Kanuga and Thanksgiving 2013

Late November had us on consecutive trips to North Carolina for a church retreat and to Arkansas for Thanksgiving at the cabin in Arkansas. Here are some highlights of both.

Thanksgiving at the Beach

Thank you to mom and dad who invited us to spend thanksgiving with them at Fort Myers beach where they had rented a condo. Dad flew to Atlanta and drove down with me and the boys on the Saturday before thanksgiving (mom was there a week ahead of us with her sister and mom). Thomas flew down on Wednesday afternoon and we drove home as a family. I was sick, so that wasn't ideal (also not ideal: I gave the sickness to my parents who have been enjoying it ever since), but it was gorgeous and the boys had a good time.

Creating our own taxonomy for shells

Totally awesome hamster ball in water thing

Carter's road food of choice (except for the last hour) was Subway, for which we were all grateful.
John had a deconstructed sandwich.

John didn't love the sand, but it also didn't bother him too much. He kept putting handfuls in his mouth. 

Amazing sand sculpture competition down the road from where we were staying

Our sand castle with a monster nest at the entrance. The monster guards the castle. 

There was much putt putt.

John's First School Performance

The daycare/preschool we use has programs for thanksgiving and Christmas every year. All the classrooms participate, even the babies. The babies just get rolled through the auditorium to up the cuteness factor. We didn't go to the program this thanksgiving, but our friend Stephanie got some photos of John's role/roll. We'll plan to attend these things for John when 1) he starts to have any idea what's going on or, 2) when we can take Carter along to watch. In the meantime, it's good to have friends who can capture the cuteness!





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Thanksgiving

This year, we spent a full week in Arkansas for Thanksgiving, thanks, in part, to Thomas not having to be in Atlanta to work on the Nutcracker this year. We had a pretty lazy week. We ate good food (everyone), played bad golf (Thomas), practiced swimming (Carter) and generally got in a lot of low-key family time.

We had a few days of rain, followed by a few beautiful days

Decompressing after a rough day on the golf course

We took a trip to Garvin Gardens to see their lights

Carter loved "driving" the train-o-lights, but I got a better picture of him with a peacock

My baby can play triominoes! I can't believe it. He's actually pretty good.

Carter made ice cream pie with Mama Helen, and we celebrated his half-birthday with a candle.

Dad-on-the-couch 2.0. The Kindle edition.

John didn't sleep through everything this holiday. But he did let me eat thanksgiving dinner in peace. And then let me nap with him!

During the rainy days, Carter and I made place cards for everyone.

Mom attempts to serve as Thomas gets a photo op with the canned cranberry sauce (ridges intact)

Mimi got to meet her newest great-grandbaby

Thanksgiving

Just getting around to posting pics from our great thanksgiving!

Carter on the upcoming holidays

I really love it when someone else does my blogging work for me. Here's a couple of stories shared by Cart Cart about his evening with Carter earlier this week, with a few comments from me [in brackets]:

While reading the fire engine book Wednesday night at bedtime, about halfway through Carter interrupts and raises a finger in the air, and says, "Let's pause for a moment, while I call my parents." And reaches over for the broken cell phone, opens it, and has an imaginary conversation with both of you. Then he puts the phone down and says, "We can go ahead now."

In the car on the way home, he was talking about a lot of things, and especially that Santa had come that day [for pictures]. He remarked the best part of Thanksgiving is that after that, Santa comes. The following ensued:

Cart Cart: "Speaking of Thanksgiving, do you know what kind of meat people eat for Thanksgiving Dinner?
Carter: Yes.
Cart Cart: What?
Carter: Chicken.

Cart Cart: No, actually it's turkey, like the thing you made in art class today and showed me.

Carter: Do people go out and hunt the turkeys and bring them home?

[Its news to me that Carter knows what hunting is. Last time I indicated that something on his plate was an animal he adamantly disagreed, citing (as if I was crazy) that "It doesn't have eyes!"]

Cart Cart: They can, but they usually just hunt them at Publix at the store, and bring them home and cook them in the oven.

Carter: And after they eat that, Santa Claus comes !!

Clearly Carter has misunderstood my attempts to give him a way to think about when the Christmas season starts. If waiting for Christmas is any more difficult than waiting for Halloween was, we're going to have a long weekend after Thanksgiving - not to mention the month after that!

Thanks again to Cart Cart for sharing!

Thanksgiving

My, mom, dad and Mimi came in from Arkansas. Park, Ashley, Anna and Sam came for dinner. Cart Cart and Nonna joined us for dessert.

Family assembled at our house for thanksgiving dinner.

I got in some good snuggle time with Sam.

Carter debuted his new Christmas pajamas (along with Mama Helen's boots) after dinner.

First full Fowlkes family photo with the new addition!

Thanksgiving

We made it safely home from Arkansas last night with a full day to recover before what will be a very busy week. Here's a little video from our weekend. Hope you all had happy thanksgivings!

Hello Mr. Turkey

Yesterday they had the Thanksgiving program at Carter's school. Here is the 2 year old contribution. Ours is the tall one in the yellow shirt waving throughout most of the video. Carter watched this video about 300 times last night. Everytime it ended he would say, "More me!"


We're headed to Arkansas early in the morning and will be without internet till Sunday. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Thanksgiving Pics

Here are some pictures from our weekend in Arkansas.

Carter and Daddy Phil.

Enjoying the fountain outside my parent's house.

Carter enjoyed two things about thanksgiving dinner: the food and the fun under the table.

Carter "helped" with Christmas decorations - in his angel's halo.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sorry for not posting earlier in the weekend. I couldn't get my camera hooked up, and it took days to realize that I could at least post a few pics from mom's camera.

We've been having a lovely time at my mom and dad's new place in The Largest Gated Community in the US. I'm not kidding.

Some findings from the weekend include:

1) We can make the 10 hour drive straight through, even if we don't leave Atlanta until 4:30pm.

2) If everyone else is eating off of china, Carter does NOT want to eat off of plastic.

3) Carter loves sausage. LOVES it.

Fall!

Fall has definitely arrived in the south (despite the nearly 80 degree weather). The trees are just gorgeous here right now. We're lucky to have three red beauties in our yard.

We're headed to Arkansas tomorrow evening to spend Thanksgiving with my parents in their new house! We'll drive part way and then make the rest of the drive in on Thanksgiving morning. Here's hoping that Carter likes road trips...

Thanksgiving Woodland Fun

No postings for awhile as we are headed up to a rented cabin the Catskill Mountains this week for a little Thanksgivings vacation with Helen, Phil, Patrick & Kir. Don't worry, we will take the camera with us and post lots of pictures when we get back!

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Fauxgiving

Carter (the elder) and Donna are in town this weekend. Since we won't be seeing them at Thanksgiving, we had fauxgiving tonight. The smoked turkey was as smokey and delicious as ever, Thomas' mashed potatoes were yummy and I had brussel sprouts for the very first time (contrary to popular opinion, they were good too). And it wouldn't have been like thanksgiving without Joo, so she came over for fauxgiving, too!