The Twins Third Thanksgiving

I can't believe that this year was my twins third Thanksgiving! Wow, where does all the time go? This Thanksgiving I was thankful for my wonderful husband, our healthy family, our children learning to love God, and that I am able to stay home with my children. One thing that the twins reminded me of this Thanksgiving is that I am especially thankful that they love each other. Preston and I have really worked hard to teach them to care for each other, to share, and to help each other. Of course we always have our moments of jealously, fights over the same toy and episodes of antagonizing one another but for the most part, I believe that Gracie and Bailey really love each other. It is hard to explain but their relationship is very unique and I love watching them interact on a daily basis. We have shared with them their story about being born early together and fighting together in the NICU to get strong. This Thanksgiving we traveled to Tampa to spend Thanksgiving day with my Aunt Debbie before heading to Disney World. While traveling the twins did the best that that they have ever done in the car on our 7 hour road trip. One thing that I brought with us to keep them occupied was their 1st Birthday video that shows pictures of them from their birth to first Birthday. They loved watching the pictures of themselves as tiny babies. The video brought tears to my eyes and reminded me of their fight together. On Thanksgiving day I loved watching them hug, hold hands and play together. I hope that Gracie and Bailey will always stay close and truly love each other. I am one very blessed Momma this Thanksgiving and I am so excited to be heading to Disney World with my family of four!

Enjoying the lake together in Tampa, FL

Bailey and the orange tree!

Gracie loved her cousin Khloe's four wheeler!

Thanksgiving Traditions

I love that our family has set traditions for holidays and one tradition is that my mom always celebrates Thanksgiving early with a house full of family and friends. We spend the entire day celebrating together with different events for everyone to enjoy. This year we started the day with playing cornhole in the backyard. The weather was beautiful and I will not brag that my team won! We then all enjoyed a wine tasting hosted by my sister Mary Ellen and her husband Brian. After sampling the wine our appetites were ready for a Thanksgiving feast. I think it is safe to say that we all stuffed ourselves. We finished the day with the annual bunco competition and ofcourse Thanksgiving desserts. It is a given that whenever our family gets together that we are celebrating a Birthday and this weekend we celebrated my sister Paula's Birthday. The twins always love singing Happy Birthday, helping to blow out the candles and of course eating Birthday cake. The cousins had a blast playing together and the twins seemed to fit right in with the big kids.

The Vacation Bug

So I have had some people tell me that I should put more hectic chaotic twin life stuff on my blog to not make our lives look so "happy go lucky!" I guess none of us really like to share the "ugly stuff" in life because it is just no fun. I love looking back and reading my blog and I do think it is good to share all the parts of our life because one day I will be able to look back and say "wow, we survived that!" I have blogged before about the vacation curse of our kids always getting sick when we go out of town. I promise our kids are never sick which is a huge blessing but you can pretty much guarantee that if we are going on a trip then one of the twins will have some type of ailment. So here the story goes for those of you who want to know what it is really like to have twins! We traveled to Macon for an early Thanksgiving weekend and as soon as we made it to Grandma's house Gracie said "my ear hurts." She has never had an ear infection so I really didn't pay it much attention as my kids can say just about anything. We go into grandma's house and she is pretty fussy but we get the twins settled into their beds and we hop into our bed. I turn to Preston and say "I hope this isn't a rough night since Gracie was fussy." As soon as we lay our heads on the pillow we hear her start to cry. After pretty much flipping a coin we decide that Gracie will sleep with me and Preston will sleep in the other guest room with Bailey's monitor. Gracie flipped around and cried on and off all night and so finally at 3:30 I went in Preston's room and said "I have got to get some sleep, your turn." Half asleep he stumbled in to swap places with me. I got about two hours of sleep until Bailey woke up. He was still adjusting to the time change and it usually takes about one night for him to get used to a new sleep arrangement. So I put Bailey in my bed with me. So we have Preston and Gracie in one guest room and Bailey and myself in another guest room and a nursery with two empty cribs of course. We all got up at around 7:30 and we were ready to enjoy an early Thanksgiving with family. At the breakfast table Gracie started pulling at her ear and so I knew we had to take her to the pediatrics after hours but we already knew where it was since last time we came to Macon she got an eye infection! My mom kept Bailey so we didn't have to expose him to any icky germs while in the doctor's office. After being weighed Gracie announced to the entire office "I am all better now, we can go home." She was such a good girl for the doctor and she didn't fuss or cry at all when the doctor looked in her ear which made us very proud. She brought her little bunny along and she played doctor with bunny while in the office which was so cute. We pretty much expect this scenario now when we go out of town. I think Preston and I work pretty well as a team and hopefully we can eventually stomp on this little vacation bug!

Happy Halloween to You!

Gracie and Bailey had anticipated Halloween night for so long. After carving their Jack o Lantern with Daddy they were so excited to put on their costumes to get ready for Trick or Treating. I worked at the Hospice IPU during that day and the twins did not have school so they spent all day with their Grammy. She told me that all day long they would tell each other "Happy Halloween to you!" When we arrived home from Grammy's we had to have a little lesson on trick or treating and on handing out candy. At first Bailey cried "no that's my candy" when I told him that we were going to give it to the neighbors. I guess that is just how a 2 year thinks. He felt much better when I explained to him that we were keeping the candy in his treat bag and that we had a different basket which we called the "share basket." When Daddy got home we practiced with having him knock on the door and Gracie and Bailey would give him candy from the share basket. We only took the twins to a handful of houses to go trick or treating as it was very cold and it was plenty enough of the experience for them. They had just as much fun handing out candy to all the neighborhood kids. Now it is time for us to start learning all about Thanksgiving!