We started off Thanksgiving a little early this year by celebrating with my mom's sisters and brothers. We went ahead and made it all the way traditional by having lasagna. You can only eat so much turkey and dressing.
We were also celebrating the new engagement of my cousin Blake. He was presented with the East "ball and chain." My grandfather gave it to my father when he married my mom. From that point on it's passed from marriage to marriage. This is it's 7th pass. That's pretty amazing considering all the moves and houses it's been in.
By the way, it's very strange to me that my "little"cousins are now starting to get married and bring their boyfriends to family events. I'm think I'm having my quarter-life crisis about five years late. Life is moving WAY too fast. These are my formerly "little" cousins. To give you a little perspective on my freakout...when Blake and I started dating, Leslie and Heather were in pre-K and now they're graduating from high school and Courtney (in the middle) was about two!!!!!
We ate WAY too much as usual. My aunt Michelle and cousin Courtney made tons of yummy gourmet fixins. Here's Courtney with a new tradition, the 2nd annual Thanksgiving Rice Crispie Treat Tukey. Hey, I never said we weren't strange =)
Today we maet the Graessers at the mall to start planning a potential 30th bday/7th anniversary trip together! Anything with 1 kid is difficult, but with 4 it's pretty near impossible! The girls wrangled the kids while the boys planned away. We did manage to squeeze in one trip around the mall in the train.
Emmy and Ben took a romantic fireplace shot for the wedding album.
It's pretty ridiculous to me that the mall is already fully decked out in Christmas gear, but I guess i better get in the spirit. It'll be here before we know it!
We finally got there and there were a whole lot of other Mommys and Gigis there. There were a few Daddys there but none of them looked very happy. After we walked around a little while to look at sparkly things, Gigi and I sat down on the floor to have lunch. She was nice and let me eat her tato and play with her bottles. 
After that we went to look at more sparkly things and things that look like mommies toys she keeps around the house. You know, all of the stuff mommy and daddy say no no when I try to take it down and play with it. Since daddy wasn’t there, mommy even let me ride on her shoulders for a little while! 
I looked at lots of people and pointed at the ones that I really liked. They liked me too and told me my bow was pretty. I don’t know why everyone likes these bows so much…I just like to take them off my head. I even decided it was time for an outfit change. I wanted to show everyone my versitility.
After we were there for a couple days we took a ride on a train. I got to point some more and dance a little bit. 
Everyone liked my dancing. Mommy, Rara and Gigi looked really tired. I guess they aren’t used to going all day without their nap. I will have to teach them how to do that one day. I don’t know what the big deal about this whole nutcracker thing is but I liked seeing my Gigi and my Rara and getting held by my Mommy so much! Maybe next year Mommy will let me bring that house home! 
