Gearing up for Thanksgiving

So, the Bates are gearing up for Thanksgiving as is anyone else. My parents and my brother and his family are coming up to our neck of the woods to celebrate this weekend. We are doing Thanksgiving dinner with them.

B's family always has Thanksgiving lunch, and like any Bates event, it's a packed house. I know for sure there will most likely be 30+ there. That's just the ones I know will be there. If other come, we could hit the 40+ range. While from a numbers standpoint that just seems crazy, it's actually kind of nice to get to visit with everyone. It seems as the kids have gotten older, we don't get to see as much of the extended family as we like. It also reminds me a lot of the Thanksgivings and Christmases we used to have when I was a kid. I can remember some of my dad's brothers and sisters coming in to our house and we would have people sleeping in the attic, on a mattress in the kitchen floor, on couches, on floors, etc. Both of my parents come from large families, so I guess I'm kind of acclimated to the craziness.

Anyway, I hope you and yours have a happy and safe holiday. Just remember to stay out of my & B's way when we hit the roads on Friday for those early bird sales because that Star Wars toy belongs to one of our boys. :)

Our Halloween fiasco

Here it is as promised!

M played youth football, and the high school has a "youth football" night for the younger kids. The date was originally slated for 10/16 I believe (which was during fall break). The younger kids get to run through the tunnel or some other thing with the varsity football players. They then have each squad on the field and they announce them. That is a pretty big thing to a bunch of little boys.

So, someone in their infinite wisdom moved the next home game-which fell on Halloween. Now, most little kids are more worried about going trick or treating on Halloween. The National Honor Society (I think) decided to do a trunk or treat for the kids coming to the game. B asked if any of the players from the team wanted to attend; we got no responses, so we were going to proceed with our normal plans. Later in the week, we did get an email from a couple of kids that wanted to do the game. B, being the head coach, said that if even one boy wanted to go, we were going.

So Halloween came and some of the boys wanted to go; we made our first stop at Grandpa & Step Grandma's. We left there and went straight to the high school to meet up with the boys. We stood there from 6:30 until around 7:10 (the picture of G in her stroller was while we were waiting). There wasn't a trunk or treat event at all really. There was a school bus way away from the entrance where we think they were handing out candy. We stood around and waited and when the time got close, I paid my $6! to get in, and I went into the stands and waited with G & W, who were getting very antsy by now. B and M came up with a bag of candy and said they weren't going to do it because not enough kids showed up. I felt so sorry for those little boys. They were so excited to get to go onto the field with the big guys. So we finally got out of there around 7:45-8 because we ran into some people we knew.

We left the field and made a stop a Meme and Papa's so they could see the kids; by the time we got done there it was almost 8:30 and it was really too late to go trick or treating. I took the kids to Mickey D's to make up for it, but sheesh! I felt so bad for M. Talk about basically ruining your whole night.

I emailed the president of the school board, the AD, and the teacher sponsoring the trunk or treat. I got a nice sympathetic email from the school board president and the teacher...the teacher's email came with a "Would you like to help next year?" D'OH! I never heard back from the AD....

So we didn't get to trick or treat this year...BUMMER! I've been making up for the lack of chocolate at home with the candy dish here at work which I've been hitting badly because of the stress...

Halloween pics!