Lots to be Thankful for!

With Grammy still on the road to recovery Uncle Trey volunteered to take on the Thanksgiving responsibilities. He gladly accepted some sous chef help from Dadda, who is very good at chopping onions and mincing garlic!

And Uncle Trey taught Dadda that beer helps the cooking, and should be used in the food and in the chef no matter how early in the day you are doing the prep work!

Grammy oversaw the operations while sneaking in some extra Charlotte snuggle time!

Which Charlotte clearly loved!

Of course Margaret tried to steal the show with her adorable party clothes!

But after only a few minutes Margaret really wanted to change into something more comfortable...or nothing at all....

And of course Charlotte got lots of loving and attention too!

Aunt Joanne and Uncle Eric brought over cousin Matthew after dinner so that we could all celebrate Aunt Joanne's birthday!

She had a really neat turkey cake, so of course Margaret wanted to help blow out the "lights"

Then Margaret and Matthew (or "Match" as she calls him) got to play together....

At the end of this very busy day we made sure to stop and take time to remember all the things we have to be thankful for this year! While the year has had its ups and downs, we are SO grateful for everything that we have! And at the top of that list we are SO SO SO grateful that Grammy is doing so well and getting stronger and stronger everyday, and we of course have to give lots and lots and lots of thanks for this beautiful new little girl who has joined our family!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!

FAO Tradition

Last year on the day before Thanksgiving Ben and I took Margaret down to NYC for the day. The highlight of our day was the trip to FAO Schwartz toy store. We had so much fun that we decided that day to make it a yearly tradition, which sounded like so much fun at the time.Fast forward one year.....Of course when we decided on this tradition we had no idea that the very next Thanksgiving we would be trying to bring two little ones down to the big toy store! We thought about bailing on it, but what fun would that be. So we packed up the girls and headed into the city.

We ditched the stroller for the backpack, which Margaret liked because she could get a much better view of EVERYTHING!

We of course had to head to the Harry Potter section as soon as we got there.....
Ben was very annoyed that once again there were NO Griffindor ties, only Ravenclaw!

But he cheered up a bit when he got to be Mad Eye Moody for a little bit....

Margaret liked these lions so much that she wanted to buy all of them!

Margaret really loved seeing all the babies in the nursery! They all looked so real!

The huge big puppies and puppets were a big hit!

And of course Dadda loved the Lego Batman

Even though Charlotte slept in the sling through pretty much the whole trip, we made sure to get proof that she was actually there.....

Belated Birthday

While Daddy got to open his birthday presents on his actual birthday (November 14) we didn't actually sing and have cake until Aunt Sara and Steph came to visit.
Margaret of course wanted to help......

Since 30 candles was too much for her to blow out we have a special relighting just for her...

And Daddy still helped a little.....

While Margaret liked blowing out the candles, she thought that eating the ice cream cake was a lot more fun! If those eyes aren't saying "YUM!" I don't know what they are saying....

Yea we like!

Here we are trying to sign for more since we already ate our whole piece!

Around Town

With Aunt Sara and "Aunt" Steph up to visit we had to show us all of our favorite places. At Margaret's request we started with the Mystic Aquarium. There is lots of fun things to see there.....

The penguins really like Margaret's cute pink hat and kept trying to peck at it through the glass

Then we got to play in the touch pool...

And Margaret got to touch a crab with Dadda's help.

And everyone got to see the blue lobster...

On the way home Margaret called Baba to tell her all about the aquarium....

The next day we took everyone to the Roger William's zoo!

Since this was one of the first times we took Margaret and Charlotte out together Margaret immediately realized that she wanted to push the stroller.....

And of course we were all very excited to see the animals!

Charlotte slept through her very first trip to the zoo....

Margaret even found really fun things to play on at the zoo......

Once we got back home Charlotte tried really hard to stay awake long enough to have some fun....

But those eyes get really heavy......

And sometimes sleep is just the best thing....