Thanksgiving in the Colonies (Maryland and Virginia)

Here's the fantastic lemon meringue pie Kim made, which was our one and only contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. Kim's cousin Dawn lives in Maryland, and she invited us over this year and took care of all the preparations. It's hard to get any luckier than that.


Megan had a great time playing with her cousin Conor and all of his neat toys (we hear that she was much better with Conor than Noel was.)


The food was fantastic, and we had a great time.


Dawn and Wade, our hosts and chefs.


We traded travel stories with Iolair and Susan


Dawn's mother-in-law from North Carolina was there. She served as the surrogate grandmother for Megan, who hung all over her. This must be the first year that Kim and I weren't at the kid's table (thanks, Linda).


Kim had to work Thanksgiving night, so on Friday me and Megan made sure to be out of the house to let her sleep. We went to visit Zack and Danica over at his brother Steve's house. Megan and Carson got along well.


We all dressed up in our warm clothes and headed out to see the Thanksgiving parade. It was much colder than expected (on Thanksgiving day it was in the 70s, but by Friday it was down to freezing temperatures.)



After the parade we went back to Steve's house and goofed around. Tom Selleck came to visit.


We miss Utah (and smoked Turkey in Texas), but it was a great Thanksgiving (my first paid holiday ever) and it was good to be with friends and family.


And these from the department of "She's Paying Closer Attention Than You Think":

At playgroup Megan was supposed to say something she was thankful for, and she responded, "I have a baby in my tummy."

Since we moved here, in her prayers at night Megan rarely fails to say thank you for "Mommy and all her hard work."

"I like the train"

Megan is officially a Washingtonian -- we took her on her first Metro ride yesterday to head downtown to the Eastern Market, a street market just east of the Capitol building.





At first she was a little nervous, but she quickly warmed up to it.



The Eastern Market was pretty neat. There was a farmer's market with loads of fresh vegetables, people selling jewelry, photography and paintings.


We found this crazy bookstore crammed into a tiny storefront. Mike accidentally knocked over a stack of books and pretended it wasn't him.



The "foreign language" section was conveniently located in the bathroom.


Megan always has a great time being out and about.



And here's Megan's funny quote of the week:

We were over at someone's house who has a hamster, and Megan was quite intrigued. After looking at him for a while she said, "I don't have a hamster...but I have paintbrushes!"

Ask and ye shall receive...

This is what a Mike-and-Kimmie-baby looks like...



And this is what Mike looks like working in a cubicle (and drinking yerba mate)...


We just wanted to remind you since it's been a while since we had a baby, and it's been a while since Mike had a job, and now we're going to do both again.

Kim is 17 weeks along, due on April 22nd. We will find out what we're having on December 5th. She is just starting to show, and she hasn't really been sick (although she's felt a little worse than she did with Megan).

So it's a good thing that Mike finally found gainful employment. After 9 months of looking and many dead ends, Mike finally got the perfect job. He is working at a global health contractor for USAID on the President's Malaria Initiative. The project covers several African countries, and Mike is super excited about it.

We feel really blessed, and we're excited about all of the changes coming up in our lives.

Social Pressure and a New Baby

Since I don't have much in the way of new pictures for this week, I thought I would take this time to show some pictures of my new nephew as well as try to put some pressure on Jared and Carolee to update their blog (which was last updated on May 20th, back when Bush still enjoyed a 31% approval rating and the dancing sequence in Spider-Man 3 was angering audiences.)

Andrew Gene was born on Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 4:59 am. He was 7 pounds 6 ounces and 20 inches long. He's pretty dang cute.




Jared says, "Isaac has been really good with the baby so far. Occasionally he doesn't understand that he isn't being very soft, but he loves to hold the baby and point to the baby's facial features. (I won't let him point out the baby's eyes and he can't understand why)."



We're very excited about this new addition to the family, and hope we can see some more pictures of him before we go home for Christmas. (See how easy that was?)

More Cowbell

This year marked the first time that Megan understood that by dressing up as something cute or scary, total strangers would throw candy at her. Even though Sean Hannity says Halloween is a liberal plot to teach our children to expect handouts, I prefer to think of it as the day we celebrate our occult heritage.

Here we are lighting the pumpkins (you're right Lonna, Megan is still intrigued by fire -- we've decided as a family to never tell her about Mike lighting fires at the bus stop in the 6th grade and nearly getting suspended.) Megan looks very reminiscent of Princess Leia recording her message for Obi Wan Kenobi here.


We joined up with all the other two year olds that live by us, and we hit the street.


I'm not sure why Megan is giving Noah this look.





As I've mentioned elsewhere, this year Megan knew the candy was for her. We're kind of nervous that we no longer live by our dentist.


P.S. By the way, if you don't know why this pumpkin deserved a blurry, flashless picture, do yourself a favor and watch this SNL clip.

Pumpkins, Pumpkins and More Pumpkins

Megan's "Notes" class went on a field trip to Cox Farms last week. This is not just any farm -- they have slides, mazes, hay rides, an animal petting area, all-you-can-eat apples and cider, hay rides, and a huge pumpkin patch. Megan loved it.







On Friday we had our annual pumpkin carving night. We invited our friends Neil and Pari (from Weber State who have been living in D.C for two years) over for cheese soup and root beer.




Megan didn't like the idea of cleaning out the pumpkin (she doesn't like to get her hands sticky). So she thought it was funner and less sticky to put candy corn teeth in her pumpkin. She also loved the fire in the pumpkins.




We're holding two contests with these weeks post: 1) Can you guess what Mike's pumpkin is (the middle one)? 2) Which pumpkin is best?

Also, we know that no one will care about Halloween pictures next week (we saw our first Christmas commercial tonight), so stay tuned -- pictures of Megan trick-or-treating are on the way.