Thanksgiving, Moving on to Christmas

Well, I haven't posted any pictures from our Thanksgiving adventures. I won't delay any longer, so I'll just write about it. Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we had a beautiful meal with Bob's parents and Grandma. It was a relaxing day, which we all needed. Bob's work schedule this semester has been INSANE.

Friday morning we packed up and headed south for Greenville. Friday night was the lighting of the Bond County Courthouse in Greenville with Christmas lights. The photo below is taken from the WGEL website, but you can see Reed in the background with Granny and P-pa.

Our first Santa sighting of the season

The next day we headed out to Daniken Tree Farm, our annual tradition, to cut our own Christmas tree. If I ever find the camera, I will upload some photos of the event. It was fun and the weather was really pleasant. Some people wait for snow to go search for their tree. I, on the other hand, was perfectly content in the 60 degree weather.

Sunday was my mom's Thanksgiving feast, where they host both sides of the family, the Reeds and the Mahers. We had a great time catching up with the extended family and we surprised them all with the news that I am expecting our third child in May. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay too long, and Sunday afternoon made the long trek home.

Monday morning we dropped Bob at the airport for a computer software conference in Las Vegas. I didn't really look for the missing camera all week because I thought he packed it for his trip. Oops. He had a great, but busy week. He passed 4 certification exams and met a lot of people in the industry. My non-gambler even won some money the last evening he was there. We'll probably use it to help finance Christmas.

Reed's solitary request for Christmas costs about $150. The good thing is he only wants one thing, the bad thing is he only wants that one thing. Nothing else will do. There's been a big change from Christmas at age 2-1/2 and Christmas at age 3-1/2. There were no expectations last year. This year, he knows exactly how things are supposed to operate. If he is good, Santa will arrive on his sleigh on Christmas Eve to give him anything he wants. Let's hope the price tag on his gift requests don't continue to increase. I keep telling myself that he has no concept of money. Besides, Santa makes the gifts anyway, he doesn't buy them!

Anyway, we retrieved Bob from the airport on Friday and had a nice weekend that included celebrating Grandpa Mihelich's birthday. We had a great time for that on Saturday and we all tried to recover from the busy week prior by having a relaxing Sunday.

This week it's back to the grind. Bob has two more weeks until he finishes up the semester. December, as always, is shaping up to be a very busy month. I hope to have lots to post here. Now, I just need to locate that camera....