Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with the Jackson Clan at Kim's house. After dinner and chit-chat, it was time for the kids to open presents. This year Ben has a new-found love of unwrapping gifts. He barely noticed what was inside because he just wanted to open the next one.

Here he is opening his Thomas ball pit. Big hit!

And his Home Depot tool bench.

A cheesy grin for the camera!

I think he liked Kenny's gift, a gas tank for the boat, best of all. He tried using it to fill up his own boat, which was another huge hit!

And Santa even paid a visit to the kids this year. As usual, Ben was very excited as long as he could keep his distance. It is a little tricky trying to take a video while holding the person you are trying to tape, so this isn't so great.

Milkshakes

It's no secret Ben loves his mint chip milkshakes. On Christmas Eve day, we whipped up a batch for Ben.

In Ben's world, no milkshake is complete without whipped cream. Thanks Gammy!

While we made milkshakes, Dad was whipping up some  meatballs for Christmas dinner. Ben was "helping":

Thanksgiving 2012

This year we hosted Thanksgiving for 20+ family members. With me 25 weeks pregnant, we were already down some manpower as I move a lot more slowly these days, so it kind of sucked when Mike accidentally sliced the pad off his left index finger while prepping/brining the turkey the night before Thanksgiving.

He refused to go to urgent care, so we bandaged it up and put a glove over it. That didn't stop it from bleeding though. 6 hrs later, at 11:30 when we went to bed, it was still gushing blood, so he finally went to urgent care and they got him all fixed up in time for Thanksgiving day.

While Mike was prepping the turkeys, Ben was "helping" but when he saw this cooler (or garbage can, as he called it), all bets were off. He had a blast just dragging this thing around the house and pretending he was a garbage man.

Clearly we were a little busy, because some how I managed to get only one photo of Thanksgiving day. Here are the kids eating dinner at the "kiddie table." So cute! (That's Riley, Ben, Carson, and Parker, from left to right, in case anyone was unsure.)