Thanks indeed

We celebrated Turkey Day this year by having our first visitors here in the new house. Since Jarom’s parents don’t love him we invited Alixa’s folks to come instead. They accepted the invitation since they have no kids at home and who wants to be in Cleveland during November anyway? They flew in the day before Thanksgiving and Mario and Jarom quickly took advantage of the nice weather to play a few holes of golf. Then after dinner, Lix and her mom went out shopping. So everyone got what they wanted on day one.

Thanksgiving started with Jarom waking up early and heading out to play football. He had messed up his knee a little while playing basketball a few days before, and probably should have sat it out, but Thanksgiving is the only day all year that he gets to play football so he played anyway. Like most ward football games it was a diverse mixture of old and young, talented and not. Jarom got to play quarterback and tried to make sure everyone felt included and had a good time, especially the little kids. And now he can put the football away for another 12 months. The afternoon was spent hanging out with the grandparents. Jenna wanted to take a walk and show them the neighborhood and the park and play on the playground. Since there are only a few of us, we decided not to cook Thanksgiving dinner at home this year, and instead made reservations at a fancy-pants steakhouse nearby. Upon arrival, Jarom and Lix realized that it was a little fancier-pants than they had thought, and questioned their presence in the restaurant with two little kids. But they gave the valet their cars and headed into the posh dining room and plopped Jenna down with her bag of cut up chicken nuggets and gave Bo some toys to chew on and they were awesome. Outside of some singing that Jenna did using her NOT-library voice, there wasn’t anything to complain about, and they actually got several compliments on the stellar behavior of their children, which will make any parent proud. The dinner was superb, even though Jarom hates eating in snooty establishments. He doesn’t think turkey is all that great, so he got a ribeye and swears that it was the greatest piece of meat he has ever eaten. The rest of the party was equally pleased with their meals. Jarom and Lix might even go back there someday, although they definitely won’t try and bring any kids with them.

This is as nice as Jarom dresses up. It wasn't good enough for Lawry's.

PJ and Mario have a little more experience with fine dining than the Winns do

Friday morning was spent doing some yardwork. Mostly Mario and PJ doing yardwork. You see, Jarom is not really a landscaping kind of guy, much to Alixa’s dismay. But those Hegewalds take their yardwork very seriously, and they saw some things that needed tending to and Jarom wasn’t about to stand in their way. So some bushes got trimmed/removed, some weeding got done, and some leaves were raked. They wanted to go out and buy a leaf blower and an axe to do some heavy duty remodeling, so Jarom had to reign in the enthusiasm just a tad. After the yardwork Lix, Jarom and Mario took off to play a round of golf while the kids played with PJ.

Mimi decided to give Jenna's bed a test run while she was here

Saturday was zoo day, which is always Jenna’s favorite. The Dallas zoo is a pretty good one, and there were lots of highlights. There is a kid’s zoo area with lots of farm animals that can be petted and a pony named Tank that Jenna got to ride. There is a bird cage that you can walk into and feed the birds as they land on your arms, which Jenna thought was hilarious. There were monkeys and a tiger and camels and otters and penguins. They also got to watch a rhino play with his trainer, which was neat because he jumped around and frolicked like a little puppy, something that Jarom didn’t imagine a 1.5-ton animal could do. Alixa’s favorite was the giant South American anteater, and Jarom’s was watching a girl lion try to catch sparrows. Mimi and Opa and Jenna got to take a tram ride that circled the zoo and gave them an aerial view into most all the cages, which they thought was fabulous. After the zoo Lix took her parents to Lewisville so they could see the house that they almost moved into 10 years ago, and Jarom took the little ones home for naps.

Deep thoughts with the gorilla

Tank

Happy grandkids, happy grandparents

The rest of the grandparent’s time was spent hanging out, playing games, and enjoying the grandkids. Mars left Sunday evening, and PJ stuck around until Wednesday. I don’t know how much Bo cares about people that aren’t his parents at this stage of the game, but Jenna loved having her grandparents around. She had a great time playing with Mimi and doing puzzles and reading books with Opa. Lix started getting her books from the library a few weeks ago and she has had a great time hearing new stories each week. While the Hegewalds were here her favorite story was Horton Hears a Who, or as she calls it, the elephant book. She loves the story and gets very animated as she looks at the pictures and tells you about what is happening to the elephant and his speck of dust. She now asks to read it at least once a day and enjoys filling in some of the lines, as you can see in this video.



And now that the guests have taken off, the remodeling of the home has begun. A few nights ago the whole crew went off to Sherwin Williams to get some paint. It was a terrible experience because Blake threw up all over Alixa and Jenna had a particularly messy accident in her pants while in the store, but they got some paint and have begun to redo the family room, with other rooms on the horizon. Soon enough, Alixa will be happy with the place, except for the kitchen counters, which will then need to be replaced. I guess it never really ends.