Thanksgiving and Santa

Yes, we did celebrate Thanksgiving! Here are some pictures to prove it as well as our visit to see Santa this past weekend. We did celebrate Thanksgiving at both my and Justin's parents houses but I failed to take the camera out of my bag at the Reynolds's house. Sorry! Both of our moms prepared an awesome meal and we left extremely full!!  As for Santa, he was kind of a bummer for us this year. He was too young and didn't really talk to the kids. Just wanted to make sure we got a good picture, which I appreciate but, I want them to have the experience mostly. We only have a few short years left of it. Brice is so far gone, I felt badly for him this year. Anna is going to put it all together soon I feel like from the fact that I told her we aren't getting an Elf on the Shelf. Anyway, Kyle enjoyed the experience and was so excited to go see him so that kept me smiling through the line. He is SO excited about Christmas this year.

Thanksgiving this year brought the good with the bad emotions. Mom celebrated one year of being cancer free on November 1st and I think for the first time in a long time has felt like herself again. What a ride she has been on. We are so thankful for the doctors and nurses that cared for her, especially my Dad who was probably the biggest rock star for her throughout the year. And then the hardest part was the beginning of the holidays without my grandfathers and without Justin's grandmothers. I haven't blogged about it at all but when Justin and I got married, there were five grandparents between the two of us. This is quite remarkable to say the least. Well, this year, we lost four of the five between April-Larry's mother, June-my dad's dad, August-my mom's dad and September-Robin's mother with my maternal grandmother being the last living. Their legacies live on as do memories...My side didn't always spend Thanksgiving with grandparents but we did with Justin's side and there were two sweet ladies that were very much missed this year.

Okay, Santa pictures! And what do you do when you stand in line waiting? Make crazy faces of course...

 Yep, too young looking. And, this was on a Saturday morning. Wouldn't you bring out the best of the best on a Saturday morning in December??!? Oh well. Kids were able to place their requests so we should be all ready for the big guy's visit!