I am so excited about our new van! It's a 2000 Ford Windstar. I know that doesn't sound like a "new" van, but to us it's great. We've been driving a 1987 Bronco II and a 1989 Chevy Astro Van. So, this van is 11 years newer than anything else we've ever owned! Before our Bronco and Astro van we have had a 1989 Chevy Corsica, 1988 Ford Aerostar, and a 1979 Dodge Colt. We feel like we are living in luxury with all of the features this van has.
There is tons of room behind the back seat and the seat moves forward and back to adjust the space as needed.
This is the driver's side. There are sliding doors on both sides! I'm so happy about that. Plus, the sliding door on the passenger side is automatic and can open and shut with a push of a button. How great! No matter how hard my kids have tried with our other vans they can never get the door shut by themselves. Now I can do it with a button!
Also, there are 2 captain chairs for the middle row. This is so nice because our kids will all have their own seat. Hopefully this will eliminate some of the fighting, touching, hitting, and "he's/she's looking at me"! Well, it probably won't solve that last one, but I can always hope.
We've already sold our Bronco II and now we've got our old van listed and hope to sell it soon.
P.S. I will hopefully take Alex in to the doctor tomorrow to get his staples removed. Tomorrow will be the 8th day, and I don't want to wait until Monday. He had to get retake pictures taken today, so I gave him a much needed hair cut yesterday. I couldn't cut around the staples, so he has a long patch of hair in the back of his head that I'm dying to get rid of!
Happy Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with our family and Jon's dad (Grandfather Lanier). I made turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn, gravy, and cranberry jello. Everyone was stuffed--as usual. 
My turkey got done a couple of hours before I expected it to, so I had to keep it in the oven on "warm" for a while. That was good though. It gave me time to finish preparing the rest of the food. 
After dinner we went outside to play some baseball. It was chilly, but fun. Grandfather pitched the ball and the kids took turns batting. Even Leah is getting better at actually hitting the ball. Her coordination is getting better. We came back in to have some pie. I made apple pie and pumpkin pie. Everything was made from scratch. Well, the apple pie filling was home-made by a neighbor. I made the crusts and pumpkin pie filling. I even cooked the pumpkin myself from our Halloween pumpkins, mashed it up, and made the pie from it! Everything tasted great. I love Thanksgiving. I love it even more because it means I get to decorate for Christmas at my house now!! 
We decided to stay for the men's game afterwards and it was a really good game. We stayed for more than half of the game. BYU was winning by about 20 points when we left. 
Byron, Alex's friend and our neighbor, was starting to get tired. Caleb was too, so we didn't stay for the whole game. They all had fun cheering "Rah, Rah, Rah-Rah-Rah, Goooooo Cougars!" That is Leah's favorite part of the game! She also had fun eating popcorn from the family behind us and playing on the empty chairs. What a goof! There was even a point in time where she was doing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" as loud as she could. Everyone else around us was being loud, so she fit right in. 
Caleb's favorite ingredient to add is the eggs. Leah loves to unwrap the butter. 
Caleb is getting really good at scooping the dough onto the cookie sheet. 
Leah just likes to eat the dough! They learned that from their mom. I love eating dough and batter of just about anything. The cookies turned out really yummy. Good job Leah and Caleb! 
Alex had fallen off the top of the playground at school after lunch and split the back of his head open. They had him all bandaged up with ice on it and we didn't get a good look at his head until they unwrapped it at the doctor's office. We took him to InstaCare and after 3 hours he had 3 staples in his head and we were finally out of there.
