Thanksgiving Weekend

We spent Thanksgiving weekend at my parent's house in Indianapolis. We ate lots of wonderful food and enjoyed a day full of lots of family we don't get to see too often. It was really relaxing and fun for us.
Cole learned how to dunk Oreo's in milk, and we visited Santa at the Indiana State Museum, too. Along with Santa, the museum has a Christmas Train for kids. Cole rode on the train all by himself!
And last but not least, we continued our new tradition of drumming at the dinner table. Well, tradition may be a strong word, but lately it has become a nightly occurrence whether we are home or not. Cole loves to drum, and the table is perfect. Lately he has been asking others to join in his fun, and he loves to be the one in control. He starts and stops and then everyone else follows his lead. This past Friday, he started adding a quiet shhhh after the drumming, too. It was too funny not to capture on camera! I have a video of it, but I need to get Chris to post it. Stay tuned.

One more thing...
I have been noticing lately that Cole has started to pretend. I'm not sure where he learned this, because it seems a very hard concept to teach. Being a teacher myself, this is fascinating to watch. It must be something that God created inside our hearts, the ability to imagine a reality that includes a mixture of the real and pretend. Here are a few examples:
1. The other day we had pear slices for lunch. Cole took a bite out of the middle of one slice, placed it on the table and said, "It's a boat!"
2. That same day we were painting with watercolors, and Cole painted a long magenta colored line across the paper and said, "It's a dragon!"
3. Tonight in the bathtub (some of our funniest moments happen in the tub) he picked up an empty cup, filled it up with soapy water, drank a sip, and said, "drinking coffee mommy." Then he began to give the rubber duck some coffee, too. He was so proud of himself. I asked him if the duck liked the coffee and he said, "Uh huh, sure!" and then I asked him if the duck liked hot chocolate, too, because Chris and I had some hot chocolate earlier in the day. Cole quickly said, "Of course!" Then he went back to swimming in the bath tub, which tonight he was calling a lake. Hmm.

I'm not kidding folks. This kid is hilarious. The last funny thing you need to know is that we've been teaching Cole about Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus recently, since Christmas is coming soon. Cole has his own nativity set that he's been playing with, and he has been learning about the Christmas story in his class at church. The funniest thing about this is that Cole says JEZUZ instead of JESUS. I guess you have to hear it to know it's hilarious.