Thanksgiving Things

We had a long Thanksgiving weekend together as a family with very loose plans. That is highly unusual, and it was really nice. Matt was off the entire school break, and kicked off the weekend for us by scheduling a financial meeting for the two of us. Only a man would think it was OK to schedule appointments like that the day before Thanksgiving. So, I arrived in the kitchen at last in the late afternoon. Thankfully, the Tauntons invited us over to their Thanksgiving feast, so my work was small in comparison (read I didn't have to make the turkey! Wahoo!). After a lazy morning watching the parade (and laughing at my kids for being frustrated they couldn't fast forward through parade commercials!), we headed over around 11 to spend the day with our dear friends. I should have taken pictures and documented our togetherness, but alas, I did not. I did take a couple funny shots, however. First, Matt proudly displaying his required disgusting jellied cranberry sauce. Blech. There's always homemade cranberry sauce around, but he NEEDS this gross stuff. Too funny.

And this one--late in the day the boys started discussing a Thanksgiving night shopping trip to Best Buy. We thought they were nuts, but we told them to go if they so desired. I guess electronics are worth waiting in ridiculous lines for if you are a guy...either that or they were just eager to escape the women and children. You decide.

Lastly, I had to laugh at the children who decided 2 hours after dessert (which was two hours after a HUGE meal) that they were so starving they needed some dinner! Ha!

On Friday we had a lazy day at home.  The girls would not rest until we had the tree up and decorated in its entirety.

Side effect of putting children in charge of ornament placement....we had to do a bit of follow-up work.

On Saturday we surprised the girls with tickets to the Polar Express ballet the local dance studio was putting on at the Civic Center. We hit Chester's for lunch beforehand and the girls asked to stand outside and take a couple pics by the big tree in Peace Plaza.

Saturday evening included the big Harry Potter finale. Matt has been reading the first book to the girls most nights before bed. Jillian has been so into it she can hardly sleep, coming downstairs long after we put her to bed to ask questions and speculate about plots. Adrienne did surprisingly well at listening, too.

The reward for finishing the book was that we watched the first Harry Potter movie on Sunday evening. Adrienne, who usually gets antsy after the first hour of a movie, was riveted for the entire 2 hours and 45 minutes.  They are excited to start the first book after Christmas...bedtime reading during Advent consists of all Christmas books.