Thanksgiving 2012

We were going to go to Utah for Thanksgiving, but I had some pre-term labor issues a couple weeks prior and we decided it was probably safest to stick around for the holiday.  But let's not let the pre-term labor story end there.  All should know that Barack Obama is responsible for putting me in the hospital two days after he was re-elected.  I am completely serious.  The night of the election I was so distressed and discouraged when I realized the way things were turning out.  Sure, in hindsight I'm not quite as bugged, but the night of? The stress was enough to start contractions.
I didn't take them seriously until Thursday morning when they started to grow in intensity.  I decided to head on over to the hospital, and yep, I was in labor.  Awesome. I was only 32.5 weeks along, so I wasn't too keen on having a baby quite yet.  Thankfully, after 3 doses of medication, the contractions slowed down enough that my doctor was comfortable sending me home.  This is the part that struck me as funny.  Sure I wanted to go home, I had no interest in spending the night at the hospital.  However, I was really surprised when the nurse told me a few times that the contractions were slowing down in intensity and speed.  To me, I had been contracting for almost 48 hours, by the time they sent me home, every movement my body was making made it feel like an intense contraction.  The nurse also informed me that the medication was pretty powerful and I was feeling those side effects as well.  All I know is I felt like crap when they sent me home, but happy was I to be leaving.
I had to rest for a few days, and there were a couple days there that I thought I'd be back in the hospital, but thankfully, I took it easy enough that the contractions stopped altogether after about a week. Now, at 37 weeks, I'm dealing with the occasional Braxton Hicks.
In the end, it was just us three for Thanksgiving.  It was really nice to know that I could prepare a humble Thanksgiving feast for us, and we could enjoy each other's company and not be miserable that we weren't with our extended family.  We are a family, we like each other a lot.
Mitchell didn't think Thanksgiving was quite as great as Halloween, and he's certainly forgotten about it in the excitement of preparing for Christmas, but the Thanksgiving season is definitely one of my favorite times of the year. It's the perfect way to start off the season of giving!

Mitchell's new trick- climbing up to find the candy. 

When is this kid going to learn to smile good for the camera? Gah!

Our Thanksgiving Feast prepared by yours truly! 34 weeks pregnant.

Remember October?

Gah! I'm turning into most of the people on my personal blog list...those who haven't updated their blogs in like a year.  October was pretty great.  I spent a good part of the month getting ready for a Halloween Party that we hosted for Mitchell's friends.  It was a ton of fun to plan, but it turned out better in my head! I need to remember that 3-4 year olds don't have the kind of attention span I give them credit for.  The handful of games that I planned only took up about 30 minutes of the party, but in my head, they were busy with the games much longer than that! Thankfully we had a Winnie the Pooh Halloween movie that saved the day and filled up the time until the food was ready. 
It was so much fun to have Mitchell's friends over and all decked out for Halloween. All the kids did great- except one. Mine.  Our little Superwhy! was throwing a fit almost the entire time.  I think he has issues when lots of kids are in his territory. Oh well.  Thankfully Todd was home for the party, so he took care of Mitch while I supervised the other kids.

Spider webs made with almond bark, pretzels and some raisins.

Mummy dogs- surprisingly delicious!

Jell-O Worms, alot of time, but totally worth it!

My dear friend, Kate, who helped plan and execute the party. Thanks Kate!!

My personal favorite, Jack-O-Lantern ball toss.

Ghost bowling

Pin the hands on Mr. Bones

Earlier in the month, we took the opportunity to head out to an awesome pumpkin patch just outside of town.  We had a great time on the hayride, getting lost in the corn maze, and of course, picking out pumpkins.

About 30 weeks pregnant. I'm way bigger now. Yikes!

Mitchell's classic "big smile and look at the freaking camera" face!

Carving pumpkins in this California climate isn't quite the same as growing up in Utah.  Here you can only carve them like 2-3 days in advance of Halloween because it's still like 80 million degrees here by October's end. Anyways, we enjoyed our carved pumpkins for about 48 hours before the millions of nasty bugs descended on them.

Mitch only loved the pumpkin "guts" just a little. He'd laugh so hard every time I said "guts"!!

Too great not to post.

Handsome guys!

Haley's pumpkin on the left, Mitchell's in the middle, and Todd's on the right.

And a couple more photos from the big day itself- Halloween.  Have I mentioned that Mitchell fell in love with Halloween this year?  He asked for about two weeks afterwards if we could go trick-or-treating again.  And, he's still quoting a couple of Halloween books we got from the library- Room on the Broom and Halloween Night.

As his parents, it's our responsibility to make sure our kid scores BIG on Halloween. And score big he did.

And in case you haven't seen enough...

We made a bird feeder for Joy School one day.  We were severely disappointed when we put it up early October and birds didn't eat from it til like November.  But then it was cool.

This is Todd trying to act like he's got photography skills.