Thanksgiving-ish

We don't have any pictures of Thanksgiving, but we stuck around in town and celebrated with our friends the Heldts in Castle Rock. We brought over the game Rock Band to play in their shiny new basement on the gigantic screen with intense surround sound (though my ps2 doesn't have surround), enjoyed a delicious and gluttonous feast thanks to Mike and Rachel, Mike's brother Kevin and his family, and our contributions... one of which I'm sure Jenna plans to post a recipe. All the kids had a good time (I believe there were 7 kids there between our three fams), and Laina especially enjoyed the cranberry sauce (takes after her dad). We stuck around late and played some pool and darts on their fresh table and dartboard while Laina slept upstairs.

Here's a picture I stole from the Heldts blog of the whole crew:


Friday was 'deck the house' day. Jenna was feeling pretty scroogy this year, didn't want to put up a tree or anything since we're heading out to California for Christmas, but I put on the music, broke out the tree and the ornaments (which captivated Laina), and proceeded as normal. Laina loved the ornaments, especially the "little guys" and the ladybug, which she's hanging in the photo below

That night we went to check out the Parker "Tree Lighting", though we realized quickly there was no specific tree, it was really the lighting of an entire area at the entrance to 'downtown' Parker. We stuck around, but it started getting really cold, so we walked through town a little, got some free hot chocolate and checked out the horse-drawn carriage rides, then wandered back for the big event. We then snapped a quick photo and got out of there... it was freezing!


Shortly after we got home, it started to snow. Pretty good timing, as we'd just gotten the tree up and the outside lights up, and our neighbors lit up their houses, making quite the scene. This morning we woke up to a couple of inches of snow, so Laina and I went outside and made a snowman (my first ever, I think, and not very impressive... I think I worked out a few kinks on this one, though).


So after all the lights, the music, the tree, the cute kid getting all excited, and finally the snow, I think Jenna's coming around...