Thanksgiving 2009

It was a whirlwind Thanksgiving weekend with the Schmitts this year! They came up Wednesday night, while Jessica & Mike went to see a concert, we watched the adorable "Santa Buddies" movie with Benjamin. On Thursday morning, Mike was supposed to run a Turkey trot but after getting home in the wee hours of the morning, wasn't quite up to it so the 5 of us spent some quality time together before the big meal - which, if I must say for myself, was fantastic! After gorging ourselves, we all went for a nice long walk around the neighborhood, checking out the cold lake water and early Christmas decorations! On Friday, we ran some errands, ate leftovers and then went to Excelsior for a "Lantern Parade" it was charming - Excelsior is a cute little town on Lake Minnetonka with small shops and restaurants. The parade started at the end of the town, went down Main St with Father Christmas leading the children in song, arriving at the town tree and overseeing the tree lighting. There is also a Christkindlsmarkt in town with some kiosks of food and crafts. On Saturday the Schmitts headed home to do some Christmas decorating, while Ed and I put the outside lights on.

Next weekend, we get Benjamin again - this time we are taking him to the Ice Fishing Show, The Holidazzle parade and then on Sunday, Breakfast with Santa and out to chop down the live tree for the basement.....whew...

Halloween 2009

Despite the windy and cold weather, we still had a wonderful Halloween! The Schmitts came on Friday night and Benjamin showed off his adorable Robot costume - Mom's creativity really work on this one! Jessica and Mike had a 1/2 marathon on Saturday morning so we had custody of Benjamin - we took advantage of our new Zoo membership and went to the Minnesota Zoo HallZOOween event. His robot costume was a big hit, people loved it and commented that it was the best one there! The zoo really did a nice job with this, there were trick and treating sessions with candy and little trinkets, special musical shows, etc. We spend a terrific afternoon there! Then we took Benjamin over the Uncle Andy & Aunt Jennifer's to meet up with mom and dad, from there they went on to a Halloween party and we went home to set up for trick and treaters. We get so excited about having actual trick and treaters, in the townhouse, no one ever came by - we usually bought at least one bag of candy and ended up eating it ourselves, but here we get TONS of kids, this year we bought 8 bags of candy and ended up digging into Benjamin's Fruit Rollups!
Headed to Vegas next week! Woo-Hoo!