Thanksalot

I should have written this yesterday, because then I would have had nothing but sweetness to share for this Thanksgiving. Posting after a day like today is going to taint my memory of just how sweet the weekend was, but maybe that will make it more palatable because otherwise I would have just gushed for several paragraphs about how great my kids are and who wants to hear that?

Today they both decided to forgo the nap and scream at me instead. We went to get our Christmas tree today because it is the first day of Advent and last year we didn't get our stuff up until way too late and I didn't have time to enjoy it. I had looked forward to taking cute photos of the children (a la pumpkin patch) amidst Christmas trees but they were not feeling cooperative and this is the only one I got.

This is a picture of Jack running to tell me he needed to go potty which actually meant that he'd just pooped his pants. Awesome.

But aside from that, this weekend really was awesome. My kids really are great, and I know it even when I'm too miffed to gush about them. They were so well behaved on Thanksgiving. They let us cook all afternoon without needing constant attention, or maybe that is just a testament to what a good job my grandma did in entertaining them, but either way, somehow (I have no idea how) all this food materialized on our table without even seeming like an effort. They very cooperatively took marathon naps to allow us time to sit around and read up on the origin and popularization of Thanksgiving, taking about a million tangents (one of the further afield being the evolution of the corporation, because the Pilgrims after all had gotten their ticket to America from the Virgina Corporation, one of the world's first corporations, and where in the world did it come from anyway?). This is what happens when you marry a history major. You can lose hours to Wikipedia in a single sitting. The children woke up bright eyed and excited to eat. And who can blame them- check out this spread!

They both stayed up well past their bedtimes but had zero meltdowns and ate well and hung out with us at the table for far longer than should be expected at their ages, and then played very delightfully together on the floor afterwards. By which I mean Sadie looked at books for several seconds before stuffing them into her mouth and Jack watched dino train on the iphone. But I couldn't really argue because they were letting us adults sit around and go back for seconds and thirds and fourths (and then dessert!!) and listen to my grandma tell stories about life on the farm and about my grandpa, which was a lovely way to spend the end of the dinner. After that, of course, Jack needed to get a little silly with his daddy.

Always got to rile them up before bedtime.

And because I'm a terrible mother and apparently only take photos of one of my children, here are more pictures of Jack being adorable with his nana and grandparents and parents. He had a great time this weekend with so many people around to love him.

(So did Sadie, even if I lack the photographic evidence to prove it. I think maybe I don't take pictures of her enough because I'm always holding her. Yes, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)