Junkin Thanksgiving

 The Junkin crew took over the traditional Thursday thanksgiving dinner, and it was also a great meal.  I love the sweet potato casserole from Shay, and the spiral ham, and even tho it looks gross, the pile of vegetables.  We spent the night in the RV on both Thursday and Friday night, which was nice to spend more time than usual with family.  

On Friday morning, we woke up early, and as Colby and I added a new brick flowerbed, Sam, Davis, Ben, and Eli cleaned out a ditch, and added dirt to a berm in Granddaddy's yard.  So a good hard days work, but this day included a horrible dad moment...

The RV has a tricky door that gets stuck and you have to really push it hard to get it opened.  And on Thursday night, we put the girls in bed early, while I went back in the house to visit and talk with Colby and family.  Before leaving the girls out in the RV, I recognized that they might be stuck in the RV if they could not get the door open, so I told them both that if they needed me for any reason, and they could not get out of the door, that they were to honk the horn over and over again until I heard it and came out to help them.  They both acknowledged this, but also both went right to sleep with no problems.  The next day I was up early and got to work quickly.  Ruby came out in her pajamas from being inside the house, and wanted to go into the RV to change clothes.  I helped her into the RV, then closed the door for her to change, while I went back to working on the flowerbed on the other side of the house from the RV.  Then 25 minutes later, I see my sweet baby girl sobbing and walking over to me after being "trapped" in the RV.  Oh no...I could see she was very upset...but I knew that I had given her instructions...so I immediately scolded her telling her to "Stop her crying, you were told what to do, why did you not honk the horn"...then I felt so bad as in between sobbing breaths, she cried out "Because I don't know where the horn is".   She later told me about her struggles being trapped in the air conditioned 2 bedroom home of an RV...how she first pushed as hard as she could against the door...then yelled out the front window towards the front of the house...and finally, the kicker, she climbed up in the top bunk looking out the window towards the house yelling "Daddy".  Ugh Ugh Ugh.  By the way, Ruby now knows where the horn is, and how to operate it in the event of being stuck in an RV.  

Ratcliff Thanksgiving

Trying to keep things outdoors this year for thanksgiving, and look at the beautiful day.  It was an amazing day with way too much food as usual.  I got the normal sleeping picture down below, but Sam actually caught Magan and Marcia sleeping as well, so I wasn't the only one on this holiday.  The ratcliff family were also introduced to KanJam on this day.  

Wrestling with Dave

So this happened, Davis is now wrestling for the Chelsea Middle School team, and he loves it.  Never even a sport that I ever thought about, but he came home one day as they mentioned the season was about to begin saying I want to join.  I suggested he go to some practices and see if he would really like it, and picking him up after practice I learned that he had the breath knocked out of him twice, and he still loved it.  So we signed him up, with easily the most expensive sport we have experienced thus far.  And now he has practice every day, and even got a pin in his very first match ever.  

Magan is mad that I can't seem to capture the videos very well.  It is a long night during the wrestling meets...about 3 hours to see Davis wrestle for about 2 minutes, but it is quite exciting...at times.  Davis lost his next two matches, but on his third shown in the pictures against the guy in red from Thompson  Middle, Davis almost got pinned in the first round, then flipped the guy in the second round for a quick pin.  I was so glad to get a copy of the school video, because his double fist pumps when he won was so great to watch (but again, my camera messed up)...and I don't think I have ever seen him smile so big when he came back to his team and looked up at me.  I am proud of my new wrestler.  His coach tells him he needs to get more aggressive...which is funny because he told me tonight that he was wrestling a guy a little smaller than him in practice, and it was hard slamming him down, because he was afraid he would hurt him.