Thanksgiving Weekend

Foggy Thanksgiving Morning at the Turkey Trot
Chris decided to run again this year. I decided to cheer him on with Davis.

It was a chilly morning... Davis got to wear his super warm coat for the first time.

Chris and Aron strolling across the finish line.

Davis kept sitting down on the cold concrete to read his book "Baby Animals". He didn't care where he sat. Don't worry plenty of people were staring. Grammy Stickley kept him company.

After the race we headed to Stacey's house for Thanksgiving lunch.... Yummy!!

Here are some family shots.


Mark carving the turkey...

Davis with his Thanksgiving meal.

Yes that is a lot of food BUT he ate a bunch of it.
Cheeks packed with food.

So yummy!

Ashlyn, Kendall, and Addison

Hayley

Cousins galore... all the little ones of my first cousins

Aunt Joan, Judy, Jenny, and Mom (Elsie)

Davis giggling while being tickled with his new stuffed dog.

Cousin Stephanie making Davis laugh.

Aunt Karen and Uncle "B"ryan giving Davis attention

Laughing with Great Grandma and Grandpa Brown

Newlin Family

The Stickley Family

Trick or Treat

We enjoyed our Halloween weekend. Chris's parents and his brother, Bryan were in town visiting so Davis got lots of attention and we were able to catch up. Yesterday afternoon we toured the small downtown area of Hillsborough. Then we headed home to get ready for our trick or treating. We spent the evening with our close friends from church and their kids... LOTS of KIDS.

We tried Davis's costume on early and it was a bit WARM. The costume itself was polar fleece AND it was about 70 degrees and humid outside. Needless to say we didn't keep it on for long initially but still managed to take a couple pictures.

Posing in the chair...

It's a bird, it's a plane.... NO it's SUPER DAVIS.

NOT thrilled about picture time.

SO BIG!!

Superman flying in the air.

Still not amused with his cape flapping...

Group shot of all the kiddos prior to Trick or Treating. Can't you see the kids enthusiasm.. they are ready to get some candy. As you can see we had not put Davis in his Superman costume YET and he still was a bit upset. We decided to strip him down to his onesie and take off his sweatpants and then put him in his costume. Chris took him to three houses to trick or treat and then he rode in the stroller around the block. He feel asleep before we got around the block but then woke up when we got back to our friends house and got a second wind. Chris tried to give him a gummy candy but I discouraged this. He then let him have piece of sugar cookie and he was HAPPY. All in all we had a great night and tried to keep Davis up late due to Daylights Saving Time. He still woke up at 5:30AM and has been slowly adjusting to the time change.

Thumbs up for my new Batman PJ's. Thanks Grammy Stickley!!!
They are warm and super soft.

Davis winding down for the evening reading ELMO- SO BIG with Chris and laughing at the big pop-up Elmo. He laughed every time you opened the book and Elmo got big.

Sweet dreams little Davis.

Adventures in Pumpkin Carving

We enjoyed our Sunday afternoon carving pumpkins with Mark and Aimee outside in wonderful fall weather. Davis ran around outside playing with his footballs and watched us work on several pumpkins, intermittently squealing with delight. Chris, although not initially excited about pumpkin carving, actually worked diligently on two pumpkins. He even "mucked" the pumpkin which came as a surprise to his parents as he NEVER did this as a kid. We purchased a small pumpkin carving kit and Aimee and Mark outdid us by bringing a SAW. Yep that is right a "sawzall". Needless to say Mark was the first one done with his pumpkin because he used the saw for the entire pumpkin. It sure did come in handy for the pumpkin faces.



Davis busy playing.

Here's the saw!!!

Mark's finished product.



Helping Aimee....



Chris working diligently on his pumpkin...



Aimee's finished product.



Chris still working...



Davis wanting to hold Aimee's pumpkin.



Group shot



The line-up of pumpkins




Chris and I decided on a pattern called "Good Bite Moon" (Halloween spin off of "Good night Moon" one of our bedtime favorites.) which as you can see has a bat in the silhouette of the moon.




We also decided to carve a small pumpkin for Davis with a little puppy on it. We may take it to daycare for him because they invited all the kids to bring in a pumpkin that they decorated. Of course he didn't help much with the pumpkin but I thought about getting him to put his handprints on the side or back.



Of course after emptying all those seeds we decided to make toasted pumpkin seeds. I tried a couple different flavors- sea salt, creole seasoning, and cinnamon seeds. Unfortunately I overcooked some of the seeds but the regular sea salt seeds were my favorite.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Our First Adventure to the NC State Fair

After living in Durham, NC for 4 years we had never made it to the State Fair until this year. Of course each year we hear many stories of all the fair fun so we were eager to taste fair food and experience this NC treat firsthand. It was a beautiful Fall Saturday when Chris, Davis, Aimee, and I headed to Raleigh. (We were pleased that the drive to the Fair Grounds was much shorter than the 2.5 hours it took for us to get to the U2 concert weeks prior).


This was the Bluegrass Stage.



After walking past hundreds of food booths with a wide variety of foods: fried everything (Snickers, HoHos, Coke, etc.), chocolate covered bacon, corn dogs, BBQ, italian sausages, elephant ears, funnel cakes, HUGE turkey legs, candy apples, apple fritters, roasted corn, and the list continues we finally decided to try a steak sandwich with the works.... We also shared some roasted corn with Aimee and went through the "free hush puppies" line twice. The prices are a bit steep so we didn't go crazy testing lots of food. (Picture of Steak sandwich stand)



We enjoyed the kid friendly activities and headed into the Children's Barnyard. Davis liked watching the little chicks, pointing at the horse, watching several cows, roosters, chickens, and sheep.



One of the competitions was designing landscaping. We liked this one b/c it was colorful and it was named "Mrs B's" which is the nickname for the Newlin's schnauzer, Sadie.



The mums at the Fairgrounds were bright.



Carved pumpkins with unique faces.



Davis getting brave and reaching for the animals at the petting zoo.


Davis and Chris feeding the animals. We enjoyed the close encounters with the animals including sheep, rams, camels, south american rats, a kangaroo, and many other animals I can't remember.


The animals came right up and tried to eat the food as it came out of the dispensers.


We remembered riding the Cobra as kids and I have to admit I am not sure I am brave enough to ride it again. It was also fun seeing the scrambler which was one of our favorite rides growing up.


As you can see we enjoyed our first trip to the fair.