Happy (Early) Thanksgiving!

We have already started celebrating Thanksgiving here at our house. Since the kids and I are heading to Ohio tomorrow to visit with my parents and my Aunt Claire and Uncle Jim, who are flying in all the way from Utah, we had our big meal together with Bob Friday night. It was good, but the problem with having "Thanksgiving" on a day other than the 4th Thursday of November is that there are other things going on, so you can't just focus on the preparation of food. As a result, I would have to say that it was not by any means my finest work in the kitchen, LOL. I overcooked the sweet potatoes because I turned off the oven and then sort of forgot all about them. They were still good, but the biggest problem I had was the mashed potatoes. I cooked them, drained them, and then set them down on the counter to cool for a minute or 2 before mashing them. Well, an hour or so later I remembered them. Let's just say that I have never really experienced true "gluey" potatoes before Friday, and I will not be forgetting the potatoes again any time soon, LOL. With plenty of gravy they were tolerable, although Luke did not finish his.

One thing we had going on Friday besides cooking was Grace's 6 month well-baby appointment. News flash: She is very light. Yes, she weighs all of 13 pounds, 1 ounce, which the doctor was not very pleased with. It didn't help that I totally forgot about making a 4 month well-baby appointment, so all he could see was that since July, she has only gained 1 pound, LOL. Actually, since in the past month she has gotten 2 teeth and started crawling, I would say she lost a little, but the fact is, she is never going to be big. Luke was also very light. At his 6 month appt. he was 14 pounds, but I started him on solid food at 4 1/2 months because he was not a good nurser, and I thought this would help him gain lots of weight. Well, he is almost 9 years old, he is a good eater, and he weighs 52 pounds, which is still below the 5th percentile in weight! I can definitely see Grace following this track, since she looks so much like him. As you can see by the picture, she obviously looks healthy, and she is very active. Her new thing is pulling herself to standing. I'm not concerned about her, which is the nice thing about having 6 kids, LOL. Actually, all our kids are between the 5th and 10th percentile in weight except Nathan, who has plumped up to near the 50th. So I think we can assume that none of our kids are going to be huge! I do think it is somewhat ironic in this age of childhood obesity that when a family is full of skinny but healthy kids, well, that's suspicious too! I guess I could call them all inside in the afternoons so they can play video games in front of the TV while eating doughnuts and chips . . . except we don't actually have any video games and I never buy doughnuts. Hmmm. I guess they'll just have to stay skinny! In the meantime we're really going to ramp up Grace's solid food--turkey, dressing, and mashed potatoes it is on Thursday, with pumpkin pie for dessert! LOL!