My mother asked me when it started. "After Thanksgiving," was my reply. What you asked? Total and complete insanity. Alden possesses a crazy child gene that can only be activated by one thing...extended family. The rest of use just enjoy the visit from Uncle Tommy and Aunt Nicole or Cousin Katie and Adam, but Alden seems this is where Alden seems to get his radioactive Spider-bite channeling the crawling the walls and leaping off of tall object super-powers. The good news for Tommy, Nicole, Adam, and Katie: it usually is post-visit.
We spent Thanksgiving in Jackson this year. Perhaps the fact that these boys were close to perfect the entire three days is why they just had to unleash the crazies when they got home. The drive was great, everyone slept, everyone napped, and I don't think anything was broken at Grandma's house. We ate our way to Jackson. We stopped first at Nikki's on the way out of town. As if a pound of buttered and greased vegetables was not enough, Joey was hungry again by Meridian, so was stopped for his second meal of the day. While were were there trying to keep the not hungry kids happy and taking about forty trips to the bathroom, Alden asked me to tell him a story. Thanks to Scooby Doo, Alden loves ghosts. On the back of the menu was the story of Felix Weidmann building the restaurant. So, I just read him that. Now, I have to tell a story about the ghost of Mr. Felix almost every day.
We decided to take a trip to the local park on Thanksgiving Day to run off a little energy and feed the ducks. It is so sweet to see all the ducks flock around a smiling Spencer.
Or chase the ducks depending on your personality. So nice to see the the presumably slowest of the group trying desperately to escape Alden.
My fearless climber.
Our quieter explorer.
Somber brothers. They were thrilled to get their photo taken instead of playing at the park. Photos always speak better than words.
There are a lot more fun things to do in a park on a beautiful Thanksgiving Day when you are a toddler.
Yep. Like that.
It was finally time to sit down for lunch. Grandma thought of absolutely everything. Green beans, sweet potato casserole, broccoli cheese casserole, turkey, ham, dressing, rolls, and frozen fruit cups. It won't take long though to realize that the two littlest eaters at a roll and a frozen fruit cup. The fruit only made it into the mix because we convinced Spencer it was a cupcake.
After lunch, it was time for rest. This was my favorite time of Thanksgiving. Well, yes, the calm kids part was good, but I got to have camp outs with my boys. They slept in the same room for the first time and did very, very well. Alden loved having company. Not sure of sleeping in unfamiliar places, he wanted Mommy to sleep with him on the pull out sofa. This meant that I went to bed at 8:00 pm (not all bad folks) and sometimes ended up between the boys. So special. They were so tired they slept and barely moved. Alden played with my hair all night and wanted to spoon.
Of course, our little family of four was always the first to rise. The boys shared a little chair in the kitchen and very closely watched cartoons. See the red potatoes? Spencer was convinced that they were balls and threw most of them across the room all week. That might have been the one thing destroyed at Grandma's house but I think everyone can handle a potato or two.
What trip to Jackson wouldn't be complete without a trip to Boots and More? I have to say I lived there for four complete years and never, ever took a trip to Boots and More. But, Joey woke up on Black Friday with a desire for cowboy boots. Something else I have never heard in the 15 years I have known him. The Boots and More is actually way more fun than we thought. And you know what happens on vacation.
Like you buy your three year old cowboy boot and a riding horse. The whole family (minus Spencer) went home with cowboy boots.
Of course there was a lot of play. Alden and Spencer love their Uncle Tommy.
On our last Jackson night, they boys got to play with their cousins, Anna Catherine, Caroline, and Henry. They gave a beautiful piano concert, displayed perfect highlighter art, and engaged in a thrilling game of hide and seek. Best part was, this was the perfect play date right before the drive home. Any parent knows that nighttime in pajamas is the best drive ever!
Leaving Grandma's driveway.
Four minutes into the trip.
Seven minutes into the trip.
Thanksgiving weekend would not be complete without decorating the Christmas tree. Alden was so proud that he bought his tree at Lowe's. He told everyone about it and even picked one up and hauled it over to us by himself. It was about 3 feet tall. He decided that the bigger tree was taller. I wanted to get the tree from the local Optimist Club. Joey said he wasn't optimistic about the economy so we had to go to Lowe's. It is a beautiful tree because Alden decorated it all by himself. All of the ornaments are on one side on the bottom. Spencer's favorite part is, no surprise, taking off the train ornaments and carrying them around the house.
The first gift of every Christmas...the yearly ornament. Excited little boys! Spencer got a choo-choo on his ornament and Alden got a dinosaur. They each helped put their ornaments on the tree.
Christmas is not complete without a trip to Target.
Lots of trips to Target.
Day one of Merry Christmas events was making the gingerbread house. But because I have the little conductor, we were going to make a Christmas choo-choo. AHHHHHHHH!!!!! That is pretty much all I have to say. The icing in the kit stuck nothing together. Try as he might, Alden was not the best at sitting still and holding the train car walls together while they dried.
This is Spencer while we are decorating. He wanted to eat the cookie and was absolutely flabbergasted that we could be so cruel as to not let him eat the cookie pieces. We tried to tell him it wasn't a cookie. That didn't work.
Spencer two and a half hours into the gingerbread train project slowly draining all of my Christmas spirit. Spencer had crawled to get the cookie at least ten times and pulled the train apart for the cookies. We were all covered in icing, house falling apart, and I decided to resort to hot glue. I was smart to hold on to the elementary teacher bag of emergency tools.
We then built tracks and hot glued the tracks. Time for a break. The train is displayed on the table in the living room tentatively hanging in the balance. And then the piece de la resistance of the morning. This photos is all that was left of the three hour train project after I caught the dog standing on top the the table eating the the train. I was too angry at the time to get that brilliant photo. Let's just say that I learned with boys they probably just would rather make gingerbread and eat the cookies. I also learned that sometimes the local bakery is a lot easier. 
We changed gears and had a lot more fun with the bubbles. Merry low-maintenance Christmas! The insanity and fun to be continued...