Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving at the Veronin house this year.  The food was amazing and the company was pretty good too  ;)

Doesn't it look delicious?:

Ki went full barbarian again this year and took a drumstick:

We had a great time playing games, watching movies, sleeping in (at least, I certainly took the opportunity to send Michael upstairs in the morning to go find Grandma while I slipped back into lala-land), and generally just spending time with my family.  Jeff even got a decent amount of alone time despite the small children running around.

Michael got his token ride with Grandpa on the tractor:

 

And, of course, he spent some time with the chickens (though I forgot my camera for that).

The only Black Friday shopping I did was online- no lines, no fighting, free two-day shipping, no downside- but I did leave the house when my mom told us about a farm in their area that had pony rides for kids.  We took Michael and Tess (Ki wasn't feeling well) to go play with animals but, thankfully, we only had to drive on rural roads- no shopping traffic (I understand that the Walmart right by our house was so busy people were parking along the roads in our townhomes!  I'm so glad we missed all of it).

We found out that the pony was sick and unable to give the promised ride after we got to the farm, but we were able to somewhat distract Michael with alpacas they had available for petting.

Michael insisted that they were "deer" and immediately wanted to ride them.  We did have to have a talk about not petting their tails or butts (seriously, that shouldn't be an issue, right?) but Michael eventually agree that it was a bad idea.  Not because butts are dirty, but because they might kick him if he stands behind them.  Either way, he stopped trying to pet that particular portion of the alpaca.

He eventually found this sweet girl, Sarah, who was kind enough to lie down next to the food supply and let Michael and Tess love her:

Sorry about the amount of pictures, but I love them.  It was adorable.

Another woman thought so too and took some random pictures of my son feeding and hugging Sarah, so there are probably more pictures online somewhere else.  Thanks, weird stranger.  

Michael insisted even after we left that he should be able to ride the "deer" and was sorely disappointed with us for breaking our promise.

Anyway, Thanksgiving was a lot of fun even if the drives were not.

I cannot describe just how tempting it was to put Michael in a diaper for the trip but I didn't want to take that backwards step.  So, instead, we were at his beck and call for potty breaks.  At least he was willing to tell us every time he needed to go to the bathroom rather than just wet himself.

The drive out was pretty good.  We went through Wyoming and stopped by the Cantrell's house where Kimberly fed us amazingly good food and my little sisters were tickled by Kelsey.  It was a lot of fun and uneventful, except that Wyoming is incredibly windy and has far too many deer (though none in the road that I saw, thankfully).

The drive home was easier, though Michael decided he needed to take a potty break more often than I would have liked.  But, again, at least he didn't just wet himself and he eventually fell asleep and we were able to make it home without incident (Huzzah!).