Crazy Two Days

 Here it is almost Wednesday and the kids still haven't been back to school after Thanksgiving break.

Sunday night we found out that Houston was under a "boil water" notice after 2 of the water plants lost power for a few hours.  And even though the official notice said tap water was fine for pets, "pets" did not include farm animals, and they shut off the water at the farm. 

So we had to take boiled water out to Elvis.

 

We didn't get the all-clear on the water until early this morning (Tuesday), so school had already been cancelled.  What wasn't cancelled was all of Kyle's activities. 

 I ran over this afternoon to watch him in a dive meet where he placed 6th.

As soon as his last dive was done, we had to race across town for him to attend a mandatory pig clinic. We made it with 5 minutes left to spare. 

The judge at the clinic said Elvis was the "prettiest" and had the best coloring.  

(Which we've known all along.)

Kyle said Elvis was true to his name, and totally performed on stage.  

Unlike Buddy (Elvis's next-door neighbor) who ran off the stage, tried to jump over the fence and then tried to crawl under the fence.  

And have I mentioned that Elvis is now 100 pounds! 

The Birthday Boy

 Jason's birthday was the day after Thanksgiving this year, so we celebrated with a trip to the Palm to eat lobster.

The birthday boy with all his (very skinny) boys

A table full of lobster

And birthday dessert, although we did have a polar pizza earlier!

They Trotted

 A few weeks ago I asked Reed if he wanted to run in the turkey trot.  Of course he did, but to my surprise, Kyle was adamant that I sign him up too.  Kyle's insistence to turkey trot (who said he was just going to "draft behind Reed") turned in to a full-on bet with Reed saying he'd give Kyle 10 bucks if he could finish the race in under 22 minutes. 

At the starting line

It was an up and back down the seawall, so Jason and I just waited at the start/finish, since we knew Reed would be back in about 20 minutes.

It started raining during the race, but Reed said the worst part was that when they turned to come back, he had nobody around to block the wind, which "slowed him down".

Even with the wind he finished in 20:09, came in 8th overall and 1st in his age group. 

Spoiler Alert: Kyle did not finish in under 22 minutes.

But for a nonrunner came in in a super respectable 29:24 and actually placed 3rd in his age group.

Kyle said the "worst idea" he had was trying to keep up with Reed at the beginning, then getting stuck with the "fast people" and trying not to get run over.  He also commented that "running a 5K seemed a lot easier in kindergarten", which is probably the last time he ran one. 

He was already limping as soon as the race was over, and was definitely sore for a few days!

But here they are with their winnings, and Kyle even let me put his on our Christmas tree!

Shifts

 With everybody's schedules, we filtered down to Galveston for Thanksgiving in shifts. 

Reed went down with Jason and me, so he got to be an only child for a few days.

The weather wasn't the greatest, most of the time it was cold and raining...Reed even looked like this

JR came down next

And staying behind to take care of Elvis for as long as possible, Kyle was last. (He paid somebody to take care of him for the days he was gone.)

And, of course, the baby was there the whole time, and as you can see, was quite "busy".

Early Vacay

 Kyle got to start his Thanksgiving break a day early as he had a diving meet in Corpus Christi on Friday.  They left Thursday after school and came back Saturday evening.  

He placed 4th, which we were super proud of! 

Here's some of my favorite dives.

Come Fly with Me

 Jason and I got all dressed up to go to a Catch Me if You Can themed 50th birthday party at the flight museum. 

Here we are on one of the 4 chartered buses to take us to the event

The 1960's flying theme was adorable

And my 90's college days came "flying" back to me, as Jackopierce was the band.

It was a smooth sailing night for sure. 

He's Home

 The Golden Child has returned home for Thanksgiving break!

He announced his return as soon as the plane touched down.

And Chloe was all of us when she got to see him.

One guess what his first meal was...

Yep.

There's no Whataburger in Oxford. 

Side Eye Saturday

Chloe is not impressed. 

Elvis Update #3

 It's been a few weeks since I've done an Elvis update. 

 He is eating like a champ, and when I say a champ, I mean he's up to 85 pounds!

He's not the best-behaved pig in the bunch, as he loves to go push open gates and run to the sand pile to root around when he's supposed to be practicing walking with Kyle. 

But he's still the cutest! 

Kyle went in the pig barn to check on him last weekend around lunchtime after working the petting zoo.  All the pigs were napping under their heat lamps.  Kyle didn't wake them up, but got this cute picture.

Winning and Not Winning

 There was lots of winning and not winning going on this weekend.

Reed ran a 5:30 mile time trial and then ran 8 miles (7:25/mi) so I'd say that's some winning.

Kyle worked the FFA petting zoo for a school event, so that's always a winning situation for him.

I'm not really supposed to talk about the Golden Child, but even though Ole Miss didn't win, he got himself on national TV. Winning.

And Jason went hunting and fishing in Matagorda this weekend where he got a few ducks (winning) but let this fish get a way (not winning).

And Some More Winning

 Kyle had a dive meet on Friday, which means he got to miss school (his favorite thing) so you can imagine how excited he was with me when I made him go take his biology test (not a favorite thing), then picked him up from school and drove him to the meet myself.  

Here's one of his dives

And some pictures

And he got a 2nd place finish.

Winning Decor

 I'm a winner too.

You know how I love to toot my own horn, so get ready for some loud toots.  

I was able to get our 12-foot Christmas tree out of storage, drag it downstairs, and assemble it by myself! Winning! 

I know. I was super impressed with myself too.

I did have help in the decorating process.  I had both my monkeys climb up the outside of the stairs to hang the top ornaments. And I had the monkey, who also doubles as a circus performer, helping me with the 8-9-foot ornament placement range.

And here's the final product!

Winning Weekend 2

 And if you live here in Houston, then you know what the other big win was.  The Astros won the World Series and Jason and Reed were there to see it.

Here's Reed's video of the win.

I texted JR asking him if he was running up and down the streets of Oxford screaming like he did the last time the Astros won the World Series, but I think his celebrations were a bit more low key this time. 

Winning Weekend

 It was a winning weekend here in Houston, and Kyle was the one that started the winning streak.  He won his dive meet on Saturday morning.

We had a terrible view of the boards, but he scored really well with this pretty twister.

You'll hear me say "actually that was really..." before it cuts off.  

I said "actually that was really pretty" because Jason had just said, "oh, a twister, those are the ones he looks crazy doing."  

I don't know what's happened, but he certainly doesn't look crazy now! 

And here he is doing a double back flip.  This one was from practice, but it's just such a better camera angle than I could get at the meet.

We were very excited to see him happy to be diving, and proud of his win! 

What We Wore

 So Chloe did what most girls do when they can't decide what to wear...and went with a completely different outfit.

We had a super busy Halloween. 

Kyle had a diving meet (he came in 2nd)

Jason was coming in from out of town, and Reed was busy studying, so Chloe played it low-key and went with her Halloween dress.  

I didn't dress up for Halloween, but I dressed up for an event on Saturday night, so I guess you can call that my Halloween outfit.