Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We've had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday together. On Wednesday, we celebrated Aidan's birthday by taking Christmas pictures and getting donuts in the morning. After Sophie's nap, we all headed off to see the Muppet movie. I don't know who was more excited - me or the kids. It was awesome! I can't wait until it comes out on DVD.

We had lots of plans for Thanksgiving day.

We started with lunch at my aunt's, where the kids have four cousins to play with. After lunch, we headed back to our house for quick naps.
Tony's mom, sister, and our nephew came to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. Sophie entertained herself in the baby doll stroller while we cooked.
My mother-in-law did a yummy turkey while my sister-in-law and I did side dishes.

We all ate until we were stuffed, and then headed to Tony's grandma's for dessert and visiting. In Tony's family, poker playing is a holiday tradition of sorts. It appears that Memaw was passing the tradition on to Hunter and Aidan.

While the 'guys' played poker, the girls planned some Black Friday shopping. Tony's cousin, Chyanna, Erin, and I headed to Walmart at 10 pm, followed by waiting in line for Old Navy to open at midnight. We had a really good time even though we didn't buy a lot. I got home about 3:00 am.

We spent most of Friday putting up Christmas decorations. Today we went to Providence High School's alumni Santa Breakfast. It's third or fourth year we've gone, and the kids really look forward to it. We've got some professional pictures coming, but here's a few Tony snapped with Santa:



After pictures with Santa, the kids ate breakfast and made a bunch of Christmas crafts. Tony and I enjoyed visiting with fellow alums and friends.





After lunch, we decided to go the zoo for a couple hours. The weather was seventy degrees and sunny, and we practically had the zoo to ourselves. Tony had a really good time with the camera. I may have to start hiding it, although the pictures he took turned out really good. Here's a huge sampling!


One of the really exciting things at the zoo is the baby polar bear that arrived this past spring. It was orphaned in Alaska and has been getting acclimated slowly. This was the first time we actually got to see her up close. Aidan spent a long time talking to the zoo keeper about her.








After the zoo, we took the kids for pizza and then almost completely finished up the Christmas shopping. Yay, me! The evening is culminating in two separate movies - Indiana Jones upstairs for Andrew, Tony and I and Polar Express in the basement for Sophie and Aidan.

In honor of Thanksgiving, here are the top five things I am most thankful for this year:
1. Obviously, I am so thankful for my wonderful immediate family and our relative health.
2. I am grateful to have passed my comps and be in the dissertation writing phase of my PhD. Most especially, I am glad I don't have to go to a class meeting every week.
3. I am glad my brother in law returns home to Erin, Hunter and all of us from Afghanistan in December.
3. As always, I am blessed to be teaching at such a wonderful school with amazing coworkers and great parents and students.
4. I am excited about being cast in a local production of Godspell with Tony and nine other friends, newer and very old. Stayed tuned for pictures of the January production!
5. I am thankful to be almost finished with my Christmas shopping at Thanksgiving, and happy that we had squirreled away enough money to make it a pretty good gift-buying year.

Many blessings on all of you - and I promise to be a better blogger for the holidays!