thanksgiving eve

our boys were out of school yesterday and that is something that i always look forward to. i am SO ready for them to have a break and for us to have several days in a row of just us 5. or just us 5 and whoever we want to add in. that won't happen til Christmas but thanksgiving break is a teenie tinie bit of that for us. we didn't do a whole lot of anything. luke was able to spend the night tuesday with one of his very best friends, which always involves staying up very late and playing lots of video games and other goofy things they like to do when they are together. the boys i had home with me were able to roll out of bed whenever they felt like it and play video games or watch tv or do whatever. nothing scheduled. i got some dessert baking done for dinner with mark and kate. our cousin cari is in visiting from california and it was her birthday so of course we had to have cake. she said she likes anything but carrot cake so i made white cake with white frosting because i know sarah beth loves that. i also made something called gooey butter cake (a paula deen recipe = lots of butter = delicious = extra poundage). i made the chocolate variation. yum.

this has nothing to do with anything, but this was what we saw when we left our house to go pick up luke. doesn't it look like toes? we thought maybe someone buried an ogre by our front door and just forgot to cover up one of his feet. we didn't dig to find out though. ok, so it's really mushrooms. but it does look like toes to me.

we had a really good evening with our napier family. delicious dinner and just a wonderful time of being together. it was good to have that relaxed time with them. sarah beth was pretty wiped out. she'd had a big day of driving around seeing places cari wanted to see again with her eyes and not just her memories, going to lunch, and getting her hair cut. she hung in there, though. she thoroughly enjoyed her supper and some of both desserts. we had no candles for cari to blow out but we did sing happy birthday - both the normal version and my dad's sad and slow one. kate and greg got some boxes from the attic that were full of things that had belonged to their mom and to mamaw jenkins. going through all of those things brought us some pretty good laughs and some tears as well. there were some hilarious pictures of greg from the 70's that the boys enjoyed a lot. big glasses, plaid pants, you know what i'm talking about. (and no, i won't be posting them here!) there were some of kathleen that they thought were sarah beth. and some beautiful ones of virginia when she was a young thing. also keith and virginia's wedding album. there was stuff everywhere. cari was able to get a few treasures to take with her, too.

at one point, we noticed something flying around in the kitchen. it was the biggest mosquito i have ever seen. in my life. i mean it. with peripheral vision, it could've been a baby hummingbird or something. i thought we could put jeremy on the job of seek and destroy but he wasn't having any part of it. he did try to go get a closer look but no way was he getting too close. cracked me up! luke volunteered in his place, which is not really smart since he is a mosquito magnet. he hung in there on the hunt but never got it. i guess jeremy hung out with luke for moral support. the bigger cousin did eventually come through, but i think it was only because the thing was highly visible, close to the ceiling and a broom's length away. pretty entertaining.