Thanksgiving 2009

For Thanksgiving this year we headed to Grandpa Alan and Grannie Ali's house. We headed over on Tuesday afternoon so that we would have a couple of days to visit. On Wednesday afternoon all of Grandpa Alan's kids and grandkids came over for an early Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun to get to see them again. They are very fun people, and I wish we lived closer together.

Grannie had a few activities planned for all of the grandkids. Here they are cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them to poster board to make place mats.


After the place mats were complete it was off to play again. The girls found Papa Alan sitting around and decided that he was a good place to play.



Once Grannie finished covering the place mats with contact paper or something it was time for them to show Papa Alan what they made. Here's Iz showing her's off.


Occasionally Iv would squeak or coo or something and the kids would head over to see what the problem was. Here's a group of them checking him out.


We gorged on an excellent dinner and then hung around for a bit longer visiting. I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out too great (lesson learned). Soon all of our kids started going into breakdown mode. Papa Alan's kids and grandkids left, and we all went to bed shortly afterwards; Izzie was way overdue since she barely had a nap. I'v noticed that I find myself loathing the evenings on the days that she doesn't get a nap.

Thanksgiving morning we all woke up ate some breakfast and then lounged around.


Iv was so tired that when I put him on his tummy for some exercise that he fell asleep not 5 minutes later. He's such a cute little guy.


Derek and I drove out to our grandparents house to pick up Grandpa and Grandma in the afternoon. Here's Grandpa inspecting the cooking process to make sure that it's all up to code.


Soon we were enjoying another excellent Thanksgiving dinner.



Remember the turkeys we saw at Grandpa's house a couple of weeks earlier? Well, that's him there on the table all carved up in delicious slabs of meat.



Soon after dinner we were all suffering from a sever case of Tryptophan overdose.



Before we took Grandma and Grandpa home we all stopped for a quick picture.


Friday morning Lynnell and Nessy (Uncle D's girlfriend) decided to get up at 4am to brave Spokane traffic just to find some good shopping deals. They returned triumphant, and soon after I packed up the family and we headed to Grandpa Joe and Grandma Tonia's house in the Silver Valley to visit for a couple of days. Here's Grandma Tonia marveling at Iv's awesomeness.


Izzie went straight downstairs to find her Auntie's vegging out.



We stayed there Friday night and then headed home to Helena Saturday afternoon. Here's Izzie making the trip enjoyable for Lynnell and I.


And that was Thanksgiving 2009. We had a lot of fun.