Thanksgiving--and family pictures reprise

Like the rest of America, we celebrated Thanksgiving this week.

And although the day itself is past, that doesn't change the fact that I am grateful for my husband, my children, my extended family, and my friends. (And also a good job and great community to live in).

Also, like most Americans, we traveled for Thanksgiving, spending the holiday weekend with my parents up north.

On Thanksgiving, we tried something a little new this year. My mom gave Dan carte blanche to plan the menu, which meant that Dan got to do something he loves (really, he gets enjoyment out of planning menus that continues to escape me) and my mom was much less stressed, as she got delegated from meal planner to meal helper.

My brother Jared and my sister, Jeni, and their respective families showed up, which meant that the cousins (8 of them, the oldest one 9 years old) ran rampant in the house and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't think grandpa enjoyed the resultant noise very much, though.

We had a lovely dinner: Turkey, two kinds of stuffing (traditional and sausage/cornbread), rolls, sweet potato fries, corn on the cob, broccoli, pies (and probably other stuff that I'm forgetting). My mom, Mitcee, and I spent some time before the meal perusing black Friday ads. It was fun--but a little overwhelming.

My favorite moment of the day, though, was when Jeni, Jared and I dragged the kids (all but Oliver) outside and played different kinds of tag with them. We laughed until our sides ached. Jared's a natural ham, especially around kids, and the kids themselves were hilarious, since most of them shriek whenever "it" gets close to them, and some of them have very little sense of direction or self-preservation. (Kind of reminds me of this).

In the evening, after the kids were in bed, my mom and I braved some black Friday shopping. We went to a new outlet mall, scored some great deals, and weren't actually surrounded by crazy shoppers. There were lots of people, but everyone was pretty pleasant. We avoided Walmart like the plague, drove by Target (I went in but came out almost immediately when I saw how crazy long the line was), and when we passed Toys R Us at 11:30 p.m. and saw that there was *still* a line, we avoided that too. My favorite deal was two pair of Clarks shoes for $30.

We went to Kohl's the next morning, but not until around 9:30, and to Gymboree, and that was pretty much the extent of my Black Friday shopping. Pretty wild, huh.


We did go to JC Penney as well, but that was for a good cause: another photo shoot of the kids (this time for Christmas pictures) and succeeded much better than we did last month at Sears.

Here are my favorite shots (they had a Black Friday deal running that gave us an inexpensive CD, so you get to see lots more pictures than you otherwise would).

I think you can see his dad in this one (maybe it's the ears? or the gap between the front teeth?)

 You've got to love new permanent teeth. At least they're straightening out.

 Andrew wanted to do a crazy pose, so we let him. We will not, however, be ordering lots of this.

 This pose is quintessential Evelyn.

 Oliver wasn't super happy by the time we got his pictures, but if we wasn't smiling big, at least we still got some cute pics of his fat cheeks.

 We had a hard time getting the two oldest to both smile at the camera at the same time.

 Evelyn looks like she's trying to bite Oliver here. He doesn't seem to excited either!