Thanksgiving 2008

So, here's the Thanksgiving post, finally! It's been a busy couple of weeks around here, as I'm sure it has been for everyone else, too!

This Thanksgiving, Mike & Jess were able to make it to MO & IL to hang out with us... unfortunately, Josh & I were headed to Springfield this year, not Illinois! But we still got to hang out with them on Wednesday, and managed to squeeze a pretty good time into just a couple of hours!

We started with lunch on Wednesday, at a restaurant downtown called Bleu. We had a really good time just hanging out and telling stories.

The fam, or at least most of it, hanging around outside Bleu.

We spent the afternoon checking out the Black Friday ads, and playing some Wii. Mike tried out our new Lynks Crossbow game that came with our Wii Gun. He was pretty serious about it!

Check out the really cute outfit Aunt Jess bought Elena... FOREVER AGO! This is actually a 9 month size outfit, and by the time it fit it was too cold to wear it! But it ended up being warm enough on Wednesday to wear it with a sweater. It was awful cute!

After Josh got home from work, we went to Flat Branch for dinner, then grabbed some dessert, rented Mario Party 8, and just spent the evening goofing off. We had a really good time and stayed up entirely too late considering how early we all had to leave Thanksgiving morning!

At Flat Branch, Laney decided that she LOOVED onion rings! And, french fries dipped in salsa ranch dressing! She would suck the ranch off of the fries, but not eat the fry! Those poor fries would just be totally limp and mushy, and she'd keep dipping them and licking the dressing off. It was pretty funny! :)

Thursday morning, Laney & Aunt Jess put on their Old Navy Thanksgiving shirts, entirely too early in the morning! We were all up and out of the house around 7:00am!!



On the way down to Springfield, we drove through some pretty major fog at the Lake. It was pretty cool looking, and I couldn't resist taking some from-the-car pictures!


Thanksgiving dinner was great, the table was so full the food wouldn't all fit on it! But Laney found a new favorite food... black olives! And, with a little of Mommy's help, she figured out how much fun it is to eat them off of her fingers! She seriously ate GOBS of black olives that day, which showed up the NEXT day in her diaper, which was absolutely disgusting... but she sure had fun eating them! :)

Friday morning I hit the Black Friday sales, and really scored. I left at about 4:45, and opened up one store, where I got Josh's big gift! :) So excited about that! I also went to Penney's, Staples, Kohls, Walmart, Target, Bass Pro, and Walmart (yes, I went to two different Walmarts). I was pretty successful, and got most of the stuff I went after. My best advice for next year: plan to buy a pair of earrings at Kohls! The line was at least 45 minutes to an hour, and all I had were a few little toys for Elena. So I bought a pair of $8 earrings, and checked out at the jewelry counter, where there was no line!! Totally worth every penny!

After a nap on Friday, the whole family headed to Silver Dollar City. Tim hadn't ever been to the Christmas festival, and we wanted to show Elena the lights, too. She absolutely LOVED the Christmas tree, with the lights and the music, she was totally captivated by it.

Hanging out in the stroller... check out the cute hat and mittens Grandma Looten bought Laney!

Hanging out with Great-Grandma Looten, getting ready to watch the light parade...

...which was a pretty cool parade!

After which, she totally passed out.

Although I missed my family in Illinois, especially since Jess & Mike made it this year, it was a good time hanging out with the Lootens, and I loved taking Elena to see all of the lights at Silver Dollar City.

Other than that, I've taken a few other pictures that are just too cute over the last couple of weeks... so, here goes!

Look how much hair she's getting! She sure loves her bath...

Just like her Mommy... she sure does love to read... anytime, anywhere! :)

We got our first snow, which didn't hang around long enough to really enjoy and take pictures of, but I did get this cute one of Laney & her daddy looking outside. It's funny, she really liked to watch the snow falling in the porch light (it was snowing when we got home from Springfield Saturday night), and she liked to run her fingers through the snow on the hoods of the cars. But she did NOT like snowballs. Kind of a funny thing!