Thanksgiving in Denver 2009

This year we were very lucky to make to Denver for Thanksgiving.  It was a short trip, but definitely worth it.  The original plan was to Thanksgiving Day and arrive in Denver in the late afternoon.  Well, we are always finding a way to surprise family, well, mostly Mom and Dad, when we come into town so we were going to try to leave in the afternoon on Wednesday in hopes that Brian would be able to take off early from work.  Well, he did, but couldn't get away until 4:30, which allowed us to leave a little after 5:00, but we had to stop and get a quick bite, so we didn't actually get on the road until about 6:00pm.  We were going to drive in late and stay at my sisters and then still surprise Mom and Dad by showing up at the house early in the morning instead of later that day, but by the time 11:30 rolled around we were both extremely tired.  We found a "cheap" hotel in Laramie (not cheap at all for what it was), went right to bed, woke up early since none of us could sleep, and finished the trip to Denver.  It was about 10:00am when we got to my parents house.  We parked a couple houses down, called them to tell them we were just outside of Rock Springs while we had the two boys go up to the house and ring the doorbell and wait for them to answer.  Though we didn't get to see the reaction, we were able to listen to it on the phone and it was priceless.

  We didn't exchange gifts for Christmas this year.  Instead we put that money we would have spent towards a family that needed help.  We couldn't go without giving Mom and Dad a gift though.  So, we made a family quilt with lots of pictures on it as well as a scrapbook to give to them. 

The boys enjoying their time with "Blue" Grandma and Grandpa.

Kenner always looks forward to setting up and watching Grandma and Grandpa's train around the tree.

Kameron didn't remember the train from last year considering he was only 9 months old, so this was new and fascinating to him.  Grandpa was showing him how it works and yes, he is wearing Homer slippers.

Mom and I were so exhausted from watching the boys set up the tree and train.

While we were in Denver the BYU vs. U of U game was playing. Poor Brian was outnumbered by my family and to top it off BYU won. Luckily Brian survived.

My brother came to support Brian in the game.  If you want to call it support.

While the guys watched the game, the girls went to my sisters house with all the kids and wrapped the gifts for the family we adopted for Christmas.  Before the wrapping of gifts we did activities with the kids.  We made gingerbread houses and fingerpainted with colored pudding.

The younger kids were so sad that they couldn't eat the candy instead of putting it on the houses.  We really wouldn't have minded, but the candy was from previous holidays, so it wasn't very good.

They all had lots of fun.  When we were all done we headed back to Mom and Dad's to play games.  Nothing is more fun than getting together to play games with the family.

Another tradition is the guys get a night to themselves (usually consists of video games and now Rock Band) and the girls get to go to lunch or a movie WITH NO KIDS. 

The boys in the process of breaking the wishbone.

I think you can tell who got the bigger half by looking at their faces.  Next year Connor, next year.

Kameron watching the train with his cousin Lexie.

We purchased a new camera on Black Friday and we're still trying to figure it out which is why some pictures are blurry.  I was so sad when this picture came out blurry.  Lexie, completely out of the blue, layed a kiss on Kameron.  Doesn't get better than that.

We all had a great time.  As you can see, we have made lots of memories.

Happy Thanksgiving.