Thanksgiving 2013

We had a nice Thanksgiving.  As is the norm for us, it was rather hectic, but we managed to squeeze in visits with everyone we wanted to see, so I suppose that means it was a success.  First we had lunch with my mom's side of the family at my Aunt Jan and Uncle Lynn's house.  Of course I brought my camera but didn't take a single picture.

After that quick visit, we headed over to Aunt Patty and Uncle Joe's house for the Lang Thanksgiving.  Several of my cousins were in town, including Cindy with her new baby Luke, who we hadn't met yet.

The brothers: Uncle Steve, Uncle Jim and Dad

All the siblings: Steve, Jim, Dad, Aunt Patty & Aunt Jean

Jack played a lot of tic tac toe with Aunt Ree

Sam (my cousin Cindy's daughter)

Uncle Dan and Natalie (Cindy's other daughter)

Charlie & Grandpa

Cindy & Baby Luke

Charlie and Jack got these hard hats from Aunt Patty and loved them!

After that quick visit we headed over to the Claytons' house for dinner and relaxing.  We took some pictures of the kids, adding one each time...

Jack & Lily - one year apart and pert' near the same height

+ Mia

+ Charlie donning a beautiful necklace

+ Paige

And....finally a smile from the Char Man

Silly faces!

Tickle Time

Play Date

Jules stayed in town for another week after our girls weekend, so we took advantage and got the crew together with our kids.  This time Steve and his family came too; he was left out of our weekend getaway.

We had a fun night at our house, and took the requisite 'kids on the couch' photo.  It was a success, complete with a screaming child.

From left: Evelyn (Jules), Ryan (Steve), Lucas (Jules), Dylan (Angie), Charlie, Collin (Steve), Jack, Amelia (Angie) and Cora (Angie)

 Love this one - Collin is checking Jack out and Jack's expression is like "what??"

 Only the big kids and Cora got the memo on making a silly face...

Myseum

I took off work the day after my Scottsdale trip since I got home late Sunday night and didn't see the boys.  I decided to take them somewhere fun, so we checked out Myseum in Chesterfield.  Jack got a gift card to there for his birthday (thanks Ashers!!).

Grandpa went along with us and we had a good time.  I'd say it's sort of similar to the Magic House in that there are lots of different things to check out, but about 1/10th of the size.  They also had things to climb on and inflatables and a cute toddler area.  Both boys had a fun time checking everything out.

Scottsdale

The first weekend in November, I took a girls trip to Scottsdale, AZ with my three oldest girlfriends: Laura (Brasier) Wehrley, Angie (Hefley) Trost and Julie (Albrecht) Stanczak.  We grew up together because our parents have been friends since before we were born (all the way back to childhood for my dad and Laura's dad).  Needless to say, we have a lot of memories together!  Laura lives in San Francisco, Jules lives in Chicago and Angie lives here but just returned from two years in England.  We also all have young children.  Clearly a girls weekend was in order!

We had an awesome weekend and really hope we can make this a regular (annual??) trip!  We stayed at The Zona which was really nice - luckily Julie's dad helped us use his company discount there.  We didn't rent a car so we were limited to the five mile radius that the hotel's shuttle would travel.  We were able to get out just enough and also spent plenty of time relaxing at the hotel.  We even got in the pool on Saturday - the weather was 85 degrees and sunny the whole time we were there!

We had lots of laughs over the weekend and can't wait to do it again!