Great, Long Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a super long Thanksgiving weekend. I have been off of work since Wednesday and Josh had Thursday through today off. So I have lots too post and will start with today:

Today we took the day off for a medical appointment for Madelyn in Union City. She saw the pediatric orthopedic surgeon that is the expert on her Hemihypertrophy (left side of her body is bigger than her right) and leg length discrepancy. We see this specialist about every year and a half. Today we had xrays done and saw the doctor. She measured about 3/4 of an inch off in her leg length so the doctor thinks it is time for regular shoe lifts. I need to have her right shoe altered. He also let us know that we are looking at a surgery when she is about 11 that will slow down the growth in her longer leg so that the other leg can catch up. He projects that at full growth she will be a full inch "off" so if they do the surgery at the right time, they can get her leg leght pretty close. We will see... We always try and cap our East Bay appointments off with something fun at the end of the day, so we stopped by the Oakland Zoo and road the carnival rides. It was too cold to hang out for long so we didn't really visit the zoo, but we rode the train, carausel and the little cars. Here are som pictures of our fun day:

Brother and Sister holding hands. When Noah was trailing behind, Mady said "I'll stick with Noah."

Noah watching Mady ride the Eagle.

Mady said she wanted to ride the Sea Gull.

On the Friday morning after Thanksgiving Madelyn and I went to the grand opening of a Knitting Store in Santa Rosa - we were pretty excited and Mady even took pictures with her camera. I am now in love with Baby Alpaca Chunky Yarn (also pictured). My new hobby (addiction) has now become even more expensive.

The pictures Mady took.

Here is the yarn I bought at the store - so pretty.

On Friday afternoon we decided to get a jump on things and go get our Christmas Tree. We always go out to a local tree farm and cut our tree. On Saturday we decorated inside and out. We are really never this prepared for Christmas, so it feels good to have so much done. We were the first ones on our block to get our Lights up! Usually we are the only people with kids who don't decorate on the holidays. Of course we haven't done any shopping yet, but we have the tree all ready for gifts.

Searching for our tree

We found the tree!
Cutting down the tree.
We get the tree in the house!

All the decorations are up by Saturday morning!

We had a really nice day on Thanksgiving - but I didn't get any pictures - not even one. We had dinner at my moms house. Noah even went the whole day without a nap and it was still fun! The kids did great!

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I spent the day with the kids. We had a really nice day just hanging out and I got some really good pictures of them in the back yard.




One last thing. Josh and the kids have discovered motorcycle crashes and kids riding dirt bikes on You Tube. I don't think I need to say much about that - see pictures: