4 posts in 1

Instead of doing 4 separate posts of the latest and greatest Gardner events you get to read one long one.

#1. Last Tuesday we took Abby to see her first theater movie...Madagascar 2. She watches the first one at least once a day, sometimes more, so we thought she'd enjoy watching the new one. They have a kids snack thing that has a small drink, small bag of popcorn and fruit snacks in it's own cute little tray and she got to have that...very exciting. There were only about 10 people in the theater which was great, Abby got a little loud a couple times laughing and talking about the characters. She made it through the whole movie and I think she had a good time...Cars 2 will be the next one we go to.

#2. Thanksgiving. We went to dinner at the Gardner's house and had a good dinner and LOTS of dessert..she made 4 pies and bought a cake too...lots of hungry boys in that house. Everyone was there so it was quite a houseful. Abby and Trey were darling in their outfits. Trey's lasted an hour before he needed a new shirt...poop up to your shoulders make that necessary! He took a snooze on Grandpa's chair during dinner so I got to actually sit down and eat- very nice. We were home by 6:30 and I tried to go to bed early since I had to open the stand at 4 the next morning but Trey wasn't too sleepy until close to 10.

#3. Best Buds. The first house Jerry and I owned was wired for Christmas lights our first year (thank you Tim!) and we always did it big (I say we, but it's all Jerry) and since moving to this house we have been lax on getting it properly outfitted for the multitude of lights we Gardners love. So Tim came over Friday afternoon with Abby's very best bud, Anicia, to put in some more outlets outside and a new breaker so that we won't turn the kitchen lights off everytime the Christmas ones come on. While the boys were hard at work...Tim working, Jerry supervising, I had the joy of watching Abby and Anicia play. They are quite hilarious, and now have imaginations which makes watching them play together even more fun. I thought it would be cute for them to take a nap together since Abby has such a big bed but that turned out to be a not so great idea. Abby was not about to share her precious bed with anything other than the three stuffed animals, 6 powies and 35 books that are already on it. So Anicia got to sleep on the spare bed in Trey's room. Shannon (Anicia's mom!) came over after work and joined us all for dinner and some fun friend time and the kids were so worn out from playing that they were all ready for bed early...how nice.

#4. Decorating for Christmas. We spent a rainy Saturday getting the house all Christmassy, Jerry did the lights outside and I did all the inside stuff. Hmmm, who got the short stick on that?! Jerry did a great job outside, lights on the shed, on the house, the blow-up stuff is out, snowflake lights on the backporch and all in the most freezing, rainy weather. Abby helped me decorate the tree which made it a much more fun chore than usual. I do the same thing every year, put the big box of ornaments up, marvel at how sparse it looks and then remember that I have 4 small boxes of ornaments still to put up! Abby loooooooved every second of it and then tried to take them off so we could do it again. Yikes. I found a small tree in another box and put that up and let her have some old wooden ornaments of mine and she's been decorating and redecorating that tree for the last three days. I didn't put up everything this year again, the extensive Christmas village is packed away still and there were a number of other things that I just didn't feel like setting up. Maybe in a few years when there aren't such little fingers around "helping" I'll do all the decorations.

For those of you still reading this...thank you, this novel will be out in paperback in two weeks! I think I'll try to keep up on my posting as this one was work!