Thanksgiving 2011

Jake's cousin Andy and his family came up from San Antonio for Thanksgiving this year. It was so fun getting to know them and spend time with them.

The kids first met the morning of Thanksgiving. They, of course, got along immediately and settled down to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade after breakfast:

The weather was mild, so the dads raked up a big pile of leaves and played Toss the Kids in the Leaves and Bury the Kids in the Leaves for a while. They loved it (the kids and the dads).
Our big tree is a hard one to resist:
Our families split up the meal responsibilities and came up with a wonderful dinner. I brined a turkey for the first time, and I think it was worth it. It was certainly the prettiest turkey I'd ever cooked. Amanda made the stuffing from scratch and produced the only stuffing I've ever really liked. Woot! We were both able to visit family via the web cam that day --we're definitely grateful for that technology. That evening after the kids went down, the adults had a great time playing games. I love playing games, especially on holidays.

The next day we ventured to McKinney for the Dickens of a Christmas Festival.




Caramel popcorn and a Christmas movie on TV. What a way to end the day!
On Saturday, we had a tailgate breakfast (first time for everything) at SMU. Hooray for free breakfast! It was morning and it was a little cold, so the undergrads weren't exactly out in full force, which meant more free t-shirts, chocolate milk samples, and shorter lines for us. The kids high-fived the SMU Mustang mascot on the way out, and we took off for Fort Worth.

The giant spur. Tell me you wouldn't mind having one of these babies in your yard:
It was so cold and windy!!!! We didn't explore as much as we would have had the weather been a little more cooperative, but we still made the most of it in the covered shops stockyard area.

Cowboy Santa was there:

AND there was free face painting. Cole was excited to see so much cowboy stuff and really wanted a cowboy hat. He is still talking about needing a cowboy hat.

We went to have lunch at Riscky's BBQ.
Our awesome guests: Amanda, Zach, Andy, Tyler, and Lizzie.
In my experience, two year olds don't usually play nicely with each other, but Zach and Cole were cracking each other up over the weekend. Cole adored "Zachy". We really had such a nice visit and were grateful to the cousins for taking time to come and spend Thanksgiving with us. It's now our turn to make our way to San Antonio when we can.

The videos always end up at the bottom of the posts. Here is Tessa dancing for a couple to the live musicians in the street at the Dickens Festival. I love how I could see in her eyes that she knew she was knocking out some serious Irish dancing moves.