Post-Thanksgiving Recap

My apologies to all of you eagerly awaiting my blog posts. Okay I guess that is probably just Mom - sorry Mom! We have been busy entertaining the "Quincy contingent" -- Aunt Abby, Uncle Mike, and cousin Charlie, who arrived Thursday and are departing bright and early tomorrow morning. So here's the recap:

1. Successful turkey cooking with the help of Switchin Kitchens for all the side dishes, so the actual meal preparation was not nearly as arduous as it could have been.

2. The cousins have been getting along well for the most part -- Charlie idolizes Ben and is very possessive of him so the only issues we've had in that respect have been when Ben has tried to play with someone else... Charlie yelled at one of the neighborhood kids when she tried to come over to play ("That's MY Ben!") and threw sand at one of Ben's school friends who we happened to run into at the park. He just does not want to share "his" Ben. Becca follows the two of them around trying to compete for some of Charlie's attention -- "Hey Chah-yee! Hey Chah-yee! HEY CHAH-YEE!" (No response). There has also been some toy sharing issues between the two of them. Okay, a lot of sharing issues. But overall, lots of good cousin fun.

3. Friday we took the kids to Monkey Joe's and then Abby and I went out to dinner and a movie, and Saturday we went to the Schiele Museum enroute to which Joel got a $380 traffic ticket for failing to get out of the right hand lane when passing a police car conducting a traffic stop on the shoulder -- I didn't even know there was such a rule -- so I will call that excursion not terrifically successful. Sunday we went to Freedom Park and the Nature Museum, and today (with Ben and Becca back at school) Abby and I did some shopping.

4. tomorrow it's back to business as usual, but I shall leave you with a hodge-podge of random pictures taken over the last five days....