Our Wonderful Thanksgiving Trip

Okay, we actually took our trip the weekend before Thanksgiving, but it was close enough for us. Frank, Lisa, and I left on the thursday before Thanksgiving and headed out to Portsmouth, VA, to visit our "baby." Megan had taken thursday and friday off of work so she could spend the time with us, then her boss asked her to come in for a "couple of hours" on thursday. Of course that ended up being longer than we had planned so we treated ourselves to a dinner out. We were able to spend some time with Megan's future father-in-law, Terry Hancock, and his two other sons. What a wonderful family. Pictures you ask? I forgot to bring my camera to dinner. And then, when I did get my camera out, I was only able to take 3 pictures before the battery died. I'm waiting for the other pictures we took to come from Megan's camera.

Anyway, here is our Megan with her Daddy.

This is Megan's "baby", our granddog Barkley. He enjoyed having all the extra attention from Grandma, Granddad, and Aunt Lisa, and we enjoyed playing with him.

Barkley's favorite resting place was on top of Frank. He is a really cute dog and a lot of fun.

On Friday evening we headed from Portsmouth, across the state to Hardy, VA, (near Roanoke) and the Dubyk's. Saturday morning we were awakened by our twin grandsons coming in to see "Granddad" and "Gramma Baba." They had already been playing with Aunt Lisa. It was so much fun being around those boys. Stephanie spends so much time doing fun things with them.

Here is Alex working on a hand print "turkey" for Thanksgiving. Stephanie cut out a bunch of different color construction paper feathers, then traced the boys' hands for the turkey body. A little glue, a beak and some legs, and presto! Lisa, Stephanie and I each made one also, but ours were very boring compared to the ones Alex and Jack made.

Here is Jack. He liked drawing around his hand by himself. Both boys had just that day learned how to pull the tops off of the markers for themselves. Luckily Stephanie had just gotten washable markers.

Granddad liked hanging out with Jack and Alex. Saturday night Stephanie and Jon went to a fancy party and we were the babysitters. That means the boys got to watch TV and be spoiled (only slightly) by Gramma Baba. I really enjoyed playing with them and getting them ready for bed. We got lots of fun snuggles and hugs.

This is Jack watching a movie with Granddad. Frank really loved the boys' attention.

We went to church with Stephanie and Jon on Sunday. It was a challenge getting around that early-- their service starts at 9:30 and Jon doesn't like to be late. But we made it and enjoyed visiting their small branch. Stephanie was called as a Young Women's counseller and three different people invited us to move to the area.

Jack and Alex all dressed up and ready to go to church. They were brushing their teeth in front of a Curious George video. The weather was nice and we went out to their back yard to play a little bit. The boys love having a big back yard to run around and play in. Lisa went out with Stephanie to visit the neighbors horses. Their house is really nice and the property is wonderful.

Monday morning Stephanie asked the boys if they wanted to help make some sugar cookies, so Jack and Alex grabbed chairs from the dining room and pushed them up to the kitchen counter. They love "helping" Mommy measure out the ingredients and using the mixer.

Although they think the mixer makes a little bit too much noise, so here they are covering their ears.

Here Jack is dumping sugar into the mixing bowl with Alex looking on. Stephanie figures out half-measures so each boy gets to add the same amount of each ingredient.

Almost finished mixing and getting ready to move into the dining room for the next step.

Now Alex is helping to spread flour on the table so the cookies can be rolled out and cut into fun shapes.

Jon helped the boys decide which shaped cookie cutters they wanted to use. Here's Alex trying his cutters on like bracelets.

Here's Jack with some of his cookie cutter shapes, waiting for his turn to help.

Daddy and Mommy helping the boys cut out cookies and place them on cookie sheets to be baked. This was lots of fun, but if you didn't get the cookies on cookie sheets fast enough they were wadded up into balls of dough and had to be re-rolled.

More cutting cookies. Alex with his back to the camera, Jack across the table.

Jon and Jack.

Alex and Stephanie

And now Stephanie, Jack, and Alex are frosting the cookies and enjoying the "fruits of their labors." We all enjoyed the yummy cookies the boys made for us.

And so, here is Grandma with Jack and Granddad with Alex enjoying some snuggles before we head back home to Fredericksburg. You can see by the blue "doggie" blankets, the pacie and thumb, that it is just about nap time. When the boys went down for their afternoon nap on Monday afternoon, we headed back for Fredericksburg and home.

This was a most wonderful trip. It was very difficult for Frank and the night after we got back home he fell and broke his hip, but that is a different blog to come. For these 4 days, we got to visit our youngest daughters and our twin grandsons and our "granddog", and it was great!!