A Merry Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are now getting ready for Christmas! We are home from our Thanksgiving travels to Knoxville and we got our Christmas decorations out of storage in Kane's parents basement and lugged them all home with us. I plan on getting things decorated throughout the next week and we'll put up our tree one night this week when Kane is home to help.

We spent Thanksgiving with Kane's family. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at his aunt's house and had a great afternoon and evening of yummy food and good conversation. Before Thanksgiving got underway Kane and I decided to do dinner and a movie out Wednesday evening and take advantage of eager babysitters (grandmother and aunt) who were of course willing to keep Mara Kate for free!

The day after Thanksgiving we ran around town a bit and hit Knoxville's Fantasy of Trees exhibit. Mara Kate is very into trees this year and kept pointing out all the ones we saw (there were tons, all decorated with different themes), so she had a blast. Fantasy of Trees had a lot of fun activities for children, so Mara Kate got to play in some " bumper cars", get her face painted and she also helped BeBe decorate a mini Christmas tree with ribbons and lights which she has carried around ever since.
Kane and I also enjoyed looking at their gingerbread house exhibit, as that is a tradition we started when we got married and I gathered some new fun ideas to implement into our own gingerbread house this year.

Here are a few pictures of our time in Knoxville.

Us before our "date"

Mara Kate reading a book with Daddo (great-grandfather)
before heading to Aunt Pat's for Thanksgiving dinner.

Mara Kate looking at the Elmo themed tree at Fantasy of Trees

Our little family--under a golden arch

Mara Kate "driving", with a little elf volunteer helping her along the track.

You can see her Christmas tree face painting

Building with blocks in the children's play area.


And here are a few of the gingerbread houses we liked...

Notice the shingles on the roof are made with sunchips.

This one was very detailed--chimney bricks made of PEZ candy.

Waterwheel cut out of gingerbread. I was impressed!

This one is a school house and it even has gingerbread desks and other furniture inside.
Also a lot of detail.