Christmas Village at the Bass Pro Shop in St. Louis

So, backing up a few hours... While we were waiting for the turkey to cook, we headed over to the Bass Pro-Shop because they had free pictures with Santa and they were open on Thanksgiving day.  Little did we know that they had much, MUCH more than just pictures with Santa!  It was so awesome!  And there was nobody there because of the holiday, so we got to play and play.  And the extra cool thing is that EVERYTHING was free!  Can't beat that!

Carousel ride #2 (see the post about the St. Louis Zoo) went much smoother!

Look!  No tears!

A cute one of Uncle Parker and Cousins Emily and Abby

The fam

K-Man enjoying his candy cane from Santa, and me enjoying two of my favorite kids in the world

Who knew they made a pink Red Ryder BB Gun?

Daddy showing K-Man how to shoot

A fun racetrack.  Emily was pretty good at this one.

K-Man checking out the trains

Emily and K-Man writing letters to Santa

Hard at work

Group picture.  Do we look hungry?  We are about to go home and eat our Thanksgiving feast!

Parker teaching Emily some bow-hunting skills a la Napoleon Dynamite

Camper Emily

The Big Dinner: Thanksgiving

The big day finally arrived and Sarah and I were excited to start cooking!  We started the rainbow jello a couple of days early, so we just had everything else to cook.  So, first thing in the morning (as you can tell from our tired morning faces) we got to work on the bird...

Sarah's family always layers bacon on top, which is going to be one of my traditions from now on!  Yum!

Sarah did the honors of placing the bird in the oven

Crunch time: Sarah's mashing the potatoes, Parker's carving the turkey, and apparently I'm supervising?  Maybe trying to get a few tastes in?

The kids were ready to eat!  By the way, that Sierra Mist with the cranberry in it is outstanding, I would recommend that you give it a try if you haven't already!

Time to load up the plates!  Mike has his just about full, and Sarah is close behind.

Rainbow jello: A family tradition for as long as we can remember

Yep, just a plate of salad and some jello for me, thanks.  Yeah right!! That was just the beginning!

I believe this was round two for Parker?

All in all, it was a delicious meal with some of our favorite people.  Hope you had a great one, too!

K-Man: Best Traveler Ever!

Getting ready to head into the airport to begin our cross-country trip

This year for Thanksgiving, our family went to St. Louis, Missouri to visit Amy's brother, Parker, and his family.  We flew to Hawaii when K-Man was only three months old, and he traveled great then, but we weren't sure we would have quite as smooth of sailing now that he is an independent, opinionated toddler.

In preparation for our flights (we would have five all together), Amy went and bought some fun new toys for the plane rides, and some other fun new toys for our airport time.  We planned ahead, got everything packed, and arrived nice and early to make it as easy as possible.  Luckily our checked bag weighed in at 48 something pounds so we slid in right under the weight limit, and we were off to our gate.  Traveling side note:  did you know that when you are traveling with a small child, the nice airport people let you skip the huge line to go through security and you get to use the "really special people and airport workers only" line where you don't ever have to wait?  Yeah, it was a very pleasant surprise!

So after making it through security and finding our gate, we hung out and played while we waited to board.  K-Man was a rock star!  He played, and made friends with the people sitting around us, and was just a happy kid!  We boarded the plane and Amy was nervous that he was going to be "that kid" who cries or barfs or kicks the seat in front of him the whole time, but he did great!  We even had a couple of people comment to us that he was the "best kid they had ever sat by on a plane," which stroked our parent egos nicely.   And really, this picture sums up all five of our plane rides:

Sleeping K-Man = Happy Mama

And this picture pretty much sums up our experience in the terminal:

There were so many new and exciting things to see and do and explore in the terminal that all of K-Man's new toys barely saw the light of day.

Don't worry, there are a LOT more pictures to post from our fantastic vacation, but time is short tonight, so they will be posted soon.