The Bradshaw Crew

We celebrated Thanksgiving #3 today. This was only the 2nd turkey I’ve ever made but it turned out VERY tasty even though it finished cooking 2 1/2 hours ahead of schedule! Here’s Tommy before…..

And Tommy after………

And our nice little dinner. Turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, stuffing & deviled eggs.
It was tasty! (mom, like our table cloth??) hahaha

My sister in law is the most amazing coupon’er ever! She’s got me hook line and sinker bought into this couponing idea and I’ve given it a try a couple times and have left shopping totally defeated and feeling like I’ve wasted a TON of time with clipping coupons, organizing them in my new fancy coupon organizer (only $0.99) and trying to match the coupons with the sales at the stores and double and triple where I can. So far I haven’t done well with it but I went out this morning and did awesome! I’ve been collecting glade coupons for weeks now and Kati told me of a great deal that I missed out on and was totally bummed about but like a good girl, I had my coupon tote with me when I went Black Friday shopping today and am so happy that I did! Walmart had the candles that I have coupons for on sale and I was able to double and triple some and ended up with this great loot!

Retail price on this is $58.27 (MSRP) and I got it all for $10.21!!!! That’s a savings of about 83%! WOO HOO!!! My first excellent couponing experience, I’m so excited!! Now if I could only do that every week at the grocery store!!! Thanks Kati!!!

Bo and I had an awesome thanksgiving this year, it was fantastic! We got to sleep in this morning and finish all the last minute preparations for the food we were taking with us, loaded up the car and headed out, coffee in hand. We read a few chapters of the bible on the road and prayed for our day. We arrived pretty early to Thanksgiving #1 with Bo’s family in Bonney Lake. We only got to spend about 2 hours with them as we had to head to Seattle to see my family in the afternoon.

Here are some pictures with Bo’s family.

Shirley & I (Bo’s mom)

Grandma & Grandpa Thompson

Aunt Lori

Kati (sister)

Jessica (cousin) & Ashton

Bobby (brother) cutting the Turkey

Dan (brother in law), Violet (niece) & Bo

Violet

Bobby, Sarah & Isabelle

Shirley & Isabelle

Bo & Violet

Greg (Lori’s husband)

Nyah & Randi (2nd cousins)

Brandon, Ashton & Malokai (cousin & 2nd cousins)

Brandon

Charitie (cousin) & Joe

The only picture I couldn’t find was of Aiden so I stole one from his website! This is our first nephew!

Us

Then on to Seattle for Thanksgiving #2 for the day…..

Trina, Joe & Chloe

Mom & Dad

Us again after we got home.

My camera ran out of batteries at our first thanksgiving and apparently the 2 spares I had charged didn’t actually charge so I could only snap 2 quick pictures in the afternoon with my side of the family.

We had such a great day! Bo stuffed himself stupid on his family’s traditional Thanksgiving feast (olives, deviled eggs, stuffed celery, mashed potatoes and chips & dip) and I ate well at my family’s feast with deviled eggs, stuffed celery, salad & a bite of Turkey.

We have a 19 lb Turkey to stuff and cook on Saturday when Bo and I have our own personal Thanksgiving feast at home this weekend. We don’t plan on eating the turkey fresh baked from the oven but we’re gonna have a LOT of sandwiches for the weeks to follow :)

I took a quick break mid-blog while writing this and came back to this…………………

We hope you had as enjoyable a day giving thanks celebrating with your friends and family as we did, we are blessed!

Bows found a box. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves…..

Bo and I laid down on the couch yesterday to watch a movie (The curious case of Benjamin Button) and Bows of course had to snuggle with us (well me, he won’t let her snuggle him) too.

She is such a snuggle bug but sometimes can get in the way of what we’re trying to do. But she’s so cute and soft and snuggly I won’t move her, I’ll just get uncomfortable and look around her.

We snuggled through most of the movie, she just passed out and slept cheek to cheek with me. Awwwww… so cute.

Our home group decided it was time for some fun and fellowship so we all got together last night to carve pumpkins together. We had so much fun! Here is everyone so focused on their carving!

We couldn’t even fit everyone at the table, we used the bar too.

Here is Jan with 1 of her 2 or 3 pumpkins she completed… Martha style completely covered in gold glitter, it’s so cute!

Truck with his flying ghost
(thanks for the cookies truck, I had them for breakfast this morning) :)

Robert and Eve with her beautiful Autumn gold pumpkin she decorated
(Eve I also ate that bread for breakfast, I have to buy some of that it was SO GOOD!)

Dave and Carol with their Jack-O-Lanterns

Donna and her ENORMOUS pumpkin face with hair cut on top!

Tom and Jan with their happy and mad Jack-O-Lanters

Bob & Evie and their cute ones with tongues!

Bo and I with his Mario (Bert) and my KiT-Ten!

The whole group minus a few who were sadly unable to make it last night. We prayed for you all who couldn’t be with us and missed having your company there. But we still had a great time, ate too much tasty food and got some cute pics!

Bows certainly missed us while we were gone. Bo wanted to catch the game on Sunday when we got home and she couldn’t get close enough.

It was 58 degrees in the house when we got back home so Bo snuggled up in a blanket and Bows snuggled right up with him! This is generally how she sleeps EVERY night on me, never on Bo but she sleeps on my back in bed every night. We missed her too!

I had the most fun in Jamaica, it was the best excursion we did. I have no pictures from the first part of the excursion because we were hiking up the Dunns River Falls and were totally soaked, good thing I left my camera in a locker! We met some friends who had an underwater camera and took some pictures of us, we just need to hook up with them now and try to get the pictures!

We didn’t do too much in Grand Cayman, just walked around and looked at the shops and checked it out.

Downtown streets

We found an ice cream place and had local ice cream, I had apricot which had huge chunks of actual apricot in it, soooo tasty ….

and bo had 1/2 banana, 1/2 pistacio… ick. But he loved it! I think we paid $9.00 for 2 single scoop ice cream cones. OUCH!

Us on the pier

The ship didn’t port in Grand Cayman so they had water taxi’s come pick us up right off the ship and take us to shore. Here’s bo on our way back home.

The water here was amazing, crystal clear turquoise blue colored, so pretty.

And you can see the swirls of color from shallow to deep here.

Our ship from the pier.

A pirate ship we passed by

Fresh out of the shower back out on the balcony again!

The show this night was put on by “Puck” a hypnotist… I have never really believed in hypnotism so I thought I’d give it a try to see what happened and volunteered!

I was quickly moved to the end of the row after he had started (because I was laughing) then kicked off stage back to my seat because I was unable to get myself into hypnosis and was cracking up the whole time at the people next to me “falling asleep” and landing on my shoulder. It was far more fun to watch anyways.

Here we are at dinner in the dining room

Bo got a chance to try out Karaoke … it broke glass. Just kidding, he actually did really good but his partner Shawn had apparently never heard the Pearl Jam song they sung so it was AWFUL.

Our towel sting ray to add to the zoo!

We went back out and partied yet again. We had a colors party that night, depending on what level of the ship your room was on, you were assigned a color. We went lounge hopping that night in honor of our color (white) and partied hard dancing and singing all over the ship. In the end on the very last night, another team passed us up and took first place.

Day 4 we didn’t do too much… dink’d around on the ship, played in the casino, just pretty much hung out. We did go to a juggling workshop, the show from the night before had jugglers and a guy who ate fire and they put on a juggling workshop the next day so we went to that.

I’ve always been able to juggle, I may not have the best form but I’ve always been able to do it, I remember learning to juggle with scarves in PE class back in elementary school. Bo learned I think for the first time and did pretty well!

He also participated in the bean bag toss game they had pretty regularly. Sadly, he didn’t win but he did do well!

Day 4 just happened to be FAT TUESDAY… that’s right … Mardi Gras!!! We did get off the ship in Grand Cayman and went walking around and to all the shops but we didn’t do an excursion. And I didn’t get any pics. Bad girl I know. It was PARTY TIME back on the ship though. They had Karaoke going on outside on the Lido deck showing it on the big screen tv so we thought we’d check that out for a bit (bo was in the pool watching with some friends we had met).

Then it was back inside for the actual Mardi Gras party where Bo earned LOTS of beads and horrified MANY people in the process as you can see below.

He thinks he’s “all that”doing the rave in the hallway wearing someone elses hat.

The other 2 couples we met on the ship, Levi & Jess our next door cabin mates & Shawn & Jen our dinner buddies we sat at the same table with.

Where else would we be on the ship than at the casino!?!?

Shawn & Jen our dinner buddies.

Yet again… at the casino. Bo plays a bit more wreckless than I do, that’s his whole casino budget for the day and 3 match play tickets he earned on 1 spin of roulette. That was gone in about 16 seconds so he sat and watched me play blackjack for about 3 hours after that.

The boys

I guess I forgot to take a picture of the towel animal that night…. sad :(
And our 3rd towel animal. So cute! Roland was our room steward, he was great, always made sure we were taken care of and kept bringing the animals at night!

We started a zoo…..