Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We had a good weekend – we made the long trip back to South Dakota to Becky’s parents. We had heard the news that Bryson (Brandon and Tina’s boy) had been born that day so we were anxious to see him. We made it to Grandma Nola’s a little before 9 and the girls enjoyed seeing their aunts for a little while before going to sleep. On Thanksgiving Day Nola cooked up a great breakfast for the kids and we hung in the morning until the main event starting just before noon at Great Grandma Becky’s house. We headed over there and took in all the Thanksgiving fixings – there must have been 15 different dishes. The standards, turkey and ham, the gravy, the taco salad, the stuffing, the corn, the potatoes, the veggies, the whopper salad and much more were available for the family. There were less people than normal there – of the 8 kids, only 4 (Fran, Nola, Greg and Beth’s) families were represented.
We took in some football, but those games were terrible that day. Every game was a blow out. We started playing some buck in the early afternoon, then switched over to playing Pitch when 2 more people wanted to play. What started out as a casual game ended up running all night – I think I got back to Nola’s about 11:40.
On Friday we took it easy again that morning before Nola prepared the perfect kid lunch – macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. Jess agreed to take Amelia for a nap with her buddy Evia and then Becky, Somer and Heather took the big kids down shopping in Pierre, so I got time for a little nap. We all headed down to Pierre about 4:30 in preparation for the Holiday Parade that night. We stopped at Pizza Hut for supper and they were nice enough to seat us in our own section and start up the Kung Fu Panda movie. As I tried to put the top on the kids drinks, I knocked over the glass and had it fall right in my crotch-al region, so it looked like I peed myself. That was a good feeling to have the rest of the night. After that we went to the SD state capitol building to look at the Christmas tree exhibit. That was pretty cool – they had something like 130 trees on 3 different floors of the building. The kids enjoyed running around the building and looking at all the different colored trees.
The main event was the Holiday Parade and after weaving through every possible street in town, we parked near the end of the parade. Then a friendly police officer told us we were not on the parade route, we moved over closer to the main downtown. The kids all sat on the curb and waited for the parade to start. First there was an onslaught of horses. Then there was a really long pause. Eventually the rest of the parade came and the kids got the candy they were expecting. Each of the floats were filled with lights, and they even had one that resembled Cousin Eddie from the National Lampoon’s vacation movies – an old, dumpy RV with beer cans on the back.
Saturday morning was Taydon’s birthday and the kids had fun eating Diego cake for breakfast. We took off about 11:30 and made it back home by supper time. After supper we got to put up our Christmas tree and decorations, so the kids really enjoyed that.
Sunday we had my mom and dad over for dinner. Becky and I made quite a bit – some cheesy hashbrowns, beef burgundy and a scallop and bacon appetizer that was a hybrid of stuff I made in Montreal at my French cooking class. It was a lot of work to make the appetizer, but it was fun and I found out that the girls like to eat scallops (Katie calls it chicken like every other meat).
That was about it – fun and not to stressful, so that was good.
Eric's space 