Happy Thanksgiving

To all our family and friends, we hope you all had a good Thanksgiving!!

Enjoying Family,Friends and lots of food!

We had all the kids(ALesha flew in on Monday) and grandkids here. The usual food spread. I did buy a Costco pumpkin pie this year that Doug was not to happy about. Guess I'll be making them here at home from now on .

Everyone was tired and a few people our battling colds...so hasn't been our most exciting Thanksgiving. The girls are planning to hit the outlet mall's midnight madness sales and then stay up and be in Olympia by 5am ish. So after dinner everyone just wanted to take really really long naps.
The boys (Nate and Jesse) did go play football at 9am at Toledo HS with other guys from our church. It' s tackle and they both were feeling it a little bit. Nate more than Jesse. Guess he took a particularly hard hit to the ribs and was pretty sore all day. They both sleep most of the day till dinner.

We did have alittle more excited the night before as Tressa talked us all into going to the "Great Wolf Lodge" for a "festival of trees" thing. They were having free pic's with Santa

So, we got the 3 little ones all dressed up for the big event and headed out.

The "Great wolf Lodge" turned out to be more
exciting than the festival of Trees. Jesse and Tressa were the only ones who had been there better. It is a pretty cool place. We all enjoyed the cool wood furniture and looking at the water park. It would be a fun place to stay some time.













Doug is also almost done with lights and decorating the yard. He has more he would like to do but has run out of power.( he really needs a good sale on the LED lights. Guess that is what the after Christmas sales are for) We turned the fridge on in the garage to put some holiday food in it and we blew a circuit. So until we unplug the fridge again we have lights we can't turn on.

Feel free to stop by with your families and look around!

What's it like

From time to time I get asked what's it like living with my married children and their kids. Well I can honestly say that it is both great and crazy. About 96% great and 4% crazy. Having the kids around to talk to all the time is great, having the grankids around is nothing short of fantastic! However there are those moments when they are like teenagers again and it can be crazy.

Now I have always liked my alone time and do tend to keep to myself somewhat (see outside deck and other stuff as defense exhibit A). Tressa is the opposite of this, she likes people around and to be doing stuff and in the absence of that she has the TV. Melia bounces back and forth from doing things and nice quiet solitude time. Spencer is kept pretty busy with school and training while Jesse just kind of goes with the flow and is adaptable to most situations. Dee Dee she tries to keep everything up and running smoothly but often has to do it from the road. Now all of this generally blends together in to a sort of an organized chaos.

The 4% crazy happens only when things all go bad at the same time. When multiple people have a tough day and are looking for solitude there is just not much to be found around here. A person can retreat to their bedroom but after awhile it just seems like you have been sent to your room instead of retreating to your room. Planning something for the main room is a dangerous risk because chances are there is already something happening out there. Then of course keeping the three women of the house happy and content is bound to be trouble 4% of the time. Thankfully for me these events seem to happen most when I'm not around. Hmmn maybe there's a connection here. I'm usually just informed of them when I get home or back in the house whichever the case may be.

When the grankids have a bad moment they are generally comforted by picking them up and holding them or doing something with them. Unfortunately this tactic doesn't still work for the rest of the folks in the house. Their concerns and problems generally extend to a little more than I can't see what's happening on the counter or my toy is out of my reach. It's at these times we have to remember that we are all not only physically close but also emotionally close to each other. So we have our storms occasionally but they blow over pretty quick and then is smooth sailing on the AFS (Abrahamson family ship) Chaos.

Meals can be an exciting time seeing if anyone has come up with an idea for dinner or not. I used to take leftovers for my lunch all the time but there doesn't seem to be many leftovers anymore. It seems that the fridge only has two conditions to it either so much food in it I can't find what I'm looking for or so empty there is nothing to eat. I'll have my eye on something that I want to eat that is in there Friday night but by the time I get around to eating on Sat. it's already gone. I've taken to stock piling food up in my classroom for my lunches so that I know that it will be there when I'm ready for it. It seems like the girls didn't eat much when they were in High School so we didn't go through food super fast around here but now that we have adult girls and boys here it goes fast.

Yep it's 96% great and 4% crazy but a 96 is an A on any scale.

The lighting story.

The new deck and Christmas stuff going up all around!
So it's time to tell the rest of the story. Yes you could call me crazy, but then I'm the father of 4 daughters and crazy kind of comes with the territory. I have been known to put up a light or two for Christmas to celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Just as he was a light unto the world I like to try and brighten up the little dark space that we live in. Now what started as just a few strings up so we could find the doorway in the winter has turned into almost 200 things that get plugged in. It really started to grow when I started making the painted wooden decorations about 10 years ago. I liked them because you could see them in the day but needed some lights around them to see at night, so I started putting up more lights Melia working on the tomato cage xmas trees.

Now I spend around 60 hours putting up the decorations with the girls significant contributions generally involve them telling me I don't have enough stuff up and that more is needed. They all plan these lets put up the lights day but it is rather slow and tedious work especially in the beginning. They don't like that the lights must go a certain way in order to connect everything and make it all work. They will put in a couple of hours after that it's me putting them up and then trying to hold them off on turning them all on.
Our motto for proper lighting is to keeping putting them up until a circuit breaker pops from the power overload, then I switch a few of them onto another breaker and keep going forward. We have to remember to do all the household chores like cleaning before the lights come on for the night or else cleaner will overload the system.

I built a new deck along the side of the house with a little help from the boys and covered it so the grandkids and I could sit out there and look at the lights no matter what the weather. Peyton enjoys playing there and so far the girls like to be out there as well but their parents don't let me take them out there for too long. I might have to put in a big overhead heater so I can get them out there for longer, of course I might have trouble finding enough power to keep it working. The rest of the household goes out to look at the lights for a couple of minutes, me I sit out there for quite awhile which is why it takes me 100 hours to do 60 hours of work.
Oh I don't want to forget my darling wife's contribution she constantly requests more moving lights and wants more lights all over the place, maybe one of these days I will be able to make her say that it's all good, until then I keep working at it.

Peyton -I'm sure was a big help with the deck!

The Babies

Isabell and Madison holding hand s

Guess it is time for another exciting Abrahamson family Blog. Tressa informed me she has first dibbs on Peyton. But, I can talk about the other two!

Madison is 7 months and Isabell is 5 months. they both are so cute and so different. You really don't get to see your own kids at the same stage at the same time (unless you have twins)
Madison is our serious one. You can get her to laugh and giggle. But, it can take some real effort.

Madison almost smiling!

Isabell is all smiles unless she is hungry. Then watch out for her temper. They are pretty close in weight now. Less than a pound difference. Madison has much better body control then Isabell, but,they can both sit and it's fun to put them by each other and watch them look each other over and grab at each other. Reminds me of the twins. That really was a fun time.

Isabell all smiles!

And they both seem to enjoy attention from their cuz Peyton. Isabell is very taken with him. She goes crazy whenever he is around. And Madison has endured him sitting on her like he is riding a horse. She actually didn't seem to mind.

Peyton Hugs!
Madison loves to play with her toes and Isabell loves to pull things over her face. She has even figured out how to play peek-a-boo. She'll pull the cover off her face and giggle.

I love having them( the grandkids) close. (two live in my house) It brightens my day when they seem happy to see me. There really is nothing quite like grandkids. They are the best!

Madison -one minute playing the next sound a sleep!