuff out for the pie, Abigail was playing with the salt shaker, making it "walk." It was an honest accident when one of the legs broke off--I could have set the thing down wrong and the same thing happen--and we weren't going to tell her mama. I did have her tell Uncle Paul what happened but I'm not good at quick thinking and confessed to Amy when she asked what happened to the missing salt shaker. But the pies were good, salt shakers can be replaced, and Abigail knows (and will hopefully remember) that she has to be more careful.
I have a smattering of toys I keep at the house for when children visit. Last summer before Sarah and Matthew visited, I bought these giant pick-up sticks to have at the house for them. They never touched them but it was a big hit with Abigail this visit. She also loved a Barbie paper doll I got for my birthday a few years ago--she spent quite a bit of time making fancy outfits.
Paul was probably teaching Benjamin how to spell bad words. Or (what actually was happening) Benjamin was drawing shapes and teaching them to Uncle Paul.
Amy and David scoured the ads for anything they just couldn't live without. We didn't find anything in the ads worthy of a very early rise but Paul, Amy, David, and I did go out shopping a little on Friday afternoon to get out of the house. On Saturday afternoon, all the girls went shopping as a little outing.
I used the good china for the main meal on Thursday. Jub apparently thought he should be included in the feast. Not so much, furry one. We didn't have room to serve family-style but I was glad we were all able to be seated at tables. And yes, even Abs and Ben got china at their place setting although Ben used an everyday plate when he finally decided to eat something and I helped Abigail carry her dinner and dessert plate because she was just a little too free with them, even when I kept saying two hands! two hands!
Paul's parents joined us for dinner on Thanksgiving day. It was nice that they were in town and that they were able to be with us. Roger was volunteered by Donna to carve the turkey and in turn, he volunteered her to finish us getting meat off the turkey when we were done. Paul was amazed because he thought he'd done a good job (not really) and then his mom steps in and gets twice as much meat off. We sent some home with Donna and Roger for turkey sandwiches and I've frozen a bunch of it for later consumption
Paul said the downside to using the good dishes is that it requires handwashing. Not that it takes more than 2 seconds to wash a plate and he was on drying duty--not even rinsing duty since he was complaining about the hot water.
Look at how much fun it can be to do dishes! Yay!
OK, this might be a little more fun than copious amounts of handwashing. Paul has bought several games for children to play when at the house. There is a matching game that was a hit this trip--even as an adult, it's more interesting/challenging than most of the other children's board games. Benjamin was playing until Abigail muscled him out of the way and he found it was more fun to just climb Uncle Paul.
Amy takes a try at the Guitar Hero. We picked up the Aerosmith Guitar Hero since it was on sale and :::fingers crossed::: Santa might bring us the new World Tour with a new guitar. It's that or new luggage.
On Friday afternoon, two of my lovely neighbors brought down a tin of Christmas cookies. One of them was a big iced sugar cookie. It was quickly claimed by the two little kids and the one great big kid who split it three ways.
Benjamin very methodically ate off all the icing and then ate the cookie. He is such a picky eater and he wasn't sure about the cookie. I think the rush of sugar after the icing convinced him that it wouldn't be so bad.
Friday evening, we went to Paul's parents' house for dinner. I'd had the kids grab a couple of toys to take over there but when we arrived, we found that Donna had gotten out all of Paul's old Legos and there were lots of them. Paul nearly pushed us all out of the way to get to the toys. They found the instructions for making the castle and set to work on it for the evening.
When they weren't "helping" with the castle, Abigail and Benjamin were running back to Paul's old bedroom to see the glow-in-the-dark star stickers Paul put on the ceiling over 20 years ago. The room has been repainted several times and Roger has painted the ceiling of pretty much every other room but this one because of the stickers. They still glow so we left the light on in the room during dinner so the kids could look at them. At one point, the kids took off their shoes so they could lie on the bed and stargaze.
While we were out on Friday afternoon, we also bought Wii Music because we thought it would be easy for the little ones to play. We were right and it was a hit with both of them since all that is really required is wiggling the controllers up and down. Even 3-year-old Benjamin picked up on it. Please note Abigail and I were both wearing our quasi-matching "fancy pants" while we playing on Saturday evening.
And in between all of this fun, we also went swimming on Friday and Saturday mornings with the kids and everyone went to Dion's for pizza on Saturday. It's the one place David always requests and there is the little platform for kids to watch them make pizzas so Abigail and Benjamin enjoy that as well. Mom and Dad had an early flight out on Sunday and Amy and her family left a little before Paul and I left for church. It was a lovely weekend although we did miss having our Donna here and even if it does always feel like we're stepping over each other in my little house. I do like getting to have holidays in NM. Even being in charge of everything is in some ways easier than traveling around and about. But we'll be happy to drag over to Texas and possibly up to Kansas to see more family in three weeks.
