So for Thanksgiving we went on a road trip, with our family and my brother-in-law. Don't get me wrong, I love my brother-in-law and he loves my child, but sometimes we just don't get along, my husband says it's because we are so much alike.
My husband is driving and that's my brother-in-law on the right. He's a great guy, he really is and my husband and him have a relationship that I'll never understand- it seems like it's more than brothers, like best friends too! Which is awesome, and I know both of them need 'guy' time so for the most part, when they are together doing their 'guy' thing I try to leave them alone.
The bad thing was that I was stuck in the back seat of my Toyota Camry for 10 hours straight, with my child who was fairly well behaved for being on a long road trip like that. My back is still paying for the 10 hour trip down there and grandmother's spare bed and then 6 hours to the hotel on the way back and 4 hours home. All in the back seat. Next time I might offer to drive.
We met my parents there- they drove in from South Carolina, where they now live. They drove 2 vehicles, my parents just recently bought a Ford Fiesta and needed to sell/give us mom's 2005 Toyota Carolla. But the problem is we drive on gravel a lot- to Roy's mom's house, to our church, etc. Small cars like the Carolla can't handle the rough gravel roads, especially if they are really bad in the winter. So we saw a need, Roy's brother, Jim had just hit 200,000 miles on his van and it needs some work done on it. So we thought why not give the car to Jim, he can have a newer car (the newest in the family) and then he can pay us in monthly installments. Everyone in my family (even my 99 year old grandmother, whom I love dearly) thought that giving the car to Jim wouldn't help us out. Yes, it will in the long run. By Jim coming down to Kentucky with us he just put himself in debt. Not good, according to Dave Ramsey. But I know that he has every intention of paying us off, the earlier the better for him.
Speaking of Dave Ramsey, we were able to tour Financial Peace University while we were in the Nashville area on Black Friday! Roy and I have a college classmate that now works for Dave on his website team. It's also pretty cool for us because we got to tell Luke, our classmate how Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University has impacted us in the last year. One year ago we took the class through our local credit union and at this same time Roy was laid off, and I was on unemployment as well. God brought us through that tough time and now Roy is back at work full time (although with some added duties) and I am back to being a stay-at-home mom and graphic designer from our home. During the economic downturn somehow, we manged to pay off 2 credit card bills and finish Baby Step #1- $1,000 in the bank! We are about half way through Baby Step #2- The Debt Snowball- and looking forward to being debt free!
Luke's Mom and Dad, Luke, my husband Roy and myself at Financial Peace University. Everyone in this photo is a Judson College graduate (now they call it Judson University in Elgin, Illinois). Great time, thanks for the tour, Luke!
For our first event of Black Friday we enjoyed ICE! on the grounds of the Opryland Hotel with my parents and Jim. It's a walk-through of ice sculptures and the theme of this year was Santa Claus (the movie) so it was neat to walk through the whole movie done in Ice! It was a cold 9 degrees in there, so I was thankful that they provided us with lovely blue parkas to keep us warm- but felt like a bad mommy when I left my sons mittens in the car! He survived and we even had fun going down the ice slide that was inside, yup, a slide made of ice! I remember going down a really long one in St. Paul when I was little as part of the winter festival they have there, but I forgot how fun it is!
We also got to spend some time with my 99 year old Grandmother, here we are saying good-bye, I wish I had taken more photos of her, but for being 99 she's doing pretty good, she only has to use a walker and her memory is starting to fail a little, but that's to be expected at that age! Next year for Halloween we will be down there, Lord willing celebrating her 100th birthday. I was 12 or 13 when my family went down there and celebrated her mother (my great grandmother) turning 100... so that will be pretty neat to celebrate 2- 100 birthdays in the same family! All weekend Christopher didn't want to give Grandmother a hug, she told us "that's okay" but I could tell she really wanted a hug from my little boy!
All in all, we had a good trip and my brother-in-law has a new car, which he promptly put in a CB radio in it (no, I'm not sure why)! It's awesome to that Jim is thinking about his future more and reading and listening to Dave Ramsey- possibly looking to see if he could even get a job working for Dave, and yes, we would miss him, but I think that would be good for him and now he's looking to give Dave's book to other people. The next step for him is to sell the van, which he originally wanted to keep.... right now it's in my garage- but I'm okay with that, because last weekend he was down getting it cleaned out and this weekend he's coming down to finish it up and put a 'For Sale' sign on it! I'm even going to let him park it in my front yard so he can sell it!
God Bless,
Stephen (my son's friend) as Super Stephen and Christopher as Bob the Builder at the local PAT playgroup earlier this week. Christopher was not at all thrilled with having his picture taken... at least his friend was there to sit next to him, otherwise he wouldn't have been up there at all! 
It was fun, Kathy read a story to us, we did a craft or two, watching pre-schoolers play a version of musical chairs was hilarious. I loved the part when Christopher... deciding to opt-out most of the time, jumped in between the gap of the other children walking around the chairs, and with his hammer, he precisely hammered 3 bangs on one of the chairs, then jumped out of there before the other kids ran into him! Apparently, he had to 'fix' on of the chairs, as only Bob could do! We made a decoupage pumpkin this week, yes... it took all week, and no, it's not quite done yet. It's hard to tell an almost 3 year old little boy who loves to paint that he couldn't paint the 'pumpkin' on the first day, because at that point it was just a balloon! When we are done it will be a Jack-o-Lantern... for our last 2 weeks of the letter 'J' we have studied the topics: Jump, Jellybeans, Jack-o-Lanterns, Jets, etc.
Studying the letter J.... Jellyfish, Jet, Jack and Jill, Joker, Jack-o-Lanterns.... plus we read this book: 
The Jack-o-Lantern Christopher made at the PAT playgroup! 
