Merry Thanksgiving!

We will not be going to Michigan for Christmas this year, so we celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with Grandpa Dave and Grandma Debbie this past weekend!

To kick off the festivities, we enjoyed a relaxed Thanksgiving morning watching the Macy's parade and playing with Morgan. That was followed by the devouring of a delicious deep-fried turkey, sweet potato casserole and crescent rolls! Yum!

After dinner, we all decorated the Christmas tree together and listened to Christmas music. Grandpa helped Morgan put some of our plastic bulbs on the tree, and she thought it was the greatest! I thought she would never leave the tree alone after that, but surprisingly she has mostly kept her hands off it. She points at it a lot and plays with the train underneath, but thankfully that is the extent of it.

Following Morgan's bedtime, we had dessert and played cards. After a round of Golf (a family favorite), Grandpa and Grandma taught us a game called 65. We really enjoyed it - even though Grandpa Dave won all of the extra nickels in the pot at the end!

Friday morning it was ... CHRISTMAS! I put homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven and Jeff made a fire in the fireplace. We helped Morgan tear into her gifts and, of course, she really just wanted the boxes. Jeff quickly put together her largest gift - a shopping cart - and she happily pushed it around the house the rest of the morning!

All that cart pushing made Morgan a very tired girl, so she took a nice, long lunchtime nap. Jeff and his parents ran out to do a tiny bit of Black Friday shopping while she slept. After lunch (Debbie's must-have 'shroom burgers from Hardees), we got all dressed up and went to see SANTA!!

This was Morgan's first time meeting Santa. We chose to skip the malls and instead we went to the Indiana State Museum where Santa had just arrived earlier that day (by helicopter!). It was a great choice, because the line to see Santa was very short, there was a holiday train ride Morgan enjoyed and we got to tour the museum.

Santa must get tired of all the crying babies, however. Morgan was fine for about 8 seconds, but that's when the waterworks started. I honestly don't blame her. I mean, even though the line was short there was still a "hurry up" vibe from Santa's helpers so there wasn't really time to introduce her to Santa. She might have liked him if she had been given the chance to look at him and talk to him for a minute, but instead we had to thrust her onto his lap sight unseen. Then, we are all (2 santa helpers, Grandma, Grandpa, Daddy, Mommy, Morgan and Santa) crowded into this tiny, overdecorated room, Grandpa and I are snapping pictures like paparazzi, everyone is trying to get Morgan to smile by talking to her from 7 different directions and Santa's "professional" photographer has a lame dog puppet on her hand and is shoving it in Morgan's face in an attempt to garner a smile! Looking back, I'm not sure why I didn't cry!

Tears aside, we had a lovely time at the museum even though we had to cut our visit short to get Morgan home for a late afternoon nap (which she didn't end up taking, we think she was overtired). The rest of the visit was filled with more playing with grandparents, card games and watching movies. Like all holidays, we wish it could have lasted longer, but we are very grateful for the memories made!