Happy Thanksgiving to all! Thanksgiving is a fun time to spend with family and reflect on things in your life that you are thankful for. From year to year my thankful list stays about the same and they are always things that I am thankful for every day: my family, friends, Emma, coffee, health, working out.
It was our Thanksgiving with my family and they were all nice enough to come to our home to spend with us. It is nice not having to travel on a holiday since we do travel so much. Ryan had Thanksgiving off but had to work Friday and then went to Fosston, MN for a weekend of locum work. It was very nice for us to have people here so we weren't alone all weekend.
I go through phases where I don't take a single picture and that was unfortunately this weekend. I did snap this cute one of Grandpa, Sofie and Landon playing their tablets. We had a great Thanksgiving meal on Thursday. The kids and guys all went to the movie Frozen to get out of the house which was nice. Friday, some of us did some black Friday shopping and unfortunately I didn't find any great deals. I guess that's what happens when you go at 10am as opposed to 5pm Thursday. Saturday we took the kids to a huge indoor play structure and went out for a nice supper. The Skowlund's left Saturday night and the kids and I just had a relaxing Sunday with Grandpa and Grandma until Ryan got home later that night.
Another great Thanksgiving in the books, and thankfully no one was sick!!
We all bundled up and headed downtown for the annual Holiday Lights Parade. It was a frigid 10 degrees out but we thought we'd at least go for a little while. I absolutely love parades and have so many childhood memories of parades when I was younger. Ryan comes along because he's a good husband and even pretends to enjoy them a little bit. It is fun to watch the kids and how excited they are. We happened to sit right next to a classmate of Kadence's so the two of them had fun playing around before the parade started. The parade was fun to watch and Kenzie was taking everything in and waving at everyone. I have never seen so much candy being thrown at a parade in my life. It was the weirdest thing, there was candy all over the street in front of us that the kids couldn't even keep up with and people were throwing more. We actually stayed for the entire parade and then headed home for some hot chocolate. It was a fun night but it was nice to be home in the warmth! The best part was that Ryan took all the candy to work the next day!
Our little 3 year old has been having a blast being three. It's too bad she has no idea how old she is when you ask her. It's hilarious. She usually replies with "6, 14, 2" and then, "how old me mama?"
Kenzie has not been feeling 100% so she has been enjoying some snuggle time on the couch with her new Minnie Mouse blanket and her favorite puppy Emma.
Aunty Arin sent Kenzie these adorable Minnie headphones for part of her birthday present and she has been loving them!
Good thing she has been so adorable because she has been hogging my iPhone!
Happy 3rd Birthday to our BIG little girl! I can not believe our "baby" is THREE years old. She has blossomed so much in the past couple months and has the most fun personality. She definitely makes us smile, laugh and sometimes yell all in the same minute. She is loved beyond words. I made some sprinkle cake batter pancakes for her birthday breakfast (Grandpa Ken had spoiled her with daily donuts while we were in Mexico so I changed it up this year.)
It's my party and she'll cry if she wants to. I'm not even sure what she was so sad about here but it did make for an adorable picture. Miss Kenzie wanted any and every think Minnie Mouse for her birthday and I'm pretty sure she got it!
For a little girl who generally likes a lot of attention, she sure didn't want to be the center of attention. She was kind of quiet and shy about opening her gifts. It was sweet.
Kenzie was ecstatic to get her balloons at the door from Grandpa Ken and Grandma Debbie.
We went to Space Aliens for Kenzie's birthday dinner. Big sister and her were buddies and had a blast playing together. We had a nice supper and then played some games.
I made Kenzie some Mickey Mouse cupcakes and she loved them! We had a great family evening with are special little lady!
I was so glad to be back to these 3 little munchkins. It was awesome to snuggle them up and play with them. It was nice to be missed but I was very glad the kids had an awesome time with Grandpa Ken and Grandma Debbie. It didn't take us long to get back into the swing of things. It was hard for me to send the kids off to school in the morning but I had a nice day at home with Kenzie followed by a great evening with the other 2 after school.
Sure missed the silliness of this little Minnie loving thing. I had a newfound appreciation for the loud, chaotic house we had left for 5 days!!
Ryan and I took our first vacation since we had been together! We traveled to Mexico with his entire family to celebrate Mike and Holly's wedding. It was terribly hard to leave the kids and we felt really guilty leaving them out of the family get together but we had a good time. It really was an "adult" trip so they wouldn't have had a lot to do and Ryan and I would not have been able to spend the quality time together.
And we were off! Our first plane ride out of Fargo bright and early!
After we boarded our second plane in Chicago we were off to Mexico!
Even though it was not even 11 am we had our first celebratory Margarita's on the plane. They were tasty and followed by a couple more!
The first day we arrived in Cancun the weather was not very nice. It was raining and even chilly out in a bathing suit. This was the view from our room which was gorgeous!
I was amazed by the great service at the resort. Everyone was very friendly and eager to take care of your needs. We spent a lot of time (when it was nice) outside playing in the ocean or laying by the pool. The other time we spent at the bar in the resort or eating at one of the restaurants.
The wedding was nice with an ocean view. I couldn't believe how many people (complete strangers) lined up their beach chairs right next to the ceremony to watch. There were even several people videoing on their cell phones!! I would never do that to people I didn't even know! We had dinner outside followed by a dance. After the dance we all headed to the beach for a concert that was going on. It was a lot of fun. This was the night I definitely had the most to drink. Ha! Ryan and Kristy and Arin impressed all the guys with their awesome dancing, it was great. Ryan grabbed this little video mostly of his mom and dad dancing but there is glimpse of the whole family. I had to include it because our kids loved the video and Kenzie really wanted to "go there and dance wif Papa!"
So we ran into a few Vikings cheerleaders at the resort. That made Ryan and Gary's entire trip! It turned out they had a Vikings fan event going on at the resort and had a big screen with the game playing on the beach on Sunday. The guys were so excited and even I'll admit that was a pretty cool coincidence, what are the chances?
The last 2 days we were there were definitely the nicest weather wise. Why does that always happen? So we soaked up some sun and played in the ocean a ton. By day 4 Ryan and I were ready to get back to frigid ND to see our little munchkins. Turns out that a "break" from your kids isn't all it's cracked up to be. I guess we are weird. We had a fun, warm vacation but we can't wait to take our kids somewhere for a family trip!
Since I was kind of preoccupied with our upcoming trip to Mexico we didn't plan a formal birthday party for Landon this year. We let him bring his friend Axel for a supper and treat of his choice. He chose Chuck E Cheese for supper and Cherry Berry for desert.
We took everyone bowling before supper which was very fun. Ryan and I had just as much fun as the kids!
Landon had a very good score and won both games! He thought that was pretty cool.
Then it was on to Chuck E Cheese's for some games and pizza!
The kids all had fun and it was nice that it was a weekday because it wasn't very busy at all. It was almost tolerable…almost. Ha!
After a little Cherry Berry we called it a night! It was a fun birthday celebration and everyone was exhausted by the time we got home!
