Thanksgiving

We went to Uncle Rick and Auntie Drea's for Thanksgiving this year. It was lots of fun and the food was great! After everyone ate way too much, a couple of the kids and I went out side to get some fresh air for a little bit. Bella and Louie had fun chasing each other around.

Bella

Uncle Rob came out and gave the kids a push on the swing.

Then, Louie played king of the swing set!

After Rick and Drea's, we headed over to Tapio's and played Thanksgiving Scattergories, which was lots of fun too!

Introducing: Bridget and Richard

I went over to our friend's, Ginge and Michael's, to take some photos of their new twin babies. They were so little! Louie weighed about as much as the these two combined at birth, so they seemed so little to me.

A basket full of red head babies!

and Peter with his new baby sister and brother. He's such a proud big brother...

Our Visit with The Pioneer Woman (and Marlboro Man)!

Yesterday, we went to the Mall of America for the Pioneer Woman's book signing.
I discovered her blog a couple of years ago and then a year ago, introduced Dan to her website for the light reading on photography. He was attracted to her story "Black Heels to Tractor Wheels." So, back in September or October when she announced her book tour and said that she'd be at the Mall of America, we both agreed to go...
We got to the MOA around noon and quickly got in line. Thankfully, we'd stopped at FrickDonalds (Louie speak for the Golden Arches). It was a LONG line. Then the waiting began.
I stood in line, while Dan ran around the mall with Louie and Emily. (Legoland is a MUST so Louie can ooogle over the Lego Pirates! Rainforest Cafe for the big gator and Nordstrom kids shoe department for the aquarium)
While they were gone, my new friends and I were interviewed by the Mall Cops for an upcoming episode on TLC. The MOA's finest.

Then, Marlboro Man and two of the Punks came by and there was a SWARM of people to get their books signed.
These two boys sat on the floor and signed books for crazy fans....then they got bored and started doing face painting with the Sharpies!
Then the line started to move and me and my new friends got closer to the front. As we got closer, we could see Ree's new hair color. She's a brunette now....Dan reported that she must not be happy wiht her color change, as she was looking for someplace to fix her hair on Twitter (two things wrong here:  how on earth does my husband know what Twitter is?  and does he really care about her hair?) ... I don't know what it looked like in Chicago, but it looked a little 1984 on Saturday!  PW really shouldn't have worried about her hair, I want to know where the hell she found that jacket and who on earth told her it looked good?  I think she got it from Steven Tyler...
Then we continued to wait and the line was moving and moving and moving. Then, as we were waiting, Marlboro Man came and sat down at the table by the line and started signing books. We had been telling the kids what we were doing there and Emily took the book up to the table he was at and asked him to sign it.


"Hi, my name is Emily." "Emily, would you like a cookie?" "yes!" and the punks next to him shared their cookies with her. She was so excited to have a cookie. Apparently, we don't feed our children and I need to teach them about taking food from strangers.....

Then, the horrible photos began....you would think that after seeing this post, I have never before held a camera in my hand! but you see it was DAYLIGHT when we got there, it was DARK out when we finally got to the front of the line. The stage was under an balcony overhang and was sort of DARK! My 5D does not have a FLASH and I didn't have the right LENS on it. Very poor PLANNING on my part! But I was trying to make it easy on myself that day....
This is my new friend, she was there for her BFF's birthday gift. I told her that I would take a photo of her and this is the BEST that I could do? How lame am I???

Then, it was our turn....not much better....Here's our best shot with Ree...sorry to say, you won't be receiving a Christmas card from us this year with a strange woman in the photo with us... It was at this point that my children had just about had it with this whole day of waiting and waiting.  They sat there and made cute faces at the camera.


Dan predicted that the meltdowns would start when we got to the front of the line and sure enough, my 3 yr old threw himself on the floor and refused to look at the camera. He said hi to Ree and showed her his cowboy boots and then he was done!
I was in such a hurry to get out of there that I just grabbed my books and ran! We got home at 7:30pm. Got the kids to bed and then I went to bed at 9pm, I needed my rest. Sunday morning, I had plans to go to my friend Mike's house and photograph his brand new, fresh from the oven twin babies.....
So, while I was getting all of my stuff ready on Sunday morning, things like my camera that apparently I have never used before Saturday, I opened the books to read what Ree had written.....Thank goodness I got a GREAT night sleep on Saturday night, because I found this!!

Now, I have to go call in to the office and let them know I won't be at work on Monday! I need to get over to the Hennepin County Government Center and stand in another line...this time, I'm changing my name to Jill. I've always liked the name Jill...it's sort of growing on me.
Oh well, we had a fun day on Saturday....it was a Pelletier Family Fun Day at the Mall of America. I've lived 5 minutes from the mall for YEARS and have never spent more than 2 hours there. We had a great day and met some really nice ladies! And let's not forget, I could be making a cameo appearance on TLC's "Mall Cops: Mall of America."

More tomorrow,
Jill

Daddy's Birthday

Today was Dan's birthday, we've been celebrating for a couple of days. On Saturday, I cooked a delicious turkey dinner and then yesterday we had a homemade pepperoni pizza party in the living room, while the kids watched a movie.
Today, we had turkey and wildrice soup made from the leftover turkey and it was DELISH!!! Grandma came home from Florida today, after spending the weekend with the Florida Jansen's. She stayed for soup and then we had birthday cake.

The Leaf Pile

We went out this past weekend, during our heat wave and played in the HUGE leaf pile that Dan raked up. Emily's been asking since September if we can make a leaf pile to jump in. There was so much rain in the month of October that it was almost impossible to play in the leaves. Finally, she got to play and she had a ball!
Louie didn't enjoy it so much, he's kind of a freak about being dirty and his hands being dirty.









It was lots of fun! Now, the leaves are gone to compost and we have to wait until next fall to play in the leaves again....

Full Moon!

Tonight, I took Louie outside to check out the full moon, he is fascinated with the moon....
Louie: "Mom, I love to see the moon."
Me: "tonight it is a full moon."
Louie: "full moon?"
Me: "Yes, full, the whole thing, all of it."
Louie: "Mom, I want to be an astronaut, so I can go there someday."

We took some photos of the moon while Louie and Ted played a little soccer in the light of the moon.

Trick or Treat!

We had a great Halloween! The day started with pumpkin carving, as you saw earlier! Then, after naps, our Cousin Becca came over to trick or treat with us.
My two pirates! They loved dressing up as pirates.

and the little butterfly....this was Becca's first time out trick or treating. She had a blast running from house to house with Emily and Louie.

Grandma came over, as she does every Halloween. She passes out the candy while Dan and I take the kids out. Yesterday, we had got a couple Halloween pizza's from Papa Murphy's and had a pizza party before heading out.

When we were getting ready to head out, Isak and his two brothers came over. Louie was super excited to trick or treat with Isak for a little while.

It was pretty cold after it got dark, so we only went up and down our street.

First stop, Judy's house!

Then they just kept going (running). Isak was a robot, it was a cute costume. He was running too fast to get a shot of the front!

Here's one of Isak's brothers and in their matching monkey costumes, I couldn't tell them apart....

A few houses up the street, they had some pretty awesome pumpkins carved.... This was Louie's favorite. Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Pretty cool!

This house has a HUGE pumpkin on their steps. They did a great job carving it!

Here's the cute little pumpkins that we carved yesterday morning.

And here's our house all decorated for Halloween....

Pumpking carving....my favorite!

We carved our pumpkins this morning, before Dan took off for his football game. I realized that I really don't like gutting a pumpkin and wanted to get started on that before he left. Smart thinking....
Louie wasn't into sticking his hands into the pumpkin either. He said "No way! My hands will get dirty." So, we used our scoops.
He stepped in a scooped all the stuff out of all three pumpkins....I was a happy girl!

When we went to the pumpkin patch earlier this month, we picked up these little "snap jack" variety pumpkins. They were cute and little, but turns out they are great for roasting seeds! So, we got the insides out and I carved the kids initals in them... They thought that was so cool!

Our finished pumpkins. I'm really not creative when it comes to pumpkin carving.... Louie just wanted me to make a happy face, because the other ones are scary! I was happy to oblige!