Gobble Gobble

Living this far from family has forced us to start making our own family traditions. This year I think we found a new Thanksgiving Day favorite. We got up early and headed to downtown Detroit to run the Turkey Trot with 15,000 other people. Yes 15,000... we had no idea it was going to be that big. That's twice as big as the marathon I ran. Carter ran the Mashed Potato Mile and did AWESOME! Jared ran with him and said he was really having to run to keep up with him. It was so fun to watch him weaving in and out of all of the adults. He was ecstatic to finish before so many grown-ups and older kids. He could have possibly been the youngest kid there. Jared said it was too easy for him so we may shoot for the 5K for next year. Gage is also in training to do the mile next year! He is quite confident he can do it.

Jared and I hadn't run a race since Cam was born so we borrowed a single jogger and pushed all 3 kids in the 10K. I'm sure we were a sight to see, but we did stumble upon a couple other double joggers. There were so many people running that the prospect of gaining much ground was not feasible. Trying to maneuver around other runners with a stroller isn't the easiest task, especially when there's a double wide involved.

Look at those little legs move!!!

After the race we stuck around downtown for America's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was fantastic. This parade is serious business with big fancy floats and big helium balloons. It reminded me of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade we used to watch bits and pieces of on TV growing up.

After the parade a nice long nap in a very warm bed would have been nice We had to settle for a cup of hot chocolate as we had to finish cooking our T-day fixings and head over to have Thanksgiving dinner with some friends. It was a great time. Here's a list of the things my boys are grateful for this year:

Mommy (of course I listed that as number one)
Daddy
Brothers
Family
My Body
Tilapia... I have no idea where Gage got this from - I do make it but he rarely eats it when I do!
Jesus
Heavenly Father
Food
Candy
Toys
School
Home
Books
Legos
Bones
Everything

My Family Rocks!

I have the best extended family ever! My cousin, Julie, just took a weeks vacation to come and visit us in Detroit! True love my friends, that is true love! Okay, so we don't really claim Detroit, but nonetheless she came. Unfortunately I don't think it's me she came to see, I think it has something to do with my adorable offspring. "Aunt Julie," as she is affectionately called came to Michigan, she spoiled my kiddos, we played, we saw the sights of Detroit hehe, we discovered our new favorite restaurant... let me hear a woot woot for Pasquale's (that's for you Julie), we crafted and did projects -- basically we had a rockin' time. See for yourself!

The Zoo:
The Detroit Science Center:
The Metro Park Petting Zoo and Nature Trail:

Don't Feed the Animals, Jared!!

Roasting marshmallows and making s'mores, Mmm. Definitely more fun outside, but it was way to cold:

The cider mills in Michigan are superb. They have the BEST apple cider and donuts. I am not a big donut fan but a warm apple or pumpkin donut with a cup of FRESH apple cider definitely hits the spot!

These giant rolls of hay made for the best game of hot lava monster tag. Gage's legs were a little short to jump from bail to bail but it didn't keep him from trying. Stinkin' fun!!

Julie didn't come early enough to see all of the beautiful Michigan Fall, but there were plenty of leaves left to play in:

You're welcome to come and visit too!! Love you Julie, thanks for coming to play!

A New Favorite Tradition

Last year we had soooo much fun going to the apple orchard to pick apples we made sure to do it again this year. It will be an annual tradition I'm sure! We could have picked a warmer day this year but it was still a lot of fun. We brought our bushel of apples home and made dehydrated apple slices and applesauce together for family home evening.

We met up at the lake before apple picking for a picnic lunch with one of Jared's mission buddies, Devin, and his family. The plan was to go canoeing -- it was so cold the weather almost killed our plans. But Jared decided that since he had gone to the effort to get the canoe there, we would go canoeing! Fortunately for us the sun came out and it warmed up!

This is a Fall picnic... Michigan style! We put the picnic tables up on their side and hung the blanket in an attempt to block the wind - it didn't work out so well.

Virginia

We're not dead -- it's just our blog that died. When we started putting our blog into a template to make a blog book for 2008 I was motivated to resuscitate the blog... we'll see how long it lasts.

In October Jared took a few days off of work and we headed down to Williamsburg, Virginia to visit my brother, Rustin. Living on this side of the Country definitely has its perks. We are now within driving distance of a lot of places we would love to go and see.

On our way to Virginia we stopped in DC for a day. Carter had just done a Civics unit in Social Studies and was pumped (at first) to see the sights of D.C., the White House in particular. When push came to shove he was WAY more interested in the Smithsonian museums than the sights of DC. We had a great time and were even able to meet up with one of my friends from high school.

Mer it was so fun to see you!

Colonial Williamsburg was a lot of fun. We happened to be there the weekend of Columbus Day so they were doing a huge reenactment which was a lot of fun to watch. We also went to Jamestown and Yorktown. Overall I think the boys liked Yorktown the best -- there was a battlefield with cannons and a beach, of course it was their favorite!



We loved spending time with Rustin. He is one of the kids favorites -- sorry to the rest of my siblings who may be reading this. We hope to get back there before too long for another visit!