Thanksgiving weekend 2010

There is much to be thankful for this time of year. A warm house, good food, family, friends, and Christmas trees. We celebrated Thanksgiving at my Aunt DeeDee's house this year. It was good to see family and the food was exceptionally good. It has been our families tradition to head out to our local grocer's parking lot to pick out a Christmas tree, kinda ghetto, I know. I like to think of it as supporting our local tree farmers. This year we drove a few extra miles for our tree. On Saturday we traveled to Eau Claire for a day trip to catch up with John and Jill Eiselt and their boys Logan and Bennett who we hadn't seen in some time. And we picked out our Christmas tree at Lowes Creek tree farm. I was anticipating that we were going to cut down our tree like Clark W. Grizwold did so many years ago. But it was not to be this year. Maybe it is better that way. Anyways, the kids had a lot of fun playing together and, in typical DJ Johnnie E form, Big Papa John turned up the MetroStation for kids. It was hilarious to see four kids dancing their !@# off to some techno.

My mom was showing Grandpa J how the twenty-first century works

Caedon being Caedon

Look how refreshed, and well rested my mom looks...the kids spent the next 2 nights with my parents. They did great and so did my parents. Although I haven't heard back from my mom since Saturday when we picked up the kids, hmm? Could she still be sleeping?

Mouthful of Nummies

Caedon was introduced to bow and "arrows", dart guns, and oozies this weekend. Next weekend we'll fit him with a blaze orange snowsuit.

We made a turkey with all the things we are thankful for. It was so sweet to hear what Caedon and Norah were thankful for. The little pinecone turkey was made by Caedon as a school art project.

We saw several well-trimmed Christmas tree suitors, including the new Korean fir. But this one took the cake. The classic Balsam.

Our future "GLEEks"

The Eiselt family

The Exsted family

A bunch of ragamuffins

Bennett

Lil Benny

Preprandial playtime

Logan calling his peeps

Logan and Caedon played really well together

Slinky nose

Pasta connoisseur, al dente

Bennett wanting some more of dat

Dew wa ditty ditty dum ditty dew...

More Arizona memories

Spaghetti pirate

SMORES!!!

"I Made FIRE!" (can you hear Tom Hanks in Castaway).

Only I had little keyhole which turned on the natural gas, oh and a lighter.

One of my parent's neighbors let us use his golf cart for a ride around the retirement community.

I took Caedon with me on this beautiful sunset photo opt. Within a 20 second span, Caedon explored under a rock that revealed a lizard beneath it. We both jumped. Call us city slickers. Then he managed to get a burr stuck to his bare ankle with no cactuses within 50 feet of us. It turned out to be a REAL adventure.

We took a day trip to the Superstition mountains and Canyon Lake, about an hours drive from my parents house. I thought it would be fun to see some mountainous scenery. Change it up from the never-ending desert, you know. It was spectacular!

We found the rundown gift shop on the outskirts of the mountains. It was managed by this disheveled old man and his equally disheveled dog. Kinda creepy, but good for a memory and some 25 cent postcards

Norah's favorite thing to do at the park

Caedon had so much fun on the teeter-totter.

He kept asking me to bounce him up so he would fly in the air.

We ate at this Mexican restaurant one night. Norah was hamming it up with Jen's sunglasses.

We were treated to an amazing sunset on the way home from the restaurant

MORE SMORES!! This one got a little burnt

That's better!

This is the funniest story of the weekend. While concentrating on not burning the smores, Norah snuck behind us and grabbed a graham cracker for herself...

...After we tried to explain to an eighteen month old the concept of eating a warm smore of the campfire, she snuck behind us again and grabbed a block of chocolate. She earned the nickname Smoreburgler.

We made smores almost every night, per Caedon's request

That's a happy face, post-smoredom

One last fire before we head back to MN

We got these neon glowing bracelets at Wally-World (Wal-Mart) for a buck.

Kinda a hit on the last night in AZ.