Thanksgiving Day

This year was an exciting Thanksgiving as it was Elise's first time experiencing the holiday. The girl loves to eat so we joked this may be her favorite holiday! Lucky for her we got to celebrate it twice, first with Ty's family and then with mine. Read about Thanksgiving with Ty's family here. We started Thanksgiving day with a Turkey Day 5k, more on the race to come later. We all wore our turkey hats my mom made us a couple years ago. Carter and my mom were registered for the fun run while the rest of us ran the 5k. We enjoyed the race and the challenge of running fast so soon after the half marathon. Then my parents treated us to McDonald's breakfast afterward.

Carter, Elise, and mom ready for the Turkey Day Fun Run.

Elise, me, dad, and Carter walking the Turkey Day Fun Run.

When we returned home from the race I nursed Elise and she went down for a nap right away. I had washed some Halloween costumes my mom and I bought on sale after the holiday so I pulled out an Iron Man costume for Carter to play with and he had a blast. When naptime rolled around Carter didn't want to go down. He had fallen asleep on our way to McDonald's so we knew he was tired but he didn't want to take a nap with all the excitement and possibly because he was overtired. That morning he said he was still sleepy when he woke up. He ended up falling asleep while I laid with him, but for some reason I had shut the door and he woke up when I opened it to leave. So he ended up with a 10 minute nap to McDonald's, a 15 minute nap at home, and then some quiet rest time with me in bed. The nice thing about him not taking a full nap was that we were able to eat a little bit earlier. Since we'd had breakfast around 11 we skipped lunch, so it was nice to eat dinner a little after 3! Elise played with her feather sensory bin while I got ready and then I got her started eating before everyone else. She had quite the spread eating green beans, turkey, sweet potato, and her first taste of cranberries. She was loving it but was hungry enough she decided part-way through she wanted to be fed rather than feed herself so she could get food faster.

Our adorable, little Iron Man!

Being silly during rest time.

Elise playing with her sensory bin.

Carter wanted to cheers during our meal.

Little miss rocking out the feast!

As we have the last few years we headed  out to a shopping center that turns on their Christmas lights on Thanksgiving evening. They had a children's choir and some adult vocalists singing Christmas songs before the lighting ceremony and brought Santa out to count down to the lights coming on. It was raining but not too hard and the temperature remained in the 60's so we wore our rain boots, rain coats, and took umbrellas. Elise went in the single stroller with blankets and with the sun shade down we didn't even need the weather shield on. Ty and Thomas opted to spend the evening at Thomas' house watching football so it was me, mom, dad, Jeremy, Carter, and Elise. Carter and I enjoyed walking through puddles on our way back to the car. I told him I was thankful for puddles to splash in with him. He told me he was thankful for chalk. By the time we got back my leggings I was wearing under my dress were wet all the way across my thighs. Back at home the kids went into matching jammies for bed. It was such a wonderful evening and an even better Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for!

Walking to the lighting ceremony.

Carter playing in puddles.