Anna Grows

The holiday season is upon us beginning with the Thanksgiving feast. Anna and family decided to stay in town this year to host Thanksgiving. Aunt Mary, Uncle Joe, Cousin James, Aunt Loren, Aunt Gayle, Pauletta and Wil were all going to join us for our first attempt at making Thanksgiving dinner. Theresa had a detailed menu and set out with Anna to the supermarket early on Sunday to stock up for the feast. The first problem surfaced about 30 minutes after returning from the grocery store when we learned that Uncle Joe was in the emergency room and would be having heart surgery later in the week. We are happy to report that everything went well. While there is probably some medical term for his ailment, there is talk in the family that the heart problems were brought on by the recent success of the New York Jets this season with the addition of Bret Favre. Uncle Joe has served as a stalwart Jets fan since infancy and is so use to the loosing seasons that it is believed his heart ne...

We celebrated Thanksgiving early with a long weekend in Ohio. Anna was able to spend some quality time with her grandparents as well as hang out with her cousin, Aidyn. Actually, Anna was not that enthusiastic about Aidyn as she was forced to share the spotlight. At one point she decided that if she started crawling like Aidyn, she would get more attention. Since Aidyn only spent one night at Grandma and Grandpa's house, Anna had the rest of the time to herself. As always, there were plenty of activities including coloring, playing with Mom's kid dish set, playing on Grandma's xylophone (that's right....one of Grandma's childhood toys) and Grandpa building a house for her in the living room. Really, how much more entertainment could a kid want? There was also a large Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday with the Kent family where Anna was able to meet some of her extended cousins. She also spent some time with Great-Grandpa. Top it off with an airplane ride and you have on...

October 31 may have been the actual Halloween, but Anna celebrated all day on October 30. Ms. Be had a full-fledged Halloween party complete with costumes and trick-or-treating. Anna was dressed as an Ohio State University cheerleader, courtesy of her Uncle Rod and Uncle Tim with accessories provided by Grandma. There was some initial resistance to putting on the costume. Actually, there was A LOT of resistance, complete with crying and screaming "I don't want to wear the cheerleader." We are not sure why. At first, Mom thought it may have something to do with not wanting to be stereotyped as a cheerleader for the rest of her life. Then we thought it may have something to do with Ohio State's devastating loss to Penn State last weekend. Mom explained that it was o.k. to be a fan even when Ohio State loses. We finally realized that she just wanted to wear her pajamas, which is really no different from any other day. Dad picked up Anna from Ms. Be's a little early s...