Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  It certainly was for me–I got to take it easy, since we were invited to spend Thanksgiving at Steve and Sue’s house this year.  Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy making the whole spread, but I’m the first to admit it was a lot easier when the kids were smaller (or not here yet!)  Instead of getting up early to start the turkey, I played with the kids.  They did some dress-up with their playsilks, and I surprised them with their new Christmas pajamas.  We’ll go ahead and get those washed, since it practically ’tis the season. 😉  The kids were super excited to have matching boy & girl PJs!  Kendall and I played with Legos for awhile, and Brian made her this toy out of leftover supplies from her party–as it says, it is a spinning top. 😉  We also worked on converting Kendall’s crib into toddler bed mode, and getting her new Hello Kitty bedding and curtains ready to go!  We had to switch our her curtain rod for a double, but we’re happy with the result.  Soon it was time to head to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and I was super excited to get Kendall dressed up in her pumpkin sweater dress and leggings!  I’d been hanging onto those for the better part of year!  The kids were so pumped up to see their grandparents and their new house, they were quite the handful before we got into the car!  They were just going wild over some leftover balloons that Brian had found and asked me to blow up for them.  We let them choose a few things to bring along, and on the way out I had a moment of inspiration and stuffed a handful of balloons in my pocket.

There were great things to munch on as soon as we got to Steve and Sue’s, and the kids settled right in and made themselves at home.  We had brought some tins of crayons as a (probably selfish 😉 ) housewarming gift–one for this house, and one for the beach house.  The kids both did some coloring, Kendall and I working in her Hello Kitty coloring book, and Brian made a cool picture on his own!  His turkey has a force-field type of shield with which to repel incoming arrows. 😉  Brian got on really well with Uncle Pete (Sue’s brother-in-law) and they worked on some pictures together.  Steve read Kendall some books, and we did even more drawing with the kids’ new travel AquaDoodle.  Soon, dinner was ready, and we all sat down and shared a lovely meal together.  The kids were reasonably well-behaved, and we all somehow found room for dessert.  I really enjoyed the Black Bottom Pumpkin Pie!  Yum.  After dinner, we played some more, and the grownups had margaritas (I like this tradition!)  Brian got the big side of the wish bone, and he was pretty excited about that.  As the sun went down, the kids started to get pretty antsy again, and about that time, I happened to remember the balloons in my pocket.  We blew those up, and that bought us a little more time. 😉  Something about balloons, makes the kids just go wild!  The adults got in on the action, too, trying to keep the balloons in the air, launching them across the room, having balloon fights..!  Eventually, though, we knew we had to get the kids home, and hey, Kendall had her new bed to try out!  She was so excited to see her new room configuration, with Kitty everywhere!  Brian was interested too, and we ended up doing stories together on Kendall’s bed.  We’re a little bit apprehensive about Kendall’s new freedom–I hope she doesn’t roam as much as Brian did!  But we’ll have the long weekend to get used to it.  Kendall doesn’t appear to have any qualms at all about her new bed!  That’s one happy little girl.