Thanksgiving 2017

We traveled to Mount Pleasant for Thanksgiving again this year. We don't get to visit often, and especially after losing my grandfather this year I wanted to spend some time with family there. I may not have that many more holidays left with Grandma.

We stayed at Heather and Will's new house, which is really nice. They have a guest house so we have our own space there, which makes it really nice! This summer we will have to visit often as they have a pool as well.

Lunch went well - Grandma didn't cook much this year, so everyone else pitched in and my great Aunt Nita did the bulk of the cooking. I hadn't seen her in years so that was a nice surprise as well. I made some desserts of course.

 The day after Thanksgiving we headed over to see Dad and Paula's new house and have some barbeque chicken that Dad made on the grill. They have a nice place now, and it's pretty convenient having Dad back in Mount Pleasant since we try to get down there fairly regularly.

Baking Zeppoles with Yiayia

Kate still loves to bake with Yiayia and Nana any chance she gets. THey decided to try something new and made Italian Zeppole, which is a deep fried dough dessert that you dip in chocolate. They reminded me a lot of beignets, actually, and we all enjoyed them!

 Kate did a great job cutting the dough evenly. She's pretty handy in the kitchen these days.

Birthday with the Unis

One of Kate's best friends from school was unable to attend her birthday party due to a soccer game, so today they had a small surprise party at the regular "Uni club" meeting after school. I'm so thankful for wonderful friends for Kate and their moms who will go out of their way to spoil my little girl as well.

Matching up their triple "best friends" necklace.

Birthday with Family

Since Kate's birthday party venue was loud and full of crazy kids, we opted to do a separate celebration this year with family. Kate chose IHOP as her lunch venue for the festivities, so we met up with Yiayia, Nanay, Bill, Mom, Richard, Trey, and Richard Sr. on her actual birthday today.

Celebrating Eight!

Tomorrow Kate turns 8! Today we had her party for her friends at a local trampoline park. She had been to a party here before and decided that she also wanted to do a party here for herself. It was a lot of fun! She had a mixture of school friends, church friends, and childhood friends in attendance. Nick's Aunt Cathy made her an amazing Descendants cake for the celebration, which was delicious. Kate was super excited she got to keep the doll too.

Heather and Olivia drove in yesterday afternoon so that they could celebrate with us, so Kate had a special sleepover with her best friend as well. I'd say as far as birthday weekends go, this one is pretty outstanding so far.

Pumpkin Carving Day 3

Carving day 3 needed to be pretty productive, so we got busy on the more complex pumpkins and watched movies all day while carving at the table.

By Brandi:

 By Vickie:

By Bill:

 Collaboration pumpkins by Bill, Vickie, and shading by Brandi:

 360* pumpkins:

 By Nick (shading by Brandi):

Pumpkin Carving, Day 2

We only added 9 carved pumpkins to the bunch today, but we gutted all of the remaining pumpkins. Tomorrow is going to be a major carving day, for sure!

By Brandi:

By Nick:

By Vickie:

By Bill: