Our Thanksgiving

We had the best Thanksgiving weekend. I just love Thanksgiving-I love the warm and cozy feeling of it, the kickoff to Christmas, watching the parade while the food cooks, the feelings of gratitude, the chance to relax and have fun at the same time and this year I loved being with our wonderful friends, the Dickmans.

The boys all hit it off as if we had never been apart (they moved from Madison to the Bay Area two months before we left Madison so we haven't seen them in 6 months). Nathan and Trey (and Jack and Justin most of the time too) played tirelessly. There was no end to their ideas of things to do. Legos, backyard games, Wii, and who knows what else-we barely saw Nathan the whole weekend-he was busy playing with Trey.

On Wednesday we went to the Jelly Belly Factory to see how Jelly Bellies are made. It was funny because we have been to the one in WI but that is just a big warehouse that they drive you around in and show you videos of the actual factory and we never thought we would actually get to the real factory-but now we have! We even got to sample Jelly Bellies at the end and got a free bag. My favorite flavor was 7-up!

Thursday was a nice day just spending time with everyone. I think we cooked a pretty mean Thanksgiving dinner if I do say so myself. The only bummer was that I totally botched the Orange Rolls. Turns out the recipe I was using was supposed to make 48 rolls and I only did 24 so they were way too big and burned on the outside but were raw on the inside. The Pumpkin Cheesecake turned out wonderful though!

We also made turkey cookies with the boys that day. Without talking about it ahead of time, Nanci and I had both bought stuff to make Turkey Cookies but we each had a different style so the boys each got to make 2 different kinds:

Thursday night was our Polar Express party! The boys got in their jammies and all of a sudden from the other room the conductor (Josh) was calling "All Aboard!" and blowing a train whistle. The boys went running too see what was going on. I handed each one a ticket which the conductor punched...

...followed by a "train ride" through the house (ie. holding onto each other's shirts and marching around the house to the soundtrack of the Polar Express). Then they boys sat down to watch the movie with popcorn. When the Hot Chocolate part came along we paused the movie and they all came into the kitchen and had hot chocolate.

Friday we went to the Oakland Zoo. It is a really nice zoo-perfect for kids because it has a huge children's area with all kinds of fun things to climb on and play in:

Josh, what did you think of the Oakland zoo?

On the way home from the Zoo we stopped to see the beautiful Oakland temple:

Saturday we played at a park and then headed home. Luckily the drive home took only 8 hours rather than the 10 hour drive up due to 3 hours stuck in L.A. traffic.

Thanks Dickmans for a wonderful, wonderful weekend. We wished we lived closer-like next door. But at least we are all in California!

And a Happy Thanksgiving to all!