Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving festivities began with Olivia's class Thanksgiving recital. (Olivia is the pilgrim girl on the far right). She played a very convincing "letter R" for the importance of the holiday in alphabet terms!

Olivia in her costume before the class party began. She loved this costume so much that she wore it for the rest of the day - until it literally ripped off of her. Otherwise, she may have worn it the following day as well!

We hosted Thanksgiving this year, which meant that all of the baking and prep work took place in my kitchen. Here are the kids making pumpkin pie filling. They both love to help in the kitchen!

Great Grandma came to spend the holiday with the kids. They had a great time showing her picture albums from our recent vacations while the pies baked.

The finished pie result! While I would like to directly blame Joe for the Star Wars pie, he had nothing to do with it. Sadly it was all my idea (although if Joe did not have the Star Wars cookie cutters in the house I never would have done it!).

Thanksgiving morning - watching the Macy's parade with Uncle Thomas and Aunt Rachel, also while looking for shopping deals.

Yes, I'll admit it - we use the canned cranberry sauce. We have tried the homemade sauce a few times at the holidays, but we just keep coming back to the can. I love it.

Mmmmm, turkey!

After the kitchen had been cleaned up, we traveled to the Festival of Trees with the family. We have come to love this event almost as much as the Jack Spectacular at Halloween (but not quite). Here is Olivia with Santa.

And Ethan with Santa. He became a bit tongue tied while on his lap, and didn't manage to talk with him about what he would like at Christmas. Star struck I guess!

Olivia's favorite tree at the Festival - the Bakery Shop.

Olivia and grandma on the train.

I have no idea how grandpa fit in the caboose with Ethan and all of the other kids!

On the day after Thanksgiving the family visited the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum with great grandma. Here we all are with the famous family!

And the kids really like playing in Mrs. Lincoln's attic while at the museum.

And, finally, Thanksgiving was finally done when the kids broke the wishbone. Ethan won this year, much to his delight!