More Cousin Fun!

Just a couple more pictures of the kids playing together this week.

Sticker time (somehow I ended up covered in stickers!)...

"Driving" after dinner...

Taming the alligator!

Roasting marshmallows...

Talking on the homemade phone!

Thanksgiving Day!

This year's Thanksgiving was the most relaxing I've had in year's. My sister graciously offered to do Thanksgiving at her house since I am now eight months pregnant. I absolutely LOVE Thanksgiving, but it sure was nice to get the year off!! The food and the company was great!!

Isaac, Opa and Brian smoking the turkey....

Hanging out with Brian after dinner...

To continue the week's theme of new recipes (see my sister's blog about our Iron Turkey Competition, Part 1 and Part 2), this year's meal was a plethora of new recipes including smoked rosemary & thyme turkey, apple sausage dressing, ligon berry sauce, and razzleberry pie just to name a few. It was definitely a spread and we all ate enough to pop!

We had a wonderful day together and had such a great time celebrating all that we are thankful for!

Potty Training

Tuesday evening was the official start of Aunta's special potty training boot camp. Basically this involves allowing your untrained 2-year old to wander around the house all day with no pants on while you constantly ask them "do you need to go potty?". All I knew going into it was that Isaac was afraid of the potty and that boot camp had worked for Madeline. So, why not? Two mommy's are better than one right...so Tuesday night the pants came off.

By Wednesday night, Isaac had used the little potty a couple of times and had somehow managed not to have any accidents on the floor. He went out twice in underwear and had 2 accidents...the second of which involved a mess on the 18th hole at mini golf that Uncle Mark got to handle!

Thursday morning, he asked Oma to use the "big potty". She thought he should sit down and needless to say she never had a boy and almost got a face full! Ever since, he's been standing up and doing great at it! Thursday we pretty much stuck with underwear all day. The two pair of pants we put on him to wear to dinner ended in accidents.

Friday & Saturday...we worked on underwear and pants...and he did great again both days. Big potty and only had one accident each day...each involving more than just pee. So progress has definitely been made...we've just got to work on the multi-tasking.

I'm definitely loving Aunta's potty training boot camp, and I'm so grateful for all her help this week!!

Thanksgiving Week

Thanksgiving week was spent with Isaac's best buddy (& cousin), Madeline, in Gastonia. And boy did we ever have fun. We had a week full of fun activities. We ventured to Hickory to see Oma and Opa, the mall to see Santa, and to Ikea for a meatball lunch! And that's just to name a few things.

Now, let's keep in mind that these two kiddos are two-year olds. So, we had our rough spots too, but overall it was a great week and a lot of great memories were made.

Watching Elmo...

Hanging out on the deck...

Visiting Santa... Madeline is scared of Santa, but we made progress this week. Opa got it all started with fun stories about Santa. Isaac kept working on it by telling Madeline that Santa "is really nice. He has candy and cookies in his pockets!" At the mall, I convinced her that Santa couldn't leave the fence (like a dog) and we stood there together and snapped the following picture. Then we walked up and got a candy cane right out of his hand...but that pushed our luck just a bit and there were a couple tears that welled up but no screaming!! Progress Woohoo!!

Isaac and Audrey with Santa...

Isaac and Madeline had quite the busy couple of days leading up to Thanksgiving...and it won't be long before Audrey is following right behind them both. It's fun to watch them learn and grow together!

Party!!

This weekend we came down to Gastonia to spend the week with Isaac's cousins Madeline and Audrey. Aunta and Uncle Mark decided to start the week off with a bang by planning their own surprise 30th birthday party! We were in on the big surprise, and we had a blast.

Party Man!

Guests of Honor

Party Games

Brian headed back to Wake Forest this afternoon (poor boy has to work a few days this week), but Isaac and I stayed in Gastonia for what I'm sure will prove to be a week full of fun!

Animal Kingdom

Since we managed to finish the Magic Kingdom in one day, we decided to use our second day ticket to visit Disney's Animal Kingdom.

The park wasn't too crowded so we were actually able to ride the African Safari ride twice. The weather was overcast this morning so we actually saw quite a few animals.

Isaac's favorite part was riding the train over to the conservatory.

We ran into some characters along our travels today. Some we knew, some we didn't. Isaac was willing to talk to them all though.

We ate a late dinner, rode the monorail, and Isaac fell asleep on the bus on the way back to the hotel. It was another fun filled day at Disney!!

Halloween at Disney!

There's nothing like starting off a morning on vacation with sleeping in for a change! Evidently Saturday night's fun was just enough to wear Isaac out to let us all sleep in Sunday morning. Once we got moving we headed over to the Cape May Cafe at the Disney Beach Resort for a character breakfast. This was totally cool because we got a HUGE buffet breakfast while the characters came to the table to visit with us instead of us standing in line to see them! Isaac was pretty thrilled with the fact that Goofy, Minnie, and Donald were all there to see him!

Since we ate a late breakfast, we headed back to the hotel via a boat ride followed up by a bus ride. Isaac is still totally loving all the forms of transportation we use to get around Disney! We took an early afternoon nap and then it was time for some Halloween festivities.

Here is Isaac insisting I take his picture by the big "P" in front of the Pop Century Hotel. He saw some bigger kids get their picture taken here and thought it was a great idea for him too. He does make a cute Thomas the Train.

We headed over to Downtown Disney for their Happy Haunting 2010. It was basically chaos...millions of people...lines to get candy...but Isaac managed to keep his costume on for a little while and Daddy took him through the lines to get the candy while Mommy snapped pictures.

By the time we were done, we were all exhausted. So it was back to the hotel for dinner and the boys took a quick dip in the pool. It was another fun day at Disney....although Florida has one heck of a hot Halloween!!