Thanksgiving 2009

What a better way to start than with a picture of Aunt Kim recovering from "Black Friday."

We made it home from Las Vegas and Thanksgiving was just around the corner. We have a lot to be thankful for this year! You can see some of the people we are thankful for in the pictures I have posted. It was our turn to celebrate Thanksgiving with my side of the family this year. We had Thanksgiving with my Dad's family on Saturday and almost everyone was there, we were only missing two people! It was a beautiful day and the kids spent most of the afternoon outside.

We spent Thanksgiving day with my Mom's family. Actually, most of the family spent Thursday and Friday night together in a condo at the lake. My aunt, two cousins, sister-in-law, and myself were crazy enough to go shopping on Friday. We started at the outlet mall at midnight. We were at Walmart by 4:30 am, Target around 6 am, and back to the condo by 7:30 am - right about the time the little girls were starting to wake up. What an adventure! I tried to take a nap during the day on Friday, but wasn't successful. Jon finally put Carly in the truck to get her to take a nap and he only had to drive to the end of the driveway before she was asleep. As you can see, Carly had way too much fun playing with my cousin's daughters, Abi and Ava. We all had a great time - it's not very often that we all get to have a sleepover.

Home from Branson and Headed to Vegas!

Last week we were able to spend some time with Jon's family. On Sunday Carly and I rode down to Branson with Chris and Becky. Jon had training on Monday morning so he came down Monday afternoon. Carly was in love with Chris the whole trip. If she said his name once, she said it a thousand times just in the car on the way. Every time he left her sight she said, "Where Chris go?" She was also very attached to Becky and kept the two of them busy. She followed them wherever they went.


We saw Santa at Bass Pro on the landing, but Carly wasn't quite sure about him.





I have an idea for a Christmas present for Jon . . .

Since Silver Dollar City was not open Mon-Wed, we got to do a couple of things we had never tried before. We rode the Ducks with Chris and Becky one afternoon and Carly got to go on her first boat ride. The highlight of the trip had to be the Branson Scenic Railway. We went on the 9 am train and it was beautiful. Carly has been very interested in trains lately, so it was a timely outing. The train holds 300 people and we only had 17 on our trip. So, needless to say, we had plenty of room to roam on the 40-mile excursion. In fact, it was perfect. We had an entire dome car to ourselves and Carly got to run, dance, and wave all she wanted.

Tonight Jon and I are pretty excited. We are headed to Las Vegas tomorrow. He has a conference and I am tagging along. Our parents are splitting the time with Carly and I think everyone is looking forward to it. When we return I am sure she will be extra spoiled rotten and I will have a challenging couple of days getting her back in to her normal routine. That will be just in time for Thanksgiving and things will change again :) Oh well, that's the fun of having a young family - we love it!