Happy Thanksgiving. . .Week!

So I just can’t seem to get around to blogging a few times a week so here is a whole week in one blog!

Tanner, Brynn and I had the whole week of Thanksgiving off!  Yippee!  But first we must show off our little pilgrim!   Tanner’s class put on a Thanksgiving play on the Friday before our break.  He did such a good job!  He is usually very shy and mumbles, but this time he really spoke up!  Don and I were so proud!!!

On Saturday I went to my good friend Amy’s bridal shower!!  I saw many of my “old” friends from high school and my college roommate that I haven’t seen for years!   It was so much fun!   I had a great time catching up with everyone.  I really have to make a better effort to get together with these ladies more often – even if it does mean I have to drive into the city!  There is nothing like a night out with wonderful girlfriends!!!  It was a really great time!!  The rest of the weekend we were pretty much sloths!  :0)

The first few days of the week I decided I better stop being a sloth and ran a lot of errands – almost done Christmas shopping!!!!  Got Brynn’s 18 month pictures taken (just a few weeks late!) got a great deal on new tires for Don’s car, bought a lot of food, and cleaned – cleaning – it never ends!

My sister and her family arrived on Wednesday and the adults all put in their earplugs!  It is amazing the noise and mess five kids under the age of 6 can make!  But it is great having the cousins here.  Tanner and Keegan did some major Star Wars Lego Wii playing and it was so cute to see both Brynn and Addison walking around.  Brynn was a little possessive when I picked up Addison and made it very clear that I was HER mama and all other babies better back away.  Hum,  let’s hope she gets over that in the next couple of months or she is in for a surprise when not one baby, but two babies arrive!

Four of the five cousins watching the Santa Paws movie!!  Gotta love movie time – nice and quiet!

And then it was Thanksgiving.  The most exciting part is that I could thaw the turkey in my sink!!!  A few Thanksgivings ago we had to empty Tanner’s toy bin to put the turkey in because it didn’t fit in our old sink.

Look!  Proof it really did happen!  Thawing the turkey in the toy bin!  Now that’s a memory!

Ahhhh – I LOVE my new sink!  So the morning started with the turkey prep once again provided by Don (in his lovely white T-shirt as always!) and Kristie and then the traditional reading of the ads for the big Black Friday sales!

Brynn checking on the turkey!!  A chef in the making for sure!  Don’t you just want to eat her up in her new snowman PJ’s!!!

While the food was cooking Don and Brent put up the Christmas house lights!  You have to take advantage of free labor – Ha, Ha!  Thanks Brent!  And it was a nice warm day – you never know when that could change and we have put lights up before in the freezing cold – NOT FUN!

Don’s parents, my parents and Shelby and Alex joined us for the feast!  Shelby had a little “incident” a few days ago and broke her arm and then had to have surgery on it!  Geez, the things people do to get out of doing dishes!

Brynn is just tall enough to reach the countertops and so enjoyed the freedom to just reach up and help herself to any food she could get her little paws on.  We nearly had a couple plates end up on the floor!

The Thanksgiving outfit!  It is so much fun dressing up little girls!  You know I have to take advantage of  this now before Brynn can state her opinion of what she wants to wear!

And then the food was ready and the eating began - food, family, fun – what else could you ask for! 

And the best part – the pies!

We all of course ate too much and then had the fun job of dishes (thanks mom and Nicole!) and finding room in the fridge for the leftovers!

On Friday we did not go shopping in the morning!  Nope, I am done with the craziness of finding a parking space and standing in lines!  I would rather pay a few dollars more and miss the chaos, thank you very much!  We refereed the dear children most of the day and then my mom and two sisters and I went scrapbooking for the evening and left the men at home to feed the kids dinner and put them to bed!  We had a fabulous time!!!  I mean how could you not have fun scrapbooking for 6 hours???   And the men did such a good job that they are hired to do it every night! 

On Saturday we all needed to get out of the house so we went ice skating! 

This was only Tanner’s second time ice skating and so he was a little unsure and started out with the walker but just a few laps later. . .	He was holding daddy’s hand and then. . .
He was on his OWN!  Go Tanner Go!	Hello hat hair!!

Now these two little cuties couldn’t ice skate but they were not just going to sit in their strollers and watch – no way – they had to walk all over the place which meant the mommies or the Nana and Papa had to follow!

                  Seriously – shouldn’t we all be this happy??

Everyone went home on Sunday and we returned to reality and cleaned, did laundry, gave Tanner that much needed haircut (always a battle with him!) and I took a 2 hour nap!!!  We then reorganized the basement so we could put up the Christmas tree and ended up going through ALL of the toy bins.  We didn’t plan on doing such a huge cleaning so we ran out of time to put up the tree, but it is now nice and clean and organized and we donated a big bag of toys so we are ready for all those new Christmas toys! 

And that was our Thanksgiving week!  Did you actually read that whole thing??  Now onto December and Christmas, one of my favorite times of the year!!!