Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Christmas for Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we were able to have my entire family up from Spokane, WA. It was great having everyone here! The best part for us was getting to be with family in our own house. We did start the holiday with Thanksgiving. Everyone in the family contributed to a dish or two for the meal, so our kitchen was packed! It was a lot of fun. And Justin grilled a turkey again...so yummy!
My nephew Xander as a Thanksgiving turkey :-)
It was a lot of fun getting the cousins together. Joelle is two months older but she is the smaller of the two. She is almost walking (she has taken a few steps by herself) and Xander is sitting up on his own. They really liked playing together. Mostly sticking their hands in each others faces.
We went into Downtown Anchorage to attend a Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. It was so sweet and innocent. It was outdoors (ok, a little cold at 12 degrees) and we saw soloists singing Christmas songs, youth putting on the play "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and then Santa came with his reindeer. Yes, REAL reindeer! We got to pet Prancer. It was so much fun!
We also celebrated Christmas with the family. Joelle and Xander got to open their first Christmas gifts. I thought both of them would be a little more excited about tearing apart wrapping paper, but they were both very delicate about it. They seemed to get a bit of stage fright with all of us staring at them. Xander got an Alaska souds book (push the button and you hear the sounds of animals in Alaska) and a hand carved wooden Army tank! Joelle got The Velveteen Rabbit, a play vacuum and popper and some baby DVDs.
My sisters, their husbands and my nephew left Alaska on sunday and my parents stayed until Wednesday. Sunday evening we went with my parents and bought Alaska King Crab legs and had a big crab dinner. It was a lot of fun! It ended up being a little too much fun for Joelle as she fell asleep in her highchair.
We all had such a great time! Hopefully we'll be able to do it again before we move from Alaska. Here's some more fun pictures from the weekend:

3 comments:

Shannon said...

I'm so glad that your whole family got to come up and you all had an amazing time. Family is such a blessing. I'm also thankful to hear that you all are doing so well. Many blessing to you all
Love

KDoug said...

Two words = Burrrrr and Exhausted. I need a nap now that I've read your blog. Great pics. Look at that little one standing so tall :)

Jon & Ashley McP said...

That sounds awesome - hopefully next year I will be there to see the real reindeer with Molly!