A quick rundown

All last week Brayton was sick with a cold and home from school (they only had Monday, Tuesday and an early out on Wednesday) and if Thanksgiving would not have been in there, I think he'd have missed the whole week of school!  He finally started feeling better Saturday afternoon and Sunday he told us all day about how good he felt!  Tuesday at school, they had earned a popcorn party for their DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read).  I promised him his own special DEAR time and I read with him.  We popped marshmallow popcorn and he had juice on a blanket in the living room (note the dog watching and waiting for a piece).  On Wednesday Chris and I had to drag Bray along with us to get groceries for Thanksgiving and since he felt so badly, we took two carts and he rode in one.  He fell asleep while we were grocery shopping (poor thing!) ~ we did treat him to ice cream at Culver's though (which he promptly told his brother about when he got home from school!!)

 Thursday we had Thanksgiving at home.  I got a lot of Christmas shopping done online and I LOVE that!!  They had Black Friday deals on most websites on Thursday and lots of free shipping.  Friday we decided to decorate our tree and put out Christmas decorations.  I looked like hell, so of course, Chris took pictures of us!

 SEE?!  I have Olive hair ~ you know, the girl from Popeye??

Saturday, we decided to watch the Polar Express and Chris wanted to bring the surround sound speakers upstairs to make it really exciting.  I was cleaning up from supper and had thought at one time that I should check and see where he was because he'd been MIA for awhile.  Well. . .  He was getting the box with the electrical stuff down so he could run some speaker wire so it would really be "surrounding" us and the ladder tipped.  This is the scene in the garage.  The blue, empty tote at the bottom is the one that had the electrical stuff in it.

 Here is all of the electrical goods spilled all over the garage floor.

 Sorry, I had corrected this one before uploading it, but it turned it on the side again.  The empty space on the shelf between the blue and orange totes is where the electrical tote was stored.  As it fell, Chris let go of it and tried to catch himself ~ he landed on a bike and the saw.  Doesn't feel so good!

Our movie was great with the surround sound though, so he might have thought it was worth it :D  In fact, I made him turn it down because I was afraid things were going to start falling off the walls and off the shelves!

This Monday, Taite was home sick from school.  He had a headache and was talking about seeing blue dots ~ UH OH!!  I gave him ibuprofen and sudafed because he had dark circles under his eyes and had him lay on a heating pad because his headache was on the left back side of his head!  He felt well enough to go to school today and they had a basketball game tonight.  I really should get a picture of the coach and his helper :~)  Bray is the stats helper for Chris and his only complaint (Brayton's) is that he doesn't know what all the motions mean for penalties.  After the 6:30 game, Taite was starving so we stopped at HyVee since he has to take birthday treats to school tomorrow.  As we were checking out, the cashier made a joke that since I used a credit card, I needed to "sign my life away" and I told her I was signing away my first born :~)  She quickly assured us that she would take him in a heartbeat and then here is the weird part.  She asks us "Does he like trains?"  We all stared at her like she suddenly grew horns and started talking gibberish.  The word "like" for how Taite feels about trains is not even close to being accurate!  She wrote down some information for us:
Mapleton
Dec 19
#10 Tower
Noon - 4:00

Then she proceeds to tell us what this is.  On December 19th, her husband's friend who collects Lionel trains is having an open house so people can come for free to see his 3000 square foot basement which is laid out with a million dollars (or millions of dollars ~ I don't remember exactly) worth of model trains running. 

WHAT?! 

Taite is already in heaven and counting down the days ~ hey ~ since his birthday gift isn't here yet, I could make him a paper chain to count down the days to the 19th!  He is scheduled to have a basketball game on the 19th at 1:30, but since it's about an hours drive away from here, we'll skip the BB game because I'm pretty sure he will want to hang out watching these trains (in person!!) for the whole 4 hours!  When Taite has free time, he sits with the laptop and watches model train videos that others have posted on youtube.  I hope he doesn't wet himself when we get there . . . hehe