Happy Thanksgiving!

We had such a lovely holiday! It started with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which, as it turns out, no one in my house is interested in besides me (I know, it's absolutely un-American, but those boys of mine are total party poopers). Ethan was mildly interested when the Buzz Lightyear balloon floated by, but outside of that he was much more into playing with his wooden train tracks. And, while we're on the subject of the Macy's Parade, can we digress for a moment and talk about the fact that Newsies is now on Broadway?!?! What?!?! I was ridiculously obsessed with that movie back in the day. The performance of "King of New York" alone was enough to make watching the parade worth it. My boys don't know what they're missing.

Given that we're exactly two weeks away from meeting baby brother, I kind of cheated my way out of cooking this year. I cooked a turkey, but most of the side dishes were purchased from our local boutique supermarket already prepared. Call me crazy, but spending hours in the kitchen peeling/boiling/mashing potatoes and making complicated recipes from scratch does not jive with the big baby belly and end-of-pregnancy pains and fatigue.

We did most of the cooking preparing while Ethan was napping, but once he woke we pulled a stool up to the counter and let him "bake the bread" (roll up all of the crescent rolls and put them on the baking sheet). We set the table with "fancy" plates and real silverware, dimmed the lights, and lit candles. Music played in the background as we talked about holidays and family, and I almost burst into happy tears several times. I was too busy enjoying the moment to take any photos, which is a testament to how absolutely wonderful the evening was.

However, a Notch blog post would not be a Notch blog post without *some* pictures. As per usual, I'm horribly behind in posting (It's been over a month! Yikes!), so I have a few catching up photos cued up and ready to go.

Here's Ethan as a scary green dinosaur (don't let that goofy grin fool you - he's a vicious beast).

He began asking for a dinosaur costume back in August, I broke down and bought it for him in September, and he intermittently wore it around the house all through October. We got some serious mileage out of that zip up dinosaur suit.

While this was taken with an iPhone camera in my office, and not with one of Ryan's fancy cameras in just-the-right setting, I figured I should post it anyway. This year for Halloween I dressed up as Mother Nature (ba dum ching!). My amazing friend Stacie spent hours with me coming up with the concept and making the skirt and headpiece. I also wore it to Ryan's office Halloween party and when we took Ethan trick-or-treating, so I suppose I got some good mileage out of this costume as well!
I will do my best to post once more before baby brother arrives - I have some recent(ish) belly shots to show you, and should do so while they're still relevant!