Thanksgiving and the Turkey Trot

My parents made the treck out here on Wednesday for Thanksgiving. Kylie loved helping in the kitchen, helping peel potatoes with Nana. I bought the smallest turkey I could find at the supermarket, he was 23.06 pounds, but it was awesome and we have lots of leftovers.

We had a great time hanging out with my parents and we had a good Thanksgiving. This morning it was 20 degrees and Cambridge had a Turkey Trot so the girls and I ran the 1k. Karinda and I finished and Kylie made it half way. It is a good thing it is Cambridge and I could ask the people at the half way mark to take her back, gotta love a small town. The 1k felt good and someone said the girls could hang with them while I ran the 5k, so I did. I ran the whole thing, not fast but I did it!

Another Surprise Visit for the Girls!

Carter and Trey!













Friday morning Karinda was surprised when Uncle Brian knocked on the window and then Carter got to go wake Kylie up! Carter and Trey came with Uncle Brian, Aunt Kelly, and Kelly's parents Jim and Marianne DeJonge. We had a great time with our visitors. Kylie did whatever Carter wanted and Karinda loves hanging out with Trey. When the boys were sleeping they had fun with Aunt Kelly doing some crafts that she brought.

Eric and Brian with the kids, could anything be sweeter!?!

The Big Reveal! From Drab to Fab!

The basement stairs, we added walls instead of spindles, and a door to our bedroom.

Where the bedroom door was (off the kitchen) we took a wall out, moved the refrigerator over and put the walkway in its place.

The kitchen carpet

replaced with tile.

The wall that got the ball rolling. There was a long narrow hallway from the front door so we took that wall out and opened up the dining room.

The kitchen and dining room.

The entrance from the
bedroom to the closet and

bathroom to make more
room in the closet and another
big wall in the bedroom.

Our bedroom, we moved the entrance door and the doorway to the closet and bathroom.

This is the girls bathroom.

These are the girls rooms. Karinda wanted pink and peace signs.

Kylie wanted her comforter from home and a red stripe, she also wanted her "Fruit of the Spirit tree."

Birthday, Birthday, Birthday

The girls went to another birthday party yesterday for their friends Ellie and Monique, it was a dress up party and they looked so cute. This was the third birthday party they went to in 8 days. Our birthday party spree started last week Friday, with a Luau party for their friend Lexie. Sunday they went to the park for their friend Breelle, and yesterday. Thankfully they were both invited to them all. It has been fun and a good sign that they are making a lot of friends here!

Corn piles

Here in Nebraska this is so common no one even pays attention, CORN PILES. There is even a small town elevator that ran out of room so they put it in the city street. NCP (Nebraska Corn Processing) also ran our of room and has two corn piles. It amazes me that it is corn,

easily amoused I guess. The girls were pretty amazed by it too. A few nights this week we would drive out in the field and watch the deer back there. The girls also loved it, they loved to talk about what the deer were thinking, it was so cute. Later in the week one of the guys working saw the deer eating the corn from one of the corn piles. He said to Eric, "You are late I just caught some of those deer eating our profit sharing." (He has an adorable spanish accent which made it very funny.)

Happy Birthday Kylie Jean!

Tuesday we celebrated Kylie's birthday!

First thing in the morning Kylie got to open her gift from her sister, the game Operation. Once they had played enough of that we did some baking. Then out to enjoy the beautiful day before bringing Karinda to Girl Scouts so we could bake some more and get

ready for our special guests.

We invited our friends the Sines and our favorite "resident uncle"
Mr. Chris over for cake. We would have had then for dinner but we

still don't have a table. Kylie was so patient and waited all day to open
her gift from grandpa and grandma and us, a karaoke machine. It has been so fun, the girls have been loving it, but it has just made it a little hard to concentrate on school. I am sure it will wear off and in the mean time they are reading and singing right!?!

Life has been good and school has been fun. We have been studing some books we got from the library about Nebraska together. On Wednesday we took a trip to Grand Island for some errands and to go to the Stuhr Museum. We checked out the "Indian building" and then went to check out the Pawnee Indian lodge they have but we were very disappointed that we couldn't go inside.

We took a walk to check out some of the other buildings and we ran into a lady that had just finished teaching a class. She was so kind and gave us a tour of the house from the 1800's. We all loved it. She told us we could to and pump the well and ring the bell by another house too!

During the week Eric brought home a ladder from work so I knew what that meant for the weekend. Finishing the painting, good and bad, good because that means we are done with the major painting, bad because it is my birthday weekend and no girl wants to spend her birthday weekend painting. He did actually help me all afternoon and we got it done and maybe next weekend we can go out.

We are still waiting for our dinning room table to arrive, need to finish the laundry room/entry, and to finish the trim and windows. I think I will finally do the reveal once we have a table and a nice light above it!

Halloween Part 2

We ended our weekend Sunday night with Trick or Treating on a beautiful fall evening. Kylie abonded Hello Kitty and went with a dog costume and Karinda went for some braids and was Laura this time instead of Mary. This was really the girls first time with Trick or Treating door to door. In other years we just went to a few friends and grandparents or a "Trunk or Treat".

They loved it, they ran from house to house for a while and then they slowed down. By the end they were begging to go home, only we were at the farthest point from out house, so we hit a few more houses on the way home and then they ran up the driveway to see if the bowl we left with a "please take one" sign was still there. It was then the real fun began. They got to hand out the candy to the other kids that came here, another first for them! When asked what they liked better, it was handing out the candy! Good to know for next year :)