Turkey (and chicken) days

Wow! We've had a busy couple of weeks! First, the bad news.. we were planning to go to my parent's house for Thanksgiving, as I mentioned in our last post. But unfortunately Dani got a cold the Sunday before Thanksgiving and her doctor said she would be contagious for at least the next 7 days. Since we knew that there would be other very small children at my family's house, we kind of uninvited ourselves.

We were REALLY disappointed at first because both Travis and I had been looking forward to going to visit my family and we've already set our plans to be with his family for Christmas. We realized though that staying home would be the responsible thing and decided we would just have to stop and see everyone when we went up for the Bates family Christmas party in December.

Travis and I realized that this acutally presented us with a unique opportunity. We decided to have our own Thanksgiving at home with our own little family. We were getting really excited about the idea, since we didn't expect an invitation anywhere else with a sick baby, when Travis' family invited us to come have dinner with them. (Insisted actually!) We were really grateful for the invitation but because there were going to be children there as well we tried to keep the visit short and just go for dinner. Dani was doing much better than expected so we did get to stay through a viewing of Monsters vs. Aliens. She didn't really get too fussy until she realized how tired she was. :) So many fun things when you go to Grandma's house! She tried real turkey for the first time (it was a hit!) and I think if she had a few more bites we could have turned her on to the mashed potatoes as well. It was good to visit with family and we were grateful that they overlooked Dani's runny nose. We're just hoping that it didn't hitch a ride home with any of them!

Because we had already started to set plans in motion to do our own family Thanksgiving we decided to continue on and do just a smaller dinner with a chicken instead of a turkey. (Let's face it, we'd never finish a turkey and I have NO idea how to cook one, so we stuck with our strengths.) Travis' cousin Jessie and her husband Adam and little girl Reagan came down to enjoy another meal with us. We had a good time together we were just sad that it was so short of a visit.

In addition to all the food I've been keeping myself pretty busy with crafts. I've been dabbling the last year or so with knitting. I've crocheted for many many years. My Grandma Todd got me started many moons ago and also gave me a book that has directions for every type of needlework imaginable. Knitting has alway intrigued me but illuded me at the same time. I finally decided that I was going to learn it. I've gotten progressively better and decided to try knitting a beenie for Dani for this winter. It really didn't start out well at all. I had only worked on it for oh... about 3 hours or so when I realized I needed to take it out and start all over! Thbbb!!! Oh well by the time I got it all figured out we had a pretty cute result. Travis came up with the idea of attaching ties so that we could strap it to her head! :) They really made it so much cuter!! And much more functionable haha!

The hat turned out so cute that I started experimenting with different colors and sizes and have now made a whole bunch of these little hats. I'm loving it! I would really love to get some more patterns and make some really cute ones for Travis and I too.

All in all we had a great turkey day and a great chicken day. :) Dani ate the chicken really well too. (I was just glad it was edible. I hadn't tried this recipe in over 5 years. Now Travis says we need to have it more often haha!!!) Dani actually pretty much insists on trying whatever it is that we are eating at this point. And to be honest there really isn't much that she has refused to eat. I hope that is good foreshadowing for the future!

This is Travis' and Dani's new game. They play hide and seek around our little coffee table and Dani LOVES it!!!!!

Dani's still got a touch of a runny nose but hopefully it's on it's way out. Doesn't look like she's letting it get her down too much though does it! haha

Well we hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well.

Till next time..