Day to Give Thanks

 Happy Thanksgiving everyone! So much to be thankful for; a wonderful husband, a beautiful daughter and another little blessing on the way just to name a few. Our day started off with a tradition I can remember since I was a little kid...the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! Well, sadly we weren't able to watch the actual "Macy's" parade since they delay it to 9am Mountain Time which is Johanna's nap time. Instead we watched the "Early Shows" parade which wasn't as great, but Johanna didn't mind. I made some warm and yummy monkey bread to munch on and some nice hot hazelnut coffee while we plopped down in front of the t.v. Johanna loved the spongebob float despite never seeing spongebob on t.v. she was waving ecstatically at him.

Russ and Kara had Thanksgiving dinner at their house so Jeff arrived bright and early to get started on the bird. After smoking the turkey for a good 6 hours, the turkey was delicious, well done Jeff you did a fantastic job!

Another thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving was that we got to celebrate it with our Cousin, Brandon! He has spent the last year overseas in Iraq serving in the Army so it is wonderful to see him safe and sound back home. The reason I mention him in this picture is because he introduced miss Johanna to some raw broccoli... as you can see she wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Maybe once her munchers come in all the way she'll know what to do!

 Kara has a mini whisk for hot cocoa which was perfect when gravy making time came around. She was able to help Grandma LoLo!

 Make a wish with the wishbone! Wonder what little Johanna wished for? A baby brother... let's hope so because that's what she's getting ;) Thank you Kara and Russ for having us over for the day it was great! And the fun thing is we get to have Thanksgiving #2 on Sunday to celebrate with the rest of Kara's family. On Saturday night little Nathan came down with an upset stomach but didn't have a fever or anything else that would indicate he wasn't feeling well so we all thought surely it was something he ate. We were having our Sunday dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's and the bug was just so sneaky before we knew it Kara, Tyler, Grandma and Johanna all got hit with it horribly on Tuesday! I have to say I earned my Mommy badge after cleaning Johanna's crib sheets, then our carpet, then her kitchen, then our sheets after a few throwing up incidents. You would think I would have learned my lesson the first time but man I couldn't keep up with her and of course she didn't want to just sit still. But luckily the bug didn't seem to last and we were all able to meet up again for Thanksgiving Day. We wanted to be on the safe side though and prevent everyone else from getting sick so we will have an even bigger and better feast on the day of Nathan's baptism, what fun!!

Oh I've got to mention, our day ended with our first attempt at Thanksgiving Black Friday shopping. I knew Toys-R-Us was starting their sale at 9pm. I figured what a fun way to end the night and maybe start a new tradition hopefully getting some Christmas shopping done too. We loaded in to the car and pulled into the store at five till 9 and the line was literally wrapped around the ENTIRE building. What the!? Needless to say Jeff and I were not about to take Johanna out to stand in a line of hundreds and hundreds of people just to save an extra what 30% at most. So this will not be a Thanksgiving tradition for this family...at least we can say we gave it a try...or at least a drive-by haha...

 The day after Thanksgiving we headed over to the zoo with Brandon. It had been years since he had been to a zoo and it turned out today was an excellent day to come. With the weather being just cool enough for the animals to be comfortable they were very active and alert. Except for this black bear...he was just too cute snoozing on his rock bed.

 Johanna loves pushing her stroller around.

 She also loves looking at all the animals. And with her expanding vocabulary it is so much fun taking her! She loved making monkey noises "eee-eee oooo-oooo" and lion/bear noises "roaaaaaar" and even had noises for animals that we adults didn't know made, what a silly girl!

 She feels so big when she's walking around with her Daddy and Cousin Brandon. Have I mentioned how great Brandon is with the kiddos?

 Johanna has her two front teeth coming in and loves making what I call her Sloth face (you know? The guy from the Goonies? check him out here) I didn't quite get the face in this photo, but you can see a little bit of her top teeth poking through.

Since we have a zoo membership and try to make it at least once a month, Johanna doesn't get a souvenir every time we come. This time however being the day after Thanksgiving we had to say we did some Black Friday shopping so we got her this little tiger toy for 40% off. She had her pick between the tiger, shark, giraffe and elephant and of course chose the tiger so she could roar at him some more.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, we are so thankful for all of you!