Thanksgiving 2011

Needless to say (I guess I've already made it obvious with my lack of blogging), we've had a very busy few weeks.
Among the happenings the past month:
- my sister's wedding (woo!!!)
- thanksgiving (we hosted)
- the Pride of Dakota show (I was a vendor)

Each of those big events was wonderfully fun and would have kept me smiling all year. What fun to have three big happenings in two weeks.

So here goes some blog catch-up ...


I was preparing dinner in the kitchen and peeked into the living room to find Kya hard at work at my desk. Before seeing her like this, I had no idea that she could climb up into a chair. What a surprise it was to see her like this! She is now officially the Bison Booties office assistant.


My parents and Grandma Katy were in town for Caitlyn's wedding, so it was an extra special treat to have them around for Thanksgiving as well. Kya made many fun memories with Grandpa and Grandma Z.


Grandma Z and Kya bake pies at our house.


Corey, Kya, and I hosted Thanksgiving for Corey's family. This was the first bog cooking holiday we hosted in our new house and my first-time-ever cooking a turkey.

We also have a BEAUTIFUL day. Corey was happy to Kya out to play which gave me plenty of quiet time to cook and prepare the meal.


Kya likes to feel the breeze wind in her face.


Kya liked watching thanksgiving football with Aunt Maria.
If you ever get the chance to sit down and chat with Maria, you will quickly learn that she is beyond intelligent - she is one of the smartest people I know. AND ... she knows lots about meat judging/butchering/grading. She is a super radical college kid. We're pretty lucky to be a frequent pit-stop on her way home.


Thanksgiving!
Kya ready to pray – and eat.

Corey's mom is the most gracious visitor, she brought part of the thanksgiving meal with her. She has a few family specialties that she cooks and it's a wonderful treat to have her cooking in the house.
By the way, my first-time turkey was delicious. Also, notice the lack of snow out the window - it was so warm!


Grandma Katy and Kya good buddies.


Grandma Katy stayed at the Seven Seas and invited us to visit and swim at the pool. Kya spent so much time in the pool she almost started growing gills.


The tree went up the weekend after thanksgiving.


The is nothing sweeter than the awe and curiosity of a toddler at Christmastime.


Helping Daddy hang her "First Christmas" ornament.

. . .

In other news:


[sigh]
Kya has been spending a bit of time in time-out lately. Time-out happens on our foyer church pew. This particular day, Kya thought it best to cuddle with the stuffed reindeer. Maybe she's starting to get the hang of this?


Bath time.
If Kya made the rules, she would have bath time for about five hours each day. I try to restrict baths to about 60 minutes a day, or until she is wrinkly as a prune – whichever comes first.

The Day After Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving day.

Our Thanksgiving was fantastic – we spent is in Linton with Corey's family and had lots of yummy food and a good time with family. Upon returning home we found out I have another cousin on the way, due to arrive in June. I'm beyond excited! Kya is happy too – she'll have a new buddy to play with!

Yesterday the weather was beyond frigid, so Kya got to bundle up in her new bunting. She'll be decked out in this cuddly suit during every outing for the next 4 months. If you are in the market for a toasty baby bunting, consider this North Face suit. The design is genius and very practical (works very well in the car seat).

Kya takes her snow suit very seriously – she puts on this "poker face" every time she wears it. It is absolutely hilarious. She'll only move her eyes, and it is everything I can do to get her to crack a smile.

Kya had a great night of sleep and slept in until after 7:15 am this morning. We had a slow morning with some cuddling and lots of giggles from Kya.

Enjoy your Friday!

Oh by the way ... 29 days until Christmas!

Thanksgiving in Kenmare, ND

This year Corey and I (and baby) spent Thanksgiving with Corey's parents and siblings, in Kenmare, ND. It is quite a magical place, especially on Thanksgiving.

The Friday after Thanksgiving the town celebrated Light Up Night, which includes a parade, town square lighting, craft fair, and open houses hosted by the town merchants.

It was a bit strange not having any snow, but the lights were beautiful nonetheless.

Here is our gang waiting for the parade. As you can see, it was chilly, but well worth it - I made out like a bandit with all the parade candy I got.

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The rest of the (extended) Thanksgiving weekend we played lots of games, ate way too much food, the boys went pheasant hunting, I finished a quilt, watched football, and enjoyed each other's company.

Thanks for hosting us, Hagers! We had a great weekend!

Baby got wheels

Today the baby received some transportation equipment (Chicco Cortina Key Fit 30), compliments of Great Grandma Katy (thank you!).

After the pieces were all assembled, Dottie (my favorite childhood comfort – a Cabbage Patch Doll) got to take it for a test drive.

Here is Dottie in the car seat. The set also came with a car seat base that will stay in the car (not pictured).

The car seat fits nicely onto the stroller for rolling around with the little one.

I think she likes it!

Here she is ready to explore the world in the stroller (without any of the car seat parts).

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As for Corey, baby and I, we'll be exploring Kenmare for the next few days - visiting Grandma and Grandpa Hager and family for Thanksgiving.

gobble gobble gobble.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Decking the halls

Maria was a huge help with decorating the house and getting out all our Christmas boxes. I couldn't believe how efficient we were – she and I set up the nativity set and decorated the Christmas tree in just a few hours. And it was so fun! We were still a bit loopy from getting up at 4 am to shop the Black Friday sales ... but that just made it all the more fun.

Our tree has primarily "tropical" ornaments, plus some other special ones mixed in. We have a little tradition of buying ornaments when we go on vacation.

Also over the weekend, we played a couple highly competitive games of Monopoly (one of my personal favorites!). It was a blast. 

The day after.

On Thanksgiving day, I bought a newspaper so I could browse though all the black friday advertisements. I'm much more of a shopper than a buyer, so I really get a kick out of flipping through all the inserts.

Corey has been thinking about buying a blu-ray DVD player for a few months and our current DVD player is in the process of dying, so Corey researched who had the best deals on blu-ray players. Before too long, we realized that WalMart was having a huge sale on them. I'm not one to pay full price for something if I can get a better deal on it somewhere else, so I started recruiting someone to accompany me to WalMart at 4 am the next morning. Lucky for me, my buddy Maria was up to the challenge. She'd never been to a black friday shopping event before, so she thought it sounded fun (what was she thinking?! haha). Since we were going to be up and out anyway, we decided to also stop at Herbergers (a department store in the mall) to get some new silverware.

I actually woke up before my alarm – I think I was pretty excited. So out we went at 4 am, Friday morning to WalMart. The store is open 24-hours a day, so we didn't have to wait outside (yay!). But to make it a bit more fair and to build up the whole "black friday" hoopla, WalMart wrapped the pallets of sale items with black plastic and lined them up along the middle of all the main walkways through the store.

When we arrived (at about 4:15 am) there was a small crowd already in the store, with groups of people gathered around their plastic-wrapped pallet items. But by the minute, more and more and more people arrived and quickly grew the gatherings to a mass of bargain shoppers. At this point I questioned why I was not in bed asleep.

After a bit of eavesdropping, Maria and I realized that we were fortunate to be two of only a few people looking to score a cheap Blu-Ray player. Most of the folks around us were looking to buy a large flat-screen TV. Piece of cake, I thought, we'll let the folks up front get their player, we'll stand back and wait, then when it's our turn, I'll grab on of the 40 of so players and then make our way to the cash registers.

At 5 am sharp, every Walmart employee was called to their "station" to cut the black plastic off the pallets. With that, people started getting crazy. Apparently quite a few of the folks around us (who I thought were just shopping for TVs) decided they wanted blu-ray DVD players too – and not just one – these people were grabbing two, three and four at a time. As I'm "sitting back and waiting for my turn" I notice the pile of boxes is getting lower and lower so I watch for a break and I sneak in and grab one. Yay! I got one!

... Then for the journey to the front of the store. Through the mass of people, highway of shopping carts piled high with goodies, shoppers trying to move huge big-screen TVs, and coffee spilled on the floor, we somehow made it to the front of the store in one piece. I made a quick detour to the cough and cold medicine for Corey (he's sick) and then we got in line.

We had fun watching what everyone was buying ... toys, lots of big screen TVs, and lots and lots and lots of DVDs. Some people were buying 20 to 30 DVDs. I began thinking I missed out on some great deals. Turns out we did - many were $2. crazy! We did get one that someone abandoned on the gum rack - awesome.

We're proud to say we survived our WalMart black friday adventure and scored a $129 blu-ray player and $2 DVD.

Our new Blu-ray DVD player:

Herbergers was much less interesting, so I'll keep it short and just say that we got what we went for, plus two nice bed pillows for under $15 and three rolls of Christmas wrapping paper for 75% off.

Thanksgiving 2008

For this first time in my life, I hosted a major holiday gathering and meal at our house. After a few evenings of cleaning and cooking, Corey and I were ready. When everyone started arriving Wednesday, I knew this was going to be even more fun than I had imagined.

Look at those cute turkeys made of cookies and candy - so neat!

In all, there were nine of us for dinner. I had planned to use two tables ... but at the last minute, we remembered that our dining room table has a built-in (under the table) expander leaf, so in a matter of minutes, there was enough room for all if us to eat together. It was great. 

The nine included Corey and me, three of Corey's siblings, and Corey's parents and grandparents.

Corey's mom and I cooked most of the food - turkey, stuffing, hamburger and rice (a Hager tradition), gravy, mashed potatoes, pecan topped sweet potatoes, whisky glazed carrots, cranberry salad, cranberry sauce, bread, and coleslaw made by Corey's dad. I think I'm leaving out something ... there was just so much delicious food.

During the day, we complied a long list (written on a roll of adding machine paper) of things we're thankful for. The list included everything from health to family to random things like chemistry.

We wrapped the list around our Christmas tree.