Happy, Happy House

You guys, I am ALONE in this house. (Except for two sweet but annoying dogs.) Is this not the holy grail of young motherhood? Dylan took the boys to the park because that's just the kind of guy he is. And that's not everything...we had the BEST day yesterday.

I need to make this quick, though, because I have about 473 things to accomplish before they get back home. Here's the short version: It was family day. All. Day. Long. Our house hasn't been this happy and this rested in some time.

We kicked it off at 6:30 by sending D and G to the gas station down the road for donuts. Gavin, a sugar junkie, was over the moon. Shortly after that came Christmas decorating. This year, it involved rearranging furniture and for some reason was much more labor intensive than I can remember. But the payoff was more than worth it. In case you're wondering, I no longer condone decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving under normal circumstances. I've learned the value of patience in my old age. But, if we didn't do it this weekend, we wouldn't get it done until the weekend of December 10th, and that is completely unacceptable. Gavin was SO into decorating the tree. It made it so much fun.

Neighborhood shenanigans on Friday

This kid melts me

Donuts!!

G2 enjoyed a few bites of donut, too.

In the afternoon, we packed up the bikes and the buggy and headed across the street to ride on the Pemberton Trail. Dylan's pilot partner was camping on the campground, and we went to visit for a couple hours. What we didn't know was that a 12-hour race was happening on the very trail we needed to ride to get to the campground. So, we were going against race traffic on a single track, and Dylan was towing a buggy. It wasn't as disastrous as it sounds because it wasn't like a constant flow of bikers...but yeah, it was a little disastrous. Anyway, we had fun at the campsite, and everyone was so sweet to our boys. Afterward, Dylan and the boys took a different path to avoid the racers, and then I joined the race for the ride back to the truck. When I'd let people pass they'd say "You're doing a great job!!" And I was thinking, well, I've been riding for 20 minutes and you're on Hour 5, and you're passing me. Haha. I took the truck and scooped up the boys down the street at a different entrance to the trail, and our timing was perfect. Overall, a successful afternoon!

Gavin painted his lips and face with a pink highlighter and then offered to do mine. So sweet.

This morning he said, "Daddy, you're my best friend. We make a great team."

Eight stockings...just right!

Our tree found a new location to call home this year.

A few pumpkins as a nod to Thanksgiving.

We closed out the night with some holiday baking, and then all four of us sat around the dinner table. It's really depressing how rare it is for us all to sit down for dinner, but it was the perfect way to close out a perfect day. This fall-like weather that has finally...FINALLY...decided to show up has been a great touch to round out an exceptional weekend. We've got more on the agenda. I hate to keep you on the edge of your seat, but you'll have to check back later to see what else is going down around here.