Thanksgiving and Christmas Prep!

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend this year. Our Thanksgiving wasn't rushed at all, which was nice. We had time to get everything done that we wanted to. We started out Thanksgiving with the Turkey Trot!  Mads wanted to walk this year and wear a number.  So we pinned on one of our numbers from last year!  (Shhh.. don't tell!)  She only ended up walking about 1/4 mile and then she rode on Daddy's shoulders for the rest of the walk.

 The weather was nice.  It was 37 degrees with a slight wind that I could've done without.  I also would've added in some sun...  BUT it was SO much better than last year's trot weather, for sure!

 After the Trot we headed home for a late breakfast and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  I think this is the first year that we've actually been able to watch the parade.  While the kids didn't really sit down and watch it, they did run in and out to look at the balloons!

We had lunch and then headed over to Jill, Eric, Claire & Nick's house for Thanksgiving with Grandma Mamie and Eric's family.  We got to their house at halftime of the Packer game, so we were able to see the win!

The kids had fun playing, they even sat down to play CandyLand together.

On Friday Andrew worked at Target, the kids and I cleaned the house and moved things around so that we had room to put our Christmas tree when it was time. 

Andrew also worked on Saturday, but he had a surprise in store for the kids when he got home.  We hopped in the van and headed up to the Fox River Mall in Appleton to see Santa!!  Mads had her list ready, but she had to ask Nathan what he wanted her to tell Santa for him.  Once we made it to the mall we found out that they have a NO PHOTO POLICY.  I was so mad.  They could take pictures for you, but the cheapest package price was $22.95.  Are you kidding?!  I could see maybe spending $5 on a picture, but I'm not spending over $20!  Last year they had a two picture limit, which was irritating...  but this is just crazy.  Anything to make money, I guess.  At least they still let the kids sit on Santa's lap to tell him what they wanted for Christmas.  Although, I have no pictures of the encounter.  :( 

On our way home we stopped for dinner at Bennigans.  Nathan perused the menu and I thought he was pretty darn cute looking like a little man.

Today was an easy-breezy kind of day.  We had church this morning and then went grocery shopping.  We didn't have any plans at all for this afternoon so we took advantage of the free time to decorate our house for Christmas!

While the kids napped Andrew and I got the tree ready with the lights so as soon as the kids woke up we could decorate the tree.  Well, I decided to go heavy on the lights this year, and I ran out of lights about halfway up the tree!  So after the kids woke up and we took a quick run to Target, it was finally time to decorate.  We had a lot of fun this year, especially Nathan who was able to help much more than he was last year!

Andrew helps Mads get the star on the tippy-top of the tree

 Success!

 The kids had fun putting the ornaments on...

 Nathan helped hand me the ornaments.  We had a good system going this year!

 Our family ornament!

 Nathan hangs his baby shoe ornament from his first Christmas last year.

 The finished product!  (Yes, I realize the top isn't as bright as the bottom - and the top lights are the NEW ones!)

 Kids in front of the tree!

Mom & Mads

 Dad & Nathan

 Mads wanted me to take her picture alone in front of the tree.  Something was horribly askew with my camera settings, but Mads was smiling nice so I had to post the picture.  (This really isn't photoshopped, as much as it looks like it is!)

Nathan loves the Jingle Buddies!  Good thing I bought them, like, 8 years ago so that he can be entertained!

I can't believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone and Christmas is in less than one month!  I hope everyone is able to enjoy the season!

Thanks for stopping by!

Fun at the Packer game & jumping in the leaves!

Monday Night Football.  Green Bay Packers Vs. Minnesota Vikings  AT Lambeau?  YES PLEASE!

Mary was lucky enough to get tickets to the game through the lottery drawing for Brown County residents.  We went with Jill & Eric and had a blast watching the Pack blow the Vikings away! 

Warming up:

 Hey, is that Steve Young?

 Packer Fans!

 Introducing the team

 We got to be part of a sweet card stunt during the National Anthem.  Who knew there were so many instructions to holding up a card?

 Pretty awesome!

Final Score - Yeah Baby!

I had taken Monday and Tuesday off from work since the game was on Monday night.  On Tuesday afternoon the kids and I did some raking, which led to jumping in the leaf pile!

Mads had a blast!

 Nathan wasn't so sure, though.

 Hmmm...

 He found Mads to be very funny!

 Making a leaf angel:

One random picture..  Nathan had his first Icee when Mads shared with him during a Target run this week!  Yum!

Wisconsin Dells Fun!

It's that time of year again...  time for Andrew's annual continuing ed weekend in the Dells.  The Wisconsin Optometric Association switched it up on this year and held the conference at the Wilderness Resort instead of the Kalahari.  It was nice to have a change of scenery, but I think that we might prefer the Kalahari more than the Wilderness.  The funky thing about the Wilderness is that it's three hotels in one.  The conference was actually held at the Glacier Canyon Lodge.  To get to all of the amenities, like the restaurants, water parks, and indoor arcades you had to walk in the skywalks to the other hotels.  It wasn't a problem to walk, it just took a long time.  With Nathan in the stroller and Mads walking along beside it took us 15 minutes to walk to the water parks!!  Only two rooms were further away than we were!  We did have a lot of fun, though. 

Mads and Nathan had fun on the luggage cart when we first arrived:

Nathan actually bolted for the remote first, but then saw the fun happening on the luggage cart!

After we got settled into our room we hoofed it down to the only restaurant we were able to find.  We ate quickly and Andrew took off to his class.  The kids and I wandered around a little bit, but were back to the room by 6.  The kids did some reading with their Tag books and then we all went to bed early.

 Nathan had some fun hiding underneath the stroller.

On Saturday Andrew had class from 8-2:45.  The kids and I did some more exploring and were able to find the other section of restaurants, a water park, and indoor play area that we weren't able to find on Friday night.  We played at the indoor play area for awhile.  We weren't able to go into the larger 4 story play tree house as I couldn't keep my eyes on both kidlets while in there.  So we stuck to the toddler zone.

After playing we did some more exploring, watched the people in one of the water parks for awhile, and then headed back to the room.  We took our traditional "calling room service" pictures.  (They didn't have a room service book in our room, so we had to use the map...  but we can pretend, right?)

 "Well, fine!  If you don't want to bring me room service, I'll hang up on you!"

 We then had a little picnic lunch and then took some naps.

Once Andrew was done with class we were ready to head down to the water parks and do some swimming!

 We stopped at the first water park and Mads wasn't really digging it.  Nathan had some fun in the kid area, though. 

 Finally Mads warmed up enough to go down the kiddie slide a few times.  She wouldn't go on anything else because she would get wet.  We decided to leave this water park and head to another one, hoping that she'd like it better. 

 When we got to the second and third parks she had finally warmed up.  In the third park they had a large raft ride, so we went on that.  The four of us sat in the big raft and went through the dark tunnel.  Mads asked me to hold on to her tight and when we were done she told us that it was the best ride she's ever ridden on!

We left the water park and went back to our room.  We decided to leave the hotel for dinner and went into the Dells to eat.  We ended up at Buffalo Phil's.  We weren't able to get a table where the train delivers the food directly to you, but we were able to see a train that was circling the room above our heads.  Nathan kept a close eye on it and notified us every time it came by!

Sunday morning we woke up early (we do have tiny kids that get up at the crack of dawn, you know), packed up and took off.  While we were packing Mr. Nate found Dad's shoes and decided to try them out!

We left the Dells and headed to Madison to meet my mom and collect Lily who had a vacation of her own in Monroe!  :)

Two more pictures..  on Thursday night Oshkosh had their annual holiday parade.  The kids got to bust out their new coats, hats, boots and mittens for the occasion.  Love it!

 Nathan bundled up at the parade, we think he might have been hibernating!

Thanks for stopping by!