Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my side of the family. Every year we alternate between Thanksgiving and Christmas between Scott's and my families. This year we'll do Christmas with his family and next year we'll switch. When we spend Thanksgiving with my side, we also do Christmas. We were up in Indy for 5 full days and our boys played with their cousins nonstop without ever getting tired of each other. It's fantastic. My brother has a little girl (the only girl of all the cousins) and can't wait for ours to get here, even though there will be about a 3 year age difference.

I've been waiting to go on this trip so that we can get back and I can go ahead and pack a bag for Ethiopia. It might sound a little premature, but organization is on my list of things to do before we get our referral. (I'm whittling away at my list-I still need to find an adoption keepsake book that I like.) Since we won't need anymore boys clothes, I have been throwing all of Max's clothes he's outgrown into a huge pile. If the pile had been right next to his crib, he could have easily crawled out of his crib and slid down the pile! Yesterday I washed everything and folded it all, ready to pack one of our large bags with all of them to take to the orphanages in Ethiopia. Today I made one last look in his closet before I was going to pack our first bag and I found two more boxes of clothes that I am now washing. Originally I was just going to donate them here, but then decided that we'd take them there instead. We may have to pay extra for all of our luggage, and most all of it won't even be for Scott and I to wear.

As far as our house goes, the construction crew has started on our renovations. I'm so excited. They worked a little while we were gone, so it was pretty wild to come back to an almost entire new room upstairs (at least framed and floored). I'm so glad that we decided to do the room addition, and especially to get it done before we travel. Need to go pick up paint samples. I'll add that to my list...