Blah.

NOTHING happened to me today.  NOTHING.

I slept until 7:15 and immediately started folding the huge mound of laundry from last night/stripping sheets and gathering rungs and bathroom towels and plugging away on our Thanksgiving weekend laundry pile. 

Ben and I planned a few days of half-assed dinners over coffee and breakfast.

We spent several hours cleaning the house.

I kept working on the laundry while Ben went to Whole Foods, Harry and Jack watched TV, and the babies napped.

Ben made cheeseburgers while Jack and Cooper and I went to Pier One for picture frames.

We planned our two 2015 vacations.

I drank over 32 ounces of water.

It was all very low-key.

Dorothy never got dressed, and she and Harry did not set foot outside the house.

Kind of a lackluster ending to NaBloPoMo.

BTW, it looks like NaBlo went off without a hitch, but I screwed up the dates of some of my auto-posts and had to fix them after the fact, so.

Thanksgiving in iPhotos

 Not one single good picture of all 4 before we got on the road Thursday morning.  But could I love Dorothy's dress more?  Nope.

Here she is holding her "mamas" and her "ee-ee" singing "Let it Go" on the way to Des Moines.

 After she stacked her blocks, she was quick to instigate a round of applause-- same thing after she knocked them over.

 an animated conversation

 A super fun game where she climbed on top of the toy box and jumped off until she inevitably fell and smacked her head on some toys.

 OMG she loved playing the piano-- she played and sang very seriously for quite some time.  It was adorable.

 Pretty sure he was dancing and this is actually a happy face.  Yikes.

 THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN AT 3:45 AM, WHICH IS WHEN DOROTHY GOT UP FOR THE DAY.

 Once I realized around 4:30 that she was really up, we colored.

 At 6, I went into the other room and got Ben.  He took Dorothy with him, and I slept until 8.  Ben corralled all 4 ids in our adjoining room and shut the connecting doors and fed them room service breakfast.  There was a fruit bowl and a yogurt parfait and a vanilla latte waiting for me when I woke up.

We had a pretty sweet hotel set up-- a one-bedroom suite and a connecting room.  Ben and the boys slept in the double beds; Ben and I hung out in the living room after we put the kids to bed, and Dorothy and I shared a king.  If she wasn't the worst roomie ever, it would have been a perfect arrangement.

 I think the glow of Black Friday is what convinced her that 3:45 was a good time to be awake.

 The boys all love a good hotel pool.

 Jack the most, maybe.

 Dorothy got part way in and then refused to try it again-- too cold.  I agreed but since Ben was all FOTY while I slept, I got in with Cooper.

 IT WAS SO COLD.

 Dorothy was a little hot in the heated, balmy pool area, but she liked it that way.

 I tried really hard to stay dry, but Jack made that not happen.

 After the pool, Ben and they boys went to see Big Hero 6, and Dorothy and I snuggled under the covers and went to sleep for a couple of hours.  But the nap did little to improve her mood.  We hung out at my grandma's most of the day and held our traditional night-after-Thanksgiving pizza party in the lobby of our hotel, which was convenient snce our baby could not keep her shit together.

 She was sort of happy throwing glass balls off the lobby tree (canNOT wait to have a ball-covered tree of our own because I am sure that keeping her away from it will be a snap.)

 A quick Starbucks milk break.  She has it so rough.

 Cooper was a little clingy.

 LOOK AT HER SCOWL

 Then she woke up at 3-freaking 45 this morning after waking from 12-2 and only going back to a fitful sleep when she nursed. We hadn't nursed in almost a week, but I guess we are doing THAT again.  Bah.

She and I were dressed for our day by 6.

 I stuck Ben with the babies and took the boys back to the pool.

 They seriously love hotel pools.

 Dorothy freaked out some more at my grandma's house and then passed out in the car as soon as we backed out of the driveway-- she even looks grumpy in her sleep!

Thanksgiving is delicious

 The kids were so good on the drive this morning.  5 hours flew by and made us think we can maybe take a driving trip this summer.  It helped that we had 3 iPads, 2 iPods, 2 Nintendo DS's, and 2 Mac Book Airs.  (And I didn't want a TV in the car because that seemed like too much screen).

 When we got my my grandma's, Dorothy got right to work stacking.

 An update to yesterday's picture.

 Cooper ate a thousand pre-dinner cookies.

 So did Dorothy.

 STILL MOVEMBER

 Beseeching.  Not sure what he wanted.  He looked really red in the face at dinner, and I asked him if he needed to go potty, and he said "Nah.  I'll just poop in my pants."  (We made it to the bathroom in time).

 4 kids is a lot of kids.

 The whole family!!

Tradition

I posted this in 09 and again last year, but what can I say?  Tradition.

My brothers and me-- I was 7; Ben was 3, and Jon was 2.

Shortly after this picture was taken, I pushed past a houseful of guests to be first in line for the Thanksgiving buffet and heaped my plate high with turkey, chopped liver, stuffing, cranberry orange relish, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole-- you get the idea. I marched into the library where the folding kids' table was set up, delighted that I didn't have to waste time talking to my brothers or any guests, plopped both my plate and my fat little self down on the bench, shot my cuffs, picked up my fork, opened my mouth, and raised a heavy, quivering bite of buttered roll and gravy-drenched meat to my eager lips. And then the table collapsed under the weight of me and my leaning tower of flesh and carbs.

Happy Thanksgiving. May you eat like no one's watching.

#MOTY

Ben left at 6:30 this morning for work.  None of the rest of us had anyplace to be ALL DAY.  All day is long.

When Ben got home at 3:30, I was in the basement getting 2 mini-Sprites that I said the boys could split 3 ways and beer for myself because I reached that point in the day when I really needed a beer to maintain a good mood and I figured if it was summer, I would be drinking one at the pool, so screw it.  Than I heard Jack say hi to Ben, and I was embarrassed about the illicit beverages for all, but I brought him a beer, too.  Being greeted by 4 happy kids making turkey hats and wife with a cold beer and a smile is not a bad way to come home from work.  At 3:30-- a minor detail, really.

As soon as we took the dog to the boarder this morning (in our jammies because I realized that I just did not want to also deal with the dog today, and we'll paying for the whole day anyway...), we came home to make sugar cookies.  Harry had an awesome time lightly flouring his surface.

Cooper often begins his mornings at preschool rolling dough, so he got right to work very seriously and bothered no one for like 45 minutes.

Dorothy took the sugar which was supposed to be sprinkled on top of rolled out cookies and flung it by the spoonful everywhere.

Then she climbed on top of the counter because that's where she lives.

These guys can seriously fill some cookie sheets.  Which will come in really handy in a couple weeks when we really make our cookies.

MAKE IT RAIN

We spent our afternoon making turkey hats.  I totally love them.

 This was the best picture I got of all 4.  OF COURSE IT WAS.

 Hahahahaha.  December 1 is right around the corner.  Ah, movember.