Thanksgiving break

Thanksgiving break went by way to fast! We had such a blast!  Saturday November 22nd we decided to take a family trip up to Modesto to start our holiday shopping and to visit Santa, I know way early, right?  Well if you know me you know that the Santa picture is very important and it's nice to get it early to enjoy it the whole season.

I can't believe how big my kids look!! Time is just flying by! The Santa experience was very fun in Modesto.  They got to stand on some scale type thing and find out if they were naughty or nice (both nice!) 

 Then they took there head shots and put them on elf's dancing.  

We then took a family photo and then onto meting Santa.  I was a little annoyed with how they don't let you take pictures while they are visiting with Santa.  If you want a picture you have to buy it.  I was also sad at how little Santa talked to the kids.  But I was happy with our picture and the kids had fun.  

                                     Here are the kids waiting in line and their letters to Santa.

 Bye Santa....

Aubrey understands that the mall Santa is just a helper for the real Santa now but I think Carter still thinks any Santa he meets is the real deal.  

So we cheated again this year and started decorating before Thanksgiving! It's just so much fun to have our trees up for as long as possible.  

This year Carter got a new green tree for his room.  We love the color it's really cool! He loves falling to sleep with it on and gets mad when we have to unplug it.

 Aubrey is loving her pink tree and she sure has a big collection of ornaments now! 

That weekend I also worked on Christmas banners for gifts this year.  I like to give all my sister-in-laws some kind of Christmas decoration I make at Thanksgiving as their gift so they can enjoy it for the season.  This year I made burlap banners.  They came out pretty cute.  But oh how my arm hurt after cutting all that burlap. 

Monday we had Kendall over for the whole day.  It was so much fun for both Aubrey and Carter.  We went on a really long Thanksgiving scavenger hunt/ walk.

We even got to meet a red tail hawk.  The man was very friendly and pretty much gave the kids a 15 minute lesson about the hawk.  They loved it!  It was cute how they kept their distance and all snuggled up together.

We made some Christmas ornaments that day too.

Tuesday was my work day so the kids came to work with me in the morning.

They watched movies and made a fall craft and then Nana and Papa came to pick them up and took them to the Hilmar Cheese Factory and out to lunch.  My mom has some pictures I need to get so I can post.  They had a fun day.  Spencer took the day off Wednesday so we decided that would be a fun day to put up our Christmas decorations down stairs since we would be on the road Thanksgiving weekend.

The next half of our week off was spent with family celebrating Thanksgiving (that will be our next post).