Well Joshua just about died and went to Heaven today. We are up in Morris at Grandpa and Grandma's house for Thanksgiving which in and of itself is enough to get Josh all giddy. He was talking about going to G&G's house for about a week and always had the biggest smile on his face when he'd 'inform us' that he was going to G&G's house as if Mom and Dad were going to just stay at home or something.

Before talking about Josh's 'dream vacation' I should tell you that we had our first bowling outing last night after dinner. Josh had a blast. It was pretty funny watching him pirouette about 100 times in his bowling shoes – he thought he was pretty cool. He also thought he was pretty big stuff bowling 'all by himself'. I think he had a 9 lb ball and he reminded me of watching World's Strongest Man competitions when the competitors are lifting the Atlas Stones. I mean that ball was almost 40% of his body weight, but he did pretty well with it in the beginning but towards his 15th frame and beyond, fatigue started to wear in. He had to be helped a few times lifting the ball, but he still had a couple strikes. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, he used the bumpers and a ramp to launch the ball. He seemed to like that better than trying to roll it though – Give it a nice strong push! he'd always say as he shoved the ball down the ramp. Even with the bumpers and ramp, he is still our little King Pin!

Finally, back to Josh's little slice of Heaven. Me, Ann, Josh, Audrey and Grandpa journeyed out to the John Deere store in Morris. This store combined with Josh's enthusiasm right now for Christmas about put him on overload! We first went inside to look at the display floor which was filled with riding lawn mowers as well as having a little section of John Deere toys. Josh ran back and forth between mowers testing each one out, pressing all the buttons, stepping on all the pedals, etc. Of course he always took the key out before messing around with each one as a precaution...wonder how long we can keep him trained to do that ;) After about twenty minutes of playing inside, it was on to the serious stuff!

We went outside (the weather was unusually amazing) to look at all the combines, tractors, planters, etc. (whatever all the names are). Well all the doors were unlocked to each machine! So Josh got to climb up and check each one out. I can't believe I didn't have my camera for this...his excitement was undeniable and put a smile on all of our faces. Josh and Grandpa would climb up into this $350K machines and Josh was 'driving' around 'getting corn Grandpa!'. The part that amazed me the most was when he got out of the first combine, there were about ten of them lined up in a row...so that spans what...70-80 yards? Well I sat Josh down and he was gone! He was sprinting past all the combines to get to the tractors, and I've never seen him run so fast and with so much purpose. I swear he ran 80 yards in about 15 seconds! (too bad he didn't do that at the All Comers Track Meet)

Josh and Grandpa checked out about every machine in the field and even Audrey and I got to drive a couple combines - yelling back and forth with Josh to make sure we didn't 'crash' into each other ;) Definitely a fun trip, and I'm sure Josh would like to make it daily every time we visited G&G but I'm a little worried the John Deere store would get sick of us 'abusing' them ;)