Thanksgiving! And adventures upon returning home...

We went to my sister Amy's house for Thanksgiving and it was wonderful!  We spent Thanksgiving with them 4 years ago (when Eli was just a baby!) and it was delicious and this year lived up to our memories and expectations. :)

We arrived Wednesday afternoon and were there until Saturday morning.  I felt like I hardly even saw the boys, especially Eli, the whole time we were there.  They were in cousin heaven.  Amy has 6 kids ranging from ages 4 months to 12 yrs, so there were lots of people to help entertain them.  Besides the fact that we were exhausted from staying up too late combined with babies sleeping terribly, we had a really nice time.

Here are some pics:

Thanksgiving breakfast - Russell, Connor, Sydney, and Eli

 Grant with his newest baby sister Elise.  She is a cutie!!

 The kids anxiously awaiting the feast!

 My parents came from California too, so that was nice to see them again!

Jeremy resting after the big meal:

Mmm, pie.  Here's one of SIX pies that were made (2 pumpkin, pecan, apple, berry, and lemon cream).  I know Jeremy got more pictures on his phone, so I'll have to get those later...

On Friday afternoon, Jeremy had some dental work done.  When he was a kid, his older brother Jared shot his tooth out with a BB gun (thanks Jared!) and so he has had an implant in for a long time.  Well, a couple months ago, he bit into a bagel at work and his [fake] tooth fell out.  He knew he would need to get a new one eventually, and we were glad it happened now instead of when we were in school with no dental insurance!  He went to our dentist here and he was able to cement it back in, but he knew he'd need to get it taken care of.

Luckily our wonderful brother-in-law Rob is a dentist who also does implants (ours here doesn't), and so we got the family hook-up and Rob started the process of putting in a new implant.  So he pulled out Jeremy's fake tooth and all that remained of his original tooth, then he drilled in a titanium post I believe.  That has to heal for 4-6 months before he can finish it and attach the post and the new fake tooth, so in the meantime Jeremy gets to wear a "flipper", which is basically a retainer without the metal and with a tooth.  Fun stuff!  It's quite the process, but it will be nice when it's all done.  Thank you Rob!

Then on Saturday, we drove home.  Unfortunately Eli and Connor started getting sick before we left, and then Anna had it while we were there, and I started getting it on Saturday, and poor Jeremy had a bad headache from his tooth ordeal.  So we really all just wanted to be in bed all day, but we made it home in good time and got everyone to bed early, including ourselves.

Then Sunday night around 9pm, the fire alarm went off in the house.  We walked over to the hallway where we heard it and we smelled smoke.  Not good.  Of course we started to panic, especially when we felt the ceiling, which was very warm.  Yikes!  So we ran around the house, trying to find what was burning, making sure the kids were okay, and then Jeremy ran over to our neighbor's house to borrow their ladder so he could get up into our attic, but we still couldn't figure it out!  Finally, we realized something was wrong with the furnace and our heater wasn't working.  We tried to reset it, but when it switched back on the smoke came back, the ceiling heated up again, and the fire alarms went off again.  Our landlord was out of town, so we just shut off the furnace and bundled up for the night.  Then Anna was up coughing at 1am, then two of the smoke detectors were chirping (dying) at 3am, and Jeremy left for a business trip around 5 am this morning, so we'll just say it was a rough night!  Luckily, our landlord sent a guy over today and he was able to fix the furnace.  Hooray!  That is a relief.

So the plans for the rest of the week include staying alive, not burning the house down, getting lots of rest, and laying low until Jeremy gets home.  Sounds good to me!