Much Ado About Zilch: Thanksgiving and Dinosaurs

So it's been a little while.

One problem was that I ran out of storage space for the blog. Coincidentally, one of my facebook friends was having the same issue and someone gave her the solution. In case you are interested, I simply created a new gmail account and made it a co-author on the blog. So it gave me more space. Ta-da!

So before we get to the super awesome stuff, here's a boring update:

We've been in Virginia for just over a month now. We've had several people look at our house, but they complain that the (brand-spankin-new) driveway is too steep. Their loss.

Will commutes an hour to and from work every day. He takes the car, a train, and a shuttle to get there. His job is alright, but will be more fun once he gets done with training and gets on to a real project. We're working on giving him more time to play video games. Also, he's my hero. For real.

I'm almost 28 weeks (aka 2/3 of the way done). My biggest problem is probably my sciatic nerve, which I had problems with when I was pregnant with Ellie. Basically, the nerve that runs down the back of my left leg hurts, especially first thing in the morning. It's challenging, but there isn't a whole lot I can do. It's a really good thing that I have so many people around to help me and tell me I'm stupid when I try to do too much. We still don't know the gender of the baby, but we're working on it. Also, I've started my class back up.

Ellie talks and talks and talks. She's absolutely HILARIOUS, and has actually started to take naps again on a semi-regular basis, and I cannot express how absolutely awesome that is. She loves being at Grandma and Grandpa's house and swinging and sliding and reading and building with blocks. She really loves having her cousins around all the time.

So, on to the fun stuff.

First of all my oldest sister and her family came to visit for Thanksgiving. It was crazy, chaotic, and tons of fun. We haven't seen them for 2 years, so it was fun to see how grown up the kids are. We had Thanksgiving the Sunday before, since that was the only time we could all get together. We had my parents, 4 siblings, our spouses, and 9 grandkids (not including Baby). So 19 people running around. Hence the chaos. So Jaymie and her husband and 4 kids stayed for a week and went on all sorts of adventures. I didn't go on most of them, but we did all go to Dinosaur land. Also, Jaymie is a professional photographer, so she was kind enough to take family pictures of all of us.

So all that being said, here are ~~some~~ lots of pictures (the good ones are Jaymie's):

Ellie and Shaylee (10)

Jake (8)

Bryce (9) and Avery (7)

So you might have noticed that Jaymie's kids are 10, 9, 8 and 7. Just wait until February, when they are 10, 10, 9 and 7 for a couple weeks before Shaylee turns 11.

So we have this awesome tradition where my dad chases people around the house with the turkey before it gets cooked. Well, he would say that the turkey chases people. It also makes turkey noises as it chases (GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE). It hasn't had too many people to chase for the last couple of years, but with Jaymie's family here, it was too good to pass up. Unfortunately I didn't get to watch that part because I had to be at church early. But I'm sure it was awesome.

The spread. It was delicious. It was also awesome leftovers. And eating it early meant that on Thanksgiving day, we relaxed and ate turkey sandwiches and leftover Chinese food. It was awesome.

Lindsay and baby Ethan (9 months)

Will and his festive zombie survival shirt.

Anyway, that was Thanksgiving. Sorry the pictures are crappy.

On to Dinosaur land! Now, this place is, as my mother put it, "wonderfully tacky".

Pretty much it's out in the middle of nowhere and is full of large statues of dinosaurs and monsters. Some are pretty good and some of them have seen better days.