Thanksgiving 2013

This was our first year to host Thanksgiving (or any holiday for that matter) at our house.  My parents, my sister and brother-in-law and my aunt all came over for the day on Thursday.  We had quite the spread with Cajun fried turkey, honey baked ham, my Memaw's cornbread dressing, sweet potato casserole, masked potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, salad, fruit salad, berries with fruit dip, and fresh cranberry sauce.  We all ate so much that we didn't even have pecan pie and pumpkin cheesecake until late afternoon.  We spent the rest of the day watching "Elf", watching the Cowboys' game, playing with Avery's guinea pig "Cocoa" and just talking.  It was a fun, relaxing day with family.  We are truly blessed beyond measure!

getting ready for the big Turkey meal

It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a kids table!

Playing and relaxing after lunch.  Judson kept putting this blanket on his head and saying he was a pirate.

Chris, my Dad, Aunt Milly and Judson

Speaking of being thankful, our family is thankful for this chair that we can all pile on together! We'll see how that works out here in about 5-10 years when they are all big.

Avery and Kendall talked aunt Amy into doing a "3 V" with them so they could get Cocoa out of her cage.  Cocoa must have sensed that Amy is an animal lover because she she cuddled right up to her.

On Friday we had an early birthday lunch for Chris, then took some family pictures at Grapevine Botanical Gardens.  In the evening we met at the Gaylord Texan Hotel to do the Kung Fu Panda Snow Tubing.  It was really fun, but we only got to go down 6 out of 10 possible times because the lines were pretty long when we first got there.  We finished up our day with dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.

Avery and I finishing our slide.  The girls took turns riding with me or Scott and riding solo.  Judson had to ride with one of us in a double tube.

Scott and Avery

Kendall liked the tubing, but she was really thirsty near the end and we could not find a water fountain anywhere!

Avery and I

Scott and Judson.  He really enjoyed it and was sad when we had to leave.

We finished up our fun Thanksgiving with a trip on Saturday morning to the Perot Museum of Science and Natural History.  We got to see all the permanent exhibits including the dinosaurs, children's museum, sports and motion exhibit, gemstones, human body exhibit, and weather exhibit with the earthquake simulator.  We also got to see the Animals Inside Out exhibit, which was really cool. My pictures are all kind of blurry, but I still wanted to include them.

Judson pretending to cook over a campfire while wearing a turtle costume in the children's museum.

Judson and Kendall both loved this conveyor belt with foam blocks to put on it in the children's museum.

Of course Judson had to drive the produce truck in the pretend supermarket.

This camel was a very impressive part of the Animal Inside Out exhibit.  It was really large and the neatest part was that the baby camel seen behind the mother was actually a surprise that they found inside of her when they were preparing her for the exhibit.  This was Avery's first choice of an animal she wanted to stand by for a picture.

The giraffe was also very impressive, just because it was so big. Kendall is posing by it here.

Avery by the giraffe.

And Kendall by the camel.

In the sports exhibit you could race against a cheetah, a dinosaur or a professional athlete shown on the gigantic screen at the right.  Scott and Judson raced against the cheetah.  Then Avery and I did another thing where a lady recorded us doing a cartwheel together and then on a monitor we could compare our motion with an elite gymnast.