Enjoying the Blessings of Children and Grandchildren

On Tuesday, November 22, we traveled up to WA to spend Thanksgiving with Eric, Chelsea, and Addison!  What fun it was to see them all and to be there for Addison's first Thanksgiving.  Since our little family will be traveling down to CA for Christmas (yay!), Grandma and Grandpa had to bring a few Christmas presents early--Chelsea and Eric will not need any extra carry-on items for their return flight in December!  --Grandma's and Grandpa's logic.

Later with the cookie jar toy.....

Chelsea prepared a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings.  Jenny was her assistant with the turkey and also put together a wonderful cranberry salsa and the creamy pearl onion dish.  I know this picture isn't clear, but you can still see the cute smiles of our chefs.

Chelsea did most of the prep work ahead of time, and even had time to go out for a run on Thanksgiving morning.  Here are our beautiful tables--

            

Hmmmm, just right!

    Eric brushed up on his carving technique by watching a YouTube video, and did a great job.  Eric and Chelsea's good friends Amanda and Johnny joined our Thanksgiving group, and we had a wonderful time together.  Amanda brought two Southern style dishes that were really yummy as well.  She also brought an apple pie and a maple custard pie to add to our pumpkin pie.  We had a feast! 

Here is Addison's Thanksgiving outfit-

Here she is enjoying her new book.

 And Grandpa and Addison-

Black Friday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day--perfect for our day at the Northwest Wild Animal park.  On the drive to the park we had spectacular views of Mt. Rainier. 

Here are a few of the animals we saw.

We saw alot more: wolves, black bears, grizzly bears, coyotes, bob cats, bald eagles, mountain goats...pretty much any animal you would find in the wild in the northwest.  It was really a great park.

Addison also joined right in with watching the football games.  Here she is saying, "Touchdown!"

Auntie Natalie had fun with her niece and Addison gave her lots of kisses!

As you can see, Chelsea was even able to get a little start on her Christmas decorating before we headed home on Sunday.  We had a wonderful time, filled with precious memories.  Thank you Eric and Chelsea!

Escaping the October Surprise!

The weekend before Halloween, a storm surprised the northeast by dumping 16" of wet snow on the ground causing the power to go out and all sorts of other assorted problems.  What do you do when that happens? 
A. Commence eating the Halloween candy because Halloween is cancelled,
or
B. Fly to Phoenix and enjoy sunny, 78 degree weather with family?

Well, Mom and Renee chose B.  (Dan chose A, I think....) and even without a storm excuse, I was happy to join them there too!  Mom had been hoping to be able to come out to visit her brother Mike and his wife Connie, and this happened to be the week it got scheduled!  And so began our week of adventures!

One of the first things Uncle Mike did was give us a tour of his garage - the home of his '57 Chevy Nomad and '39 Ford Business Coupe.  Both were cars he completely rebuilt and restored himself.  Somehow I missed getting a picture of the snazzy red and chrome '57 Chevy Nomad.  Both cars are spectacular.  We each went for a spin in the Ford and enjoyed all the reactions of people as we drove by - fun!

 We drove over to ASU as well, to see the Frank Lloyd Wright theater building.

We also had a day in Scottsdale and enjoyed the art studios there.

We had lunch at a little ice cream shop/sandwich shop called "The Sugar Bowl."  It was a favorite of cartoonist Bill Keane, who did The Family Circus cartoons.

We also drove up to Sedona, the red rock area of Arizona, and walked through the Arts and Crafts Village of TlaquePaque ---  see if you can pronounce that!



Here I am pretending Chris is along with me....



Another great part of the "family reunion" was getting to see my cousins Angie and Shannon and their families.  What a special time it was to get to visit and reconnect.  (I will need to ask Uncle Mike for some copies of his pictures of all of us - somehow I didn't get a picture of the cousins, ugh!)

We had a wonderful time together, just catching up, laughing and talking alot while seeing some beautiful spots of Arizona. 
. . . And Mom and Renee were very tickled they missed the winter storm escapade happening in Connecticut!