It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Yeah! We have our Christmas tree up!! The kids and I are so excited. For those of you that know me well, know that I love Christmas. I love everything about it- the meaning, the shopping, the cooking, the decorating, the hustle and bustle...everything! This year the kids and I convinced Chris to put up our tree on Sunday, November 16. I explained to him that after all I have my fall things out all of September, October, and November. Why in the world couldn't we start decorating for Christmas? He graciously smiled (like he does a lot when the kids and/or I try to sell him on an idea!!) and said with a sigh, "I guess." The kids and I were quite surprised because I had prepared them to accept No for an answer.
The past several years we have hosted my family for Thanksgiving and I have felt like I owed it to them to keep the fall things up until we had at least cleaned up the Thanksgiving dishes, but this year my sis-in-law is hosting T-giving at her house.
So starting tonight we will have visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads...
Let the festivities begin.

Right of Passage

Today was an awesome day for my husband and son. Chris is a hunter. He starts looking forward to deer season late August, early September. He cleans his gun, sights it in, starts feeding the deer (I refer to it as luring poor unsuspecting creatures, but it does put dinner on the table!). Each year since Ty has understood that Chris was going, he has asked to go. Chris has taken him just to watch the deer, but Mommy has always said you are just not big enough yet. You have to be seven. Four years ago seven seemed like a big kid. Each year he has asked me how many more years until he is seven. Well, now he is seven and I had no choice but to let him go (Chris and Tyler held me to this). Tyler took what we are referring to as a 'personal day' from school and went to the deer stand with Chris. For those of you who are unfamiliar with deer season, this was opening weekend. We are calling it a personal day instead of playing hookie because I told him that I knew where he was and he would not be in trouble for missing school HOWEVER if he played hookie, then I would not know where he was and to anticipate trouble when I found out (not IF, but WHEN). I went on to use this as a teachable moment that because Mommy is a teacher and because technology allows it, I will ALWAYS know what is happening at school.
Okay, back to my story. Sorry I tend to digress.
The boys ended up shooting a deer. Ty was pumped. Chris was pumped. They were even using the same gun that Chris used to shoot his first deer when he was around Tyler's age. It was an awesome day of bonding for the two most important men in my life. I hope that this was the first of many trips to come.
I did send my camera, but someone (someone who is 33, male, and mentioned in this story)forgot to take it with him. Hopefully there will be another trip and I can take pictures of the 2 of them together.

Jackson Update

We have been very busy in the Jackson household. We have been winding down our fall sports. Tyler sadly finished baseball this weekend. He is an incredible little player and is very versatile. Of course, for those of you who know Chris, it makes his heart happy that he loves to play catcher!
Kaydee played her last soccer game 2 weeks ago- she is shaping up to be an aggressive goalie.
Kin will continue gymnastics (they collect our money year round)!
Halloween was very successful. As always we stopped by to let the grandparents (and great grandparents) see how cute we were! Then we headed to the Fall Festival out at Morgan's Point and collected more candy than any 3 kids should be allowed to have!