Visit to Mimi and Papa's and other November Happenings

For Thanksgiving this year, we headed down to Alabama to spend the holiday with Mom's family: Mimi, Papa, GiGi, and Uncle Trey.  We also got to meet Uncle Trey's new girlfriend, Jacie.  It was a whirlwind visit.  We flew down on Sunday and flew out on Friday.  In between, we went out to a hibachi restaurant to celebrate Kara's birthday, visited the Montgomery Zoo, visited Great Grandpa H. (who recently moved to a retirement home in Montgomery), and enjoyed some excellent home-cooking from Mimi.  We were able to meet up with the McDonough family, while they we in town to visit their family.

We kept things pretty low key for November other than Kara's birthday and our visit to Alabama.  We got a decent snowstorm in the middle of the month, which the girls enjoyed playing in.

As soon as we got home (and got mostly unpacked), Kara had us take out all the Christmas decorations.  Kara had a great time putting up the tree and all the ornaments.  Emily had fun setting stuff up, but was much more interested in playing with some of the decorations.

Recent quotes:
11/15: "I like Kara. Her my best friend." -Emily

11/15: "I love spending time with you, Dad." -Emily

Kara to Mom: "Do you know who the real Santa is? Because I do, and I'm looking at her and him (gesturing towards Dad)"

Link to November happenings pictures

Link to Shorter visit pictures

Kara's 6th Birthday!

For Kara's 6th birthday, she decided to have her party at everyone's favorite childhood birthday party destination: Chuck E. Cheese.  Kara's birthday happened to fall on the Friday before Thanksgiving break (the school district gives all the kids the whole week of Thanksgiving off), so Mom and Dad thought that maybe not everyone would be able to come.  As it turned out, every single kid invited was able to come.  It was a wild and crazy party.  The pizza was just as delicious as Mom and Dad remember, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.  The highlight for Kara was her turn in the Ticket Blaster, which is basically a phone booth full of game tickets that has a fan and blows tickets around as the birthday kid tries to grab as many as he or she can (see the video).  Now we're going to have to top this party next year!

Link to pictures