What Part of "Choppaloppaler" Do You Not Understand?

We celebrated the first night of Hanukkah Sunday night with our family, but unfortunately we forgot our camera. Tonight, Mindy came over to light the candles for the second night at our house.

Henry opens a Thomas book from Mindy. It was a hit...

Henry has always used the word "achoo" for helicopter. We have no idea where it comes from, but whenever he sees a helicopter (and they're more common than you might think if you're not constantly on the lookout), he gets really excited and shouts "achoo!" So for Hanukkah, Aunt Suzi, Uncle Barry, Ryan and Jonathan got him a giant deluxe toy emergency helicopter. But apparently, he's recently learned that "achoo" is not the right word for such a vehicle...and we learned the probable reason for his convenient nickname: turns out, "helicopter" is just an incredibly hard word for an almost-two-year-old to say...

Non Sequiturs

Here are some random pictures, including two with Henry's school friend, Hannah.

In this one, taken off of his school's website, it looks like a battle royal during story time.

But here, the two seem to have made up.

In this one, Henry demonstrates his new practice of drinking every last drop of milk from his cereal bowl...

...which often leads to Grape Nut Face.

Family portrait!*

* Thanks to Theresa for taking this picture and many, many more just like it.

Turkey Day

This Thanksgiving, we piled in the Family Truckster and headed back to North Carolina where we spent the long weekend with family...

"Please eat at least this many bites of turkey."

He actually ate lots of his grandmother's delicious cooking but once he saw the black olives, it was all over. How can other foods compete with something you can wear on your fingertips and eat? Answer: they can't.

The Thomas Twins pause for .17 seconds before resuming jumping on this air mattress.

We rode a real(ish) train at the Durham science museum with Uncle Scott and Luigi. It was cold, but so worth it.

You'd be shocked at how expensive it is to mail yourself in a cardboard box these days. Completely cost-prohibitive.

I don't know for sure what Aliza was showing Henry on her laptop, but I have a hunch it was something along the lines of this.