Turkey day was great!...we woke up and Chris made a big breakfast of biscuits and gravy, eggs and bacon-the kids loved it-they love when Chris makes them his famous biscuits and gravy! Then we got to cooking-Chris made his families specialty-squash casserole-until Chris and I were married I'm pretty sure the Beckers hadn't had a cheesy casserole at too many get togethers-Chris introduced a little casserole cookin' and he's had the job every Thanksgiving since-even though he promises that no one in my family eats it and he's not sure why he is requested to bring it year after year-let me tell you the dish was completely empty this year! I made a few new recipes this year-I made a rosemary roasted vegetable dish-which was not only beautiful, but delicious!...and I made a new recipe for blackberry cobbler-chris' favorite and a super easy-super delicious recipe! As usual there was way too much food and we all ate way too much-now that Lainie has decided to become a vegetarian (and she takes it very seriously!no animal eating!) all she ate on Thanksgiving was pumpkin pie-at the end of the night she had had 3 pieces and so needless to say she is sick of pumpkin pie! Since Molly was hosting a wonderful Thanksgiving in Chatanooga and was not here to shop with me on Friday at 5 a.m., I had to find some other suckers to get up with me....I set my plan in motion and packed up my family to spend the night at Chris Payne's house Thanksgiving night, knowing that if I was there ,surely I was going to be able to get Taylor up to go with me! To my surprise, Sally and Sarah were also spending the night and after a little convincing, I talked them into it to. We set up girl camp in the living room and thought we were going to sleep at about 10.-I left Tim and my Chris out by the bonfire and snuggled into bed...at about midnight sassy (the payne's dog) came in and climbed right into bed with me chomping on a water bottle-i was mad, grabbed it and threw it-it hit taylor, who took it and hid it and led sassy out of the room...we had a little discussion about how we were getting up in a few hours and needed to sleep-about an hour later-tim let coco(our little schnauzer) out of her kennel and she came bounding in licking and jumping and whining-this upset sassy and all of the sudden there was about to be a scuffle on taylor-i grabbed coco-stomping back in the back room and kenneled her as taylor took sassy into chris and tims room and we settled back in for sleep-about and hour and a half later tristan woke up and turned the tv on LOUD and woke us all up-he wanted to watch cartoons...my alarm went off at 4 a.m. and we all got up-i'm not so sure we needed an alarm-we were on quite a role of being awakened!....we headed out to chesterfield mall and scored some great deals-we got a free mp3 player from old navy(yes molly i got it this year-i didn't oversleep), i got a buy one get one FREE deal on holiday sweaters at the gap-so once again i got the kids their christmas sweaters and macy's had some great sales too....oh and my highlight of the morning was the eggnog latte (my fave) from starbucks to kick off the big morning. we headed of the mall as the sun was coming up and went to meet the rest of the becker girls down at soulard, we hit a cute store down there called -the porch-super cute gift store! next, it was on to viviano's-i was quite surprised to find out that they have opened other locations around st. louis so there were very few people in the store! we hit the missouri bakery for a few sweets and then onto lunch at Favazza's- it did not disappoint. Lainie and I headed out early and headed home...Chris's grandfather was rushed to the hospital on thanksgiving night because he was having trouble swallowing his turkey-and they live in a tiny town in kentucky-long story short the surgeon finished his thanksgivning meal with his family before coming in to perform surgery on chris's grandfather and after surgery, he seemed fine, but kathy and keaton and grandma jones got a call in the middle of the night to hurry back to the hospital b/c he was not doing so well. they ended up transferring him to a hospital in Paducah, and after tests-they found that he had a slight heartattack and he has pneumonia..so chris went to kentucky to be with him. we're all praying for him, but he is quite a fighter...he has diabetes, parkinson's disease, emphesyma, and double lung cancer (has had it for 2 years)!
So Chris surprised me and he and the boys put our tree up and put the lights on it while Lainie and I were shopping and lunching. When I got home, Chris headed off to Kentucky and I was left with the kids and the fun job of getting out our 4 crates full of Hallmark ornaments to decorate the tree. Those familiar with Hallmark ornaments know that there is a system to our tree and I had to remind my children of the rules that go along with decorating the tree. Now I love our tree-it makes tons of noise (because of all of the moving ornaments) and it is beautiful and full of character and the kids love to tell the stories of the ornaments and they love picking out a new hallmark ornament every year...but oh would i love to have my own "themed" tree that i could decorate as i like-one of these years i will have it! Now when Chris and I got married we were very lucky b/c all of his life his mom had been collecting ornaments for him, so from the very beginning we always had a ton of ornaments on our tree. The hallmark ornaments though all come in their own box, wrapped in there own plastic and this makes for a very long and tedious task of decorating the tree-b/c you have to open the boxes, unwrap the ornament, hang the ornament, re-stuff the box with the plastic and then close the box back up-do this over and over like 150 times!..now i see why chris is so sneaky and acts like putting up the tree and doing the lights is a huge deal-i think he's pulling my leg and acting like its a big deal so i won't want to trade jobs with him....well 3 1/2 hours later the tree was decorated (i still have one more crate downstairs that i have not put on the tree yet)
I think we're about ready for good old St. Nick to come on down that chimney! Hope you all had a great Turkey Day!
-now her favorite movie(good girl)...and tristan was indiana jones.
the weekend before halloween we had trunk or treat at church...it was so much fun and one of the winning trunks did a leave it to beaver theme-it was hilarious!
a few friends from school joined us this year and a group of girls dressed up as cat burgalers.....
-their costumes were great! it was pretty cold-so it made the trick or treating from trunk to trunk move along a little faster. 
we had a costume parade and then they had a pumpkin decorating contest and they had a few games planned for the kids to play...the adults enjoyed good conversation around the fire pits and the magees set up a big screen in their front yard and the kids all set up their sleeping bags and watched the great pumpkin charlie brown. check out this wagon-it is my friend terri's - she has triplets (who are now 7) and jacob (who is 6)-this was how she toted her brood around when they were younger!.
.now the kids love to pull eachother around in it. the next night was halloween-
the weather was perfect-in the 70's in fact i think we worked up a sweat trick or treating around the neighborhood. 
we had dinner with our neighbors outside to kick off the evening and at dark set out to trick or treat-we picked up quite a few friends along the way-i think we had a group of about 15 people by the end of the night. 
the kids got way too much candy! 
sunday was chris's birthday-they came back early from hunting and we had a small family dinner with chris parents, matt, jamie and alayna, amanda and matt, nathaniel, grandma dolan and my mom. 
i made a few soups, cornbread and chris's favorite dessert-blackberry cobbler. 
since chris is going to a mountaineering school and ice climb in colorado, in december, and climbing mt. rainier in the spring, everyone got him either gift cards to rei or something off of his climbing registry there.
he has a few more things to get to be totally ready for his trip and i think he is getting pretty excited and i am excited for him.
this was tristan and my first time ever to attend a hockey game..hockey is pretty fun to watch! we went with the cub scouts-so tristan was really excited about getting a badge from the blues. and what excited the boys even more was that cam janssen was signed to the blues from the new jersey devils at the end of last season and cam was a good friend of my brother sam's. 
during the funeral and the memorial bbq's that we have for sam, the boys got to hang out with cam and play washers with him and nervously they asked him for his autograph-he was very sweet to the boys.
the boys are especially proud to know cam because he is the fighter-and we missed his first big fight of the year by one night...although he did not let us down because he tried to start about 5 fights the night that we were there-
and the boys would jump up and yell and cheer him on as he was about to bash some other players face in!...and they bragged to all of the cub scouts around us-so by the end of the night all of these little 6 year old boys were saying "where's #55, we wanna see him fight"-gee was i so proud!
we were all bundled up in coats, hats and gloves and had our coffees in hand to keep us warm-
the girls were troopers and played a great final game...
it may have had something to do with the fact that we bribed them with lamars donuts after the game! 
oh and i can't forget 2 weekends ago lainie had ella spend the night and they put on quite a show for me-after a visit to the local libby lu store (in the clearence section) we ended up with $7.00 dresses-that matched- and pop star dress up kits...
i thought that rachel would kill me because the girls wanted to wear the ensemble the next morning to church-i complied but would not let them wear the hair!-
they danced around all night singing hannah montana and the cheetah girls songs and then on monday night called eachother to plan out their outfits for school on tuesday-guess what they wore.....
and how about the rock star one-handed glove ella has (think madonna)-lainie's popstar dressup didn't come with a glove so she wore a fingerless winter glove to church and school-just to make sure they matched!
