I forgot to include in the last post that Anthony got his first college acceptance! Someone from Texas Tech called him on Tuesday night and told him he had been accepted. Now he needs to apply to their honors program, but for now, they've offered him $4000 scholarship and then another $6000 each for four years. That covers about 2/3 of tuition, but of course barely touches room and board and other fees. Still, we're thankful that he's being offered anything at all. Now we wait until the other acceptances roll in. We may be a little biased, of course, but we feel like he'll at least be accepted to most if not all of the schools he applied to.
I took this first picture on Thanksgiving day. Eric was climbing on everything at my sister's house--the sofa, the stairs, the other furniture. We kidded that it was like her house was a big jungle gym. We're thankful that we could stay there, because they have great toys to keep him busy, like my nephew Nick's old train sets, and some old dinosaur toys. My niece Aly even gave him some of her old dinosaur books. Eric was SO excited.
My sister Cynthia had the turkey ready before 11am. Alex didn't get up until after the turkey was done, so he didn't even bother to eat breakfast. Melissa arrived with the girls and my parents and we had our traditional Thanksgiving lunch. The rest of the day was filled with football--on the big huge TV screen, of course, and Cynthia also took all the kiddos to see the movie Wreck It Ralph. Even Eric went with them. Anthony was the one who really wanted to see it, but he wanted to use his younger cousins and siblings as an excuse to go. In the evening, they watched The Avengers again, since the girls and my parents weren't there to watch it the night before. My mom and sisters hung out in Cynthia's bedroom to watch X Factor and Glee. It was another nice, relaxing day hanging out with the family.
Cynthia also had this idea to print these banners out. They all had "I am thankful for" on them and we got the whole family to fill them out. We were all going to guess who wrote what on the banners, but no one wanted to do that, so we just strung them all together and hung them on the mantel so everyone could see them. Anthony's said "Food, Family, Friends, Everything else--not necessarily in that order." Alex's said "all the kinds of stuff most people are usually thankful for." Natalie's said "Sharks, Swimming, Parents, Food, Shelter, Friends, Family, Being Healthy, Being Me". All were pretty typical of each child, especially Eric.
Eric dictated his to me since he can't spell yet. He said "Strawberries and bananas dipped in chocolate, my basketball teacher, dinosaurs, dinosaur gummies, turkey". He has only had one basketball practice, so his coach must have made a big impression. Patrick has played more basketball with him than his coach. Cynthia loved the comment about the strawberries and bananas dipped in chocolate because she had that ready for us when we arrived on Tuesday. He loved dipping his own fruit, even if the fruit kept falling off his toothpick. The "dinosaur gummies" one just cracks me up. I don't know if he's even had dinosaur gummies before.
We went home on Friday. This time Anthony drove the last hour, from the last rest stop to home. Everything went well. The kids watched Toy Story 2 in the van. Surprisingly, no one fell asleep. Some time after we got home, we were actually brave enough to go to the mall. I wanted to buy myself my birthday present with a coupon that was only good for this weekend (a Coach purse), and Patrick wanted to check out his birthday present (an Mac laptop). ;) Thankfully, we had a coupon for P.F. Chang's so we picked that up for dinner--no cooking. The boys got to play their video games again, and all was well in our household. I'm so very grateful to my family for making our stay in Houston so relaxing and fun. I'm always sad that I don't live close to them, but at least they're close enough to visit easily. Lots to be thankful for. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment