Days With Kate: Thanksgiving 2013

Dear Kate,

We started our Thanksgiving week off with a little Christmas decorating. That's right. Mommy's one of those people. That is, one of those smart people who recognize Thanksgiving is one day and Christmas is a season (i.e. over a course of weeks!) and, if you wait until AFTER Thanksgiving to decorate then you are limited on time, and well, a limitation on time just means stress and stress just means no fun. So see, Mommy's smart AND fun :) What's crazy is we had a GREAT Thanksgiving despite our house being completely decorated for Christmas! What, can you tell it gets under my skin when people say you skip over Thanksgiving just because you decorate early? NO, not me :)

And, well, I have to confess, I didn't really decorate. Mimi is a rock star when it comes to decorating for Christmas and she carried on the rocking tradition this year, too! Look how awesome she is!

Awesome, huh! And you got to have a visit from Mimi - see it's a win win situation. Why wouldn't I decorate before :)

On Wednesday, I took you and Kipper and Ellie and Sister to Goofballs to burn off a little energy and get out of the house a bit. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and a little bit of pizza, too!

The merry go round only has 3 horses and Kipper was kind enough to let his lady cousins/sisters go first and just stand back and wave!

And Sister showed her support while you two did the 'roller coaster'...

On Thursday, we woke up and had a nice relaxing morning including breakfast and a little parade watching. Now, I have to say, we have watched the parade before, but never really sat down with nothing else to do kind of watching of the parade. Let's just say, we all thought it was a little overrated. OR, at least we felt like maybe we should have waited about an hour so we could fast forward through the performances and go straight to the floats. Lesson learned. I told Daddy we should just go to New York... He didn't respond.

We eventually got ready and headed to Cookeville to Aunt Amy's. You had a quick nap once we got to their house, but once you woke up, you partied it up Clark style! You found Dixie and, well, the rest was history...

All the kiddos had a good time playing and running around and, well, someone found some marker, but his Mommy fixed him right up...

Sweet cousins at their best!

And Papa joined us, too!!!

We enjoyed a delicious dinner with all the usual Thanksgiving fixings and, of course, the awesome family time gathered around the table and in the front room. The next morning, we dilly dallied a bit (read waited on the Ing's to wake up!)...

You and Kipper read a little...

But finally got ourselves off to the (sort of) annual After Thanksgiving Day hike. I say sort of because you have never actually been on one, so not quite annual, but nonetheless, we made it! And what a beautiful day, too!!! I can't remember where we went, but we (Daddy and I) had never been. We started off with a little swinging on the front porch...

And continued at the park!

Even Uncle Martin had to have a little swing time...

A few of us didn't quite enjoy it, though...

BUT, Dixie did!!

And look, we actually got a family photo!! It's a Christmas miracle, oh, wait, I can't talk about Christmas anymore :)

So then we started on our hike. This was the first 100 feet of hour hike. It was a little scary, to say the least...

But once we got over that, we sure did enjoy it. You insisted on walking A LOT, but everyone once in awhile we convinced you to be carried whether that was on my shoulders or Daddy's!