Our small family Thanksgiving

This year we didn't travel anywhere or host guests for Thanksgiving, so we kept it simple.  I made a few of our favorite holiday side dishes (sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole), dinner rolls, and a pumpkin cheesecake.  Then we grilled some turkey breasts (it was a beautiful and warm day so it was perfect for grilling!) and we had our obligatory can of jellied cranberry sauce too of course!

During the morning, Evan watched some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  He loved seeing the balloons (which is the main attraction of that parade!).  Emma even noticed some of the balloons and approached the TV pointing saying "boo" or something that sounded like she was trying to say balloon.  While Emma took her morning nap, Evan, John, and I took some time to teach Evan some board games.  First we played Candyland, and then Chutes and Ladders.  I was impressed at how well Evan was at learning the rules and playing both games.  After one game of each, his attention span was worn down and he just wanted to move his player up and down the ladders and slides, but he made it through one game of each before that happened!  Not bad!  And he showed us he knows his colors and numbers well enough to be able to interpret the cards or spinner results to make his plays!  Since Thursday, he's asked to play the games each day, and again has done quite well, making it through one game of each before losing interest in following the rules.  And he's asked to play Connect Four (a game he "played" last week on our trip to Kansas with his cousin Kaylee), and I taught him to play SlapJack too.  I'm so excited he's gotten to the game-playing age!

We ate our holiday meal in the early afternoon.  Emma ate a bit of everything, especially the dinner rolls and sweet potatoes.  Evan dined on cranberry sauce almost exclusively.  He refused to try the side dishes, though we did manage to convince him to try one bite of each.  Even though his initial reaction to the bite of green beans made it appear like he might have liked it, he immediately wanted to spit it out just as he'd done with his bite of sweet potatoes.  He didn't want any dinner rolls (not sure why, because he loves bread otherwise), and while he did have some turkey (which he called chicken), he didn't eat that much of it.  

The pumpkin cheesecake got over baked because I was outside when the timer went off.  John and I both agreed it wasn't that great as a result and so John took it into his work to pawn off on his coworkers.   At least he had bought a pumpkin pie at the store the day before though so he still could have that for dessert.  The very fact that I was outside, though, was a testament to how nice the weather was this holiday.  The kids got to play in the backyard while we grilled.  Not too shabby for Thanksgiving!

During the kids' afternoon naps John and I rearranged the living room furniture a bit to make a space for the tree.  Then after the kids woke up we started putting up Christmas decorations.  Evan was so excited he jumped up and down and kept saying "Yay, yay! It's Christmas Day, it's Christmas Day!"  We played Christmas music and put the tree together and John hung our garlands and bows on the railings.  We ended up waiting to hang ornaments and decorated the tree until Friday morning during Emma's nap.  Evan had so much fun helping hang ornaments.  He also became especially fixated on John's airplane ornaments.  He would tell me "those are Daddy's planes" and "we just look at them" and "that one is from my birthday" (referring to the one plane ornament that doubled as his cake topper for his 3rd birthday).  

The finished product

The next few days were also really nice outside, except a bit windy.  So instead of walks to the park, we stayed close to home and played in our yard and garage.  Emma (and Evan too) helped sweep the back deck.  It's so fun to see Emma go through phases that Evan did too.  The whole reason we have that broom was because Evan loved to sweep as a toddler and so it was an Easter gift for him.  She is quite the cleaner though.  She likes to take a rag or towel and pretend to clean things too (i.e. the couch, her high chair, etc).  That'll definitely come in handy as she gets older. :)