California Thanksgiving

California Thanksgiving
Visit with Grandma, Thanksgiving, and Santa Train

Happy "Movember" from Matt!  He shaved his mustache to tease my mom that he was going to leave it like that.  It bothered me much more than it did her!  I can hardly look at him without laughing...or crying!!!  She has relaxed in her retirement age!

Christmas comes early!  The girls were so excited to get to open some early Christmas presents at Grandma's house.

Leave it to Emilyn to find something to pout about in a fun moment.  I'm sure this grumpy face moved on quickly though, as her moods are rapidly changing!

Lucas didn't waste any time remembering what to do with a wrapped present.

Emi girl very excited about her new American Girl doll horse!  It has gotten lots of love since then too!

Silly Lucas boy stealing Grandma's chair!

Love these three kiddos!

Matisyn continues to be very entertaining to give presents to.  She gives the best reactions, and is happy about everything she gets.  She is also in a habit of closing her eyes while she unwraps things and then opening them to surprise herself!  Emilyn was equally grateful and excited this year about the fun new things she got!

Matisyn's closed eyes...and then surprise...followed by excited squeal of delight!

The girls with their Uncle Chunk!

I love this with Lucas just chilling with his Uncle on the couch!

Lots of cute American girl doll accessories and fun science kits were the theme of the year!  Thanks Grandma Karen!

Lucas likes his new spiderman night light turned on each night now before we leave the room.  He even put a bandaid on spiderman's arm when he accidentally bent his arm back!

Trains, trains, Lucas loves trains!

The aftermath of early Christmas!

One of Lucas's favorite presents was this airplane and drill set that you can put together and take apart the plane over and over again.  He has spent hours playing with it since.  The other favorite was a gears set that he loves building with, mostly shooters!  I have no idea where his fascination with shooters came from!

And Lucas took to the girls new American Girl doll table.  He thought it was just the right size for him!  He looks so cute in the little chairs.  Luckily they didn't break!

Relaxing at Grandma's house

I was so excited to get to meet baby Daniel.  My cousin Tiffany had a baby in August, and this was the first time I got to meet him.  I took as much opportunity to hold him as I could.  Lucas got jealous though!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Grandma got the kids a fun train set to play with at her house.  They spent a lot of the day setting it all up.  Lucas was very helpful as you can see!

The night before we headed home we took a ride on a Polar Express Santa train in Oakdale.  The kids all loved it.  We thought Lucas would be in heaven and well behaved because he was on a train.  We were wrong!  He loved the train, but he wanted to get down and explore, not sit in his seat.  There was a lot of wrestling on our bench.  Grandma had a lovely, peaceful time with Matisyn on the bench across from us!

This was pretty much what Lucas was up to!

At one point the kids all joined Grandma on the other benches.

The girls wrote letters to Santa and then got to give Santa the letters in person when he visited them on the train.

This was Lucas's first positive Santa experience.  We tried seeing him at the mall earlier in the week and he screamed the whole time.  He liked this Santa!

The day after Thanksgiving it is tradition for my mom and I to go to the Sonora Craft Fair.  We've gone since I was Matisyn's age, so I have a lot of memories from it.  We took Matisyn with us, and she was such a good big girl.  James came with us, and we met Books, Al, and Amanda.  It was fun to spend time with all of them too.

We can't miss visiting Columbia and the Candy Kitchen while we are in the area too!

This was our sunset view on the ride home.  Thanks to Matt for taking care of Emilyn and Lucas while we had our day.  He took them to a new little museum in Lodi.

And on our way home again...