Happy Thanksgiving 2010

For the Thanksgiving holiday this year, we took a trip down to Birmingham, Alabama to visit BJ's brother Damon, his wife Lety, and their two boys, Colton and Camden. Incidently, Camden is two days younger than McKay, so I'm sure they'll always be great friends. Indeed, all three boys had a great time and really seemed to enjoy playing together. Colton and Camden's Thomas the Train set was the hit of the weekend for McKay--thanks for sharing your toys, boys!

Homewood, where Lety and Damon live, is a lovely place. It's very lush and the weather was just perfect. The Alabama Coxes showed us a wonderful time, complete with a fantastic Thanksgiving meal, movies, treats, and fun activities with the kids. One of them was a trip to the cookie shop where the boys each got to choose their own sugar cookie. Colton's self-portait is above.

McKay loved this shop and had his nose pressed up against the glass of the display trying desperately to decide on just one cookie. It was pretty funny to see him try and decide between so many delicious options.

And Camden. Don't let that innocent look fool you. Upon closer examination you'll see a faint orange ring around his mouth. All three boys loved their treat.

I just have to add a small tribute here to my sister-in-law Lety who deserves some sort of medal of honor for supporting me in a Black Friday adventure that turned out to be a little more than we bargained for.

I've never done any Black Friday shopping. To me, the unearthly hours, tales of ridiculously long lines, and shoppers running over each other to get to the great deals was just NOT WORTH IT. Well, enter children. Now, all of the sudden, Christmas means buying toys and toys, it turns out, are expensive. So, I got this great idea that we should hit the Toys'rus sale, since I've been looking for months for a used train table for McKay with no success (they go like hot cakes on craigslist, just so you know) and Toys'rus was having a fabulous sale on one.

Lety agreed to go with me to the sale so, at 9:00 pm, off we went, thinking we'd waltz into the store at 10 pm when it opened, collected our few purchases, and breeze back out, home by midnight or so. HA! How could I possibly prepare for the scene of insanity we found as we entered the parking lot. There wasn't a parking spot within a mile of the store. The began at the doors and wrapped around the rest of the strip mall, seriously, we were about 15 stores from our destination when we began standing in line.

Then we found out that the fire marshal was only going to allow a certain number of people in the store at a time. Super. 10:00 came and went, still in front of the same store. 11:00 found us 2 stores up. 12:00 and we rounded the corner so Toyrus was actually in view which, up to this point, had not been the case. At 12:45 it began raining and at 1:00 am, freezing, exhausted, and soaking wet, we finally entered the store.

There were people everywhere, chasing madly through aisles, climbing displays to retrieve toys. It was madness. But, thankfully and miraculously, there were 3 train tables left! I literally grabbed one and sat on it, lest someone come along and rip it out of my hands. Then I discovered you could take a nifty little slip to the front of the store and load it into your car. So, we stood in yet another ridiculous line in order to check out. But at least this time it wasn't raining.

We finally got home around 2:30am and fell into bed.

So, thanks Lety, for sticking with me. And I hope you're still speaking to me. :)