Thanksgiving Jabalpur style

Thanksgiving sort of came and went at our house. We spent most of the time putting down new linoleum, but we did take some time Thanksgiving day to celebrate the impending arrival of our cousin Ash's baby (now arrived and is a handsome little guy named David). All Indian parties seem to eventually turn to music and dancing, which suits the boys just fine. Duncan looks like he gets his moves from BET, and Roland tends to be a break dancer. They are never short on providing entertainment. It was good to see everyone and give thanks for the many awesome gifts we have been given.

When balloons attack.
Henry and Uncle john.
Shane and Grandma Avis.
The expecting parents.
Uncle Dennis and the boys.
We hope all of you also had a wonderful holiday season and never forget to stop and appreciate all the big and little things.

one of Henry's many firsts

Maybe now is a good time to talk about our beach vacation seeing as how the it has been many months ago. It is notable just the same as it was Henry's first vacation, outside of family visits. We really had a blast, as is the case anytime we are away from work and school. Henry is following in Roland and Duncan's footsteps and has taken to the water like a fish. The bigger boys absolutely love the beach and never want to eat or get out of the water. Normally we go to the Medieval Times dinner show, but this year we switched it up and went to a new pirate dinner show complete with cannons, acrobatics and fighting. What more could you ask for to keep kids entertained while Shane and I enjoy our adult beverages and peaceful dinner. And, as always, we went to the amusement park and stayed until they kicked us out. We can't wait to go again.



This is for all the grandparents. These floats are totally sweet. No parental supervision required. Just kidding. The hard part is keeping the other kids out of the baby float.


Come on Myrtle Beach 2012!

A lover and a fighter

I think I may have intentionally put off blogging about Duncan's birthday because it is just so hard to figure out what to say about Duncan. He is so many things and often sometimes I wonder if he might be schizophrenic. He is so thoughtful and loving and considerate and helpful and responsible and creative and crazy funny and entertaining and annoying as crap (I think this is mostly a product of his age). When I am not with him life is a lot quieter, but boring. He wears his feelings on his sleeve and will totally punch you for hurting those feelings, and then hug you and tell you how much he loves you. Even when I try to spank Duncan, I usually end up laughing because he will say or do something funny without even trying. He wakes up and he is "on." Sometimes he sits up in the middle of the night and just starts telling a story-I assume it to be his dreams- and then lays right back down and sleeps. The things he says when awake and sleeping vary from "not of this earth" to "extremely creative" to "prophetic." He loves to be wild and loves to drive his toys and ride the four wheeler and then go make some cookies in the easy bake to have with our afternoon tea. He is definitely my helper. When I vacuum, Duncan comes along beside me with his toy vacuum. And he never forgets anything, much to my dismay, sometimes. Duncan loves his brothers and tries very hard to take care of Henry and slave for Roland. When we first brought Henry home, Duncan would have these rainman moments when the baby would cry and Duncan would wake up grabbing his head and freakin' out. He has since stopped, but he still tells me that it hurts him when the baby cries, and I believe him.
I tell Shane that I always thought that we are a product of our environment and circumstances, but Duncan has proven me wrong. Like Lady Gaga says, we are born this way.
Duncan keeps everyone else in check, including and especially me. I call Duncan my replacement.
Happy 4th Birthday Duncan!
(shoutout to Aunt Erika for the great pic)
Getting woke up by Daddy on birthday morning
Birthday at Pawpaw and Grammy's
Birthday at school


You'll never guess what Duncan got for his birthday
Happy Birthday to our Duncan Butters!

Fall Fun

Even though I have seemingly skipped a whole season, I have not given up on blogging about the rest of our 2011. I have been frantically making costumes and frantically cooking for parties and frantically going to school presentations and frantically shopping for Christmas and trying to meet deadlines at work (which are always over the holidays for some reason) and literally have to wear my tennis shoes every day because I don't know when I will need to run. But...it has been so much fun and the boys make it all worth it.
Fall here was beautiful and we had a lot of good times. I personally like fall because there are so many exciting activities to use as lubricant for our daily grind.

Roland and Duncan dressed for Awanas' cowboy and indian themed trunk-or-treat.

This is what BFF is all about. This is Roland and his friend Dallas in the corn maze.

Roland taking a rest in the corn crib.

Classmates: Henry, Juliette, Samuel and Gunnar (another BF).
Duncan and classmates on their way to find their pumpkins.

Searching, searching...

Found it!

While Henry didn't get to go to the pumpkin patch, he did get to experience his first state fair. Here he is enjoying his free "you are so cute" elephant from some friendly carnie folk.

Jurrasic Park.

Couldn't resist getting a picture of my handsome guys with their babysitters.

Gentlemen, start your engines!

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line,
Engines pumping and thumping in time.
The green light flashes, the flags goes up,

Churning and burning, they yern for the cup.

- Cake "Going the Distance"

Roland and Duncan participated in their first Pinewood derby. We let the boys paint the main car color and then we helped with the decorating.

I think our group effort paid off. We had good looking cars and both the boys consistently placed 1st and 2nd in every heat.

Story: For those of you who don't know, there are limitations placed on size/weight/wheel type, etc. Right as we get ready to walk out the door, we decided to weigh the cars (insert shoutout to Alan here for the postal scale b-day gift) to see if we can add any weight to them and thereby make them faster. We were about 2oz light of the maximum, so I decided to hot glue quarters to the bottom of the cars. Bad idea because they don't have enough weight. So Shane goes to his shop and brings back some small pieces of steel that he has been storing for about 10 years. The steel plates fit on the cars like they were made for them and brought our weight to the maximum-exactly. The point of this story is that I always give Shane grief for dumpster diving and bringing home stuff from work, but this was his moment to shine.

Roland's ride. He was missed a trophy by literally hundredths of a second due to a bent axle. We'll know next time not to use a hammer.
Yeah for Duncan! He placed 2nd in boys. Good job!
1-2-3
The pits.
The raceway.
Roland and Duncan's cars (far left, blue and black, respectively).
Here's to my speed racers!

Eno

For all of you that don't already know, Shane has been working in Lexington, NC for the last two months. It has been a very busy time and it has taken some getting used to. The long term goal would be to move, if the job goes well, so that we could save money on school and daycare and be closer to family.

While some aspects of single parenthood are easier, we all miss Daddy very much and we try to take time to enjoy him while he is here on the weekends. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't hear, "When is Daddy coming home?" and "I want my Daddy." The hardest part is balancing work at home (which is always backlogged, even in good times) with the absolutely beautiful weather we have been having. I just thought I would share some of our pics from the Eno River, one of our favorite places.

GO WOLFPACK!!!!!!!

HOOOOOOWL for Wolfpack football!

Today, NCSU plays Maryland for a chance at a bowl game. Regardless of whether or not they win today, we can at least say we can at least say we saw them win something...even if it was against Central Michigan. We celebrated employee appreciation with all the boys before the game and enjoyed free food, games and other goodies. Then we dropped the big guys off and went back to the game with Henry. I don't think he cared for football very much, but he was a good boy and was happy as always with his bottle of milk.

Dad and Henry with the wolf.

Duncan getting his cornhole on.

Roland dressed for football action.

Dad and Henry with the band. Check out those seats! I haven't had seats that good since I was in band.

A great big Price family shoutout to Dr. Hyman for passing on the free football tix!

Good luck Pack!