A Minnesota Thanksgiving!

This year for Thanksgiving we flew back to Alexandria and spent a week with family and friends.  The weather was amazing and we got to see and spend time with so many people.  Here is a run through of the good times!

 Travel

Parker is a great traveler- whew!!  Essentially, she slept three out of the four legs of the entire trip.  We didn't have to be "those people"!  Yesssss.

 This is the one part she was awake and was digging a little Baby Einstein with my headphones.

 Family

Matt and Uncle Robb...

 Gramma Rosella

 Some of the Davison cousins with Grandma & Grandpa Davison

 Sista and I took on the challenge of making Spritz Cookies...alone!  We managed to figure it out and both took a bunch home with us.

 Thanksgiving Day was beautiful outside!  The Kvasagers' and Olsens' got together at my parent's house for the afternoon.  We had a great feast! 

 The Olsens' and Kvasagers'!

Dogs and the Shop!

Look at Al sharing his bed so willingly!  Parker seriously has a dog obsession.  She loved all the dogs (and Julie!) between my parent's house and Aaron's.  Another big hit was the shop.  The day before Turkey Day we had a Shop party and then hit the town.  Unfortunately, my camera was MIA during that part...but you can imagine.  Good times were had!

 

 Farewell...

Parker loved the tub in Al and ML's bathroom...especially with the jets on and bubbles in full effect!

Slumber party with Parker and Grant!  The night before we flew out we went and stayed with our friends Brian and Amanda and their son Grant, who is 2 weeks older than Parker.  They hit it off!

 Back at the airport in Denver...a fantastic trip back home!

2011 Christmas Card Photo Shoot!!

Self timer...wanting to do multiple scenes...Aaron....a 17 month old...I needed to use ALL my patience and skill this time around!  Here are some that made the holiday card...and a lot that didn't!

And what I like to call "The Beginning of the End"...

Happy again with her books...whew!

THE END!

HaLloWEen!!

Parker's school held their annual Spooktacular this past weekend so we all dressed up and headed out!  It was a great time...live music, games, crafts, food...everything you could want!

 Parker and her friend Nora hitting the dance floor...they were a little unsure of it all!

 One of Parker's teachers Miss Shawnie

 I hit the dance floor to show her how it's done...

Family photo!  Aaron thinks it would be funny to always dress up as a Vampire (for him) and Waldo from "Where's Waldo" (for me) every year...so that all our pictures will look the same except for Parker's costumes...we'll see about that- I may need to mix it up!
2011

2010

Hitting the streets!  The actual night of Halloween, I took Parker to some of our friend's houses.  I figure she can't say "trick or treat" and we don't want the candy around, so let's just go hit up our friends!

We had to stop by to see Parker's good friend Starra!

Fall In Full Effect...

This weekend we went out to Lone Pine Farms, which is in it's prime time!  Hay rides, pumpkin patch, cow rides, tractor rides, goats, horses, a huge haunted corn maze...it is awesome.  The weather was beautiful so we headed out to hunt down a couple pumpkins!

 Oh yea, and there is a place where you can pan for gold!

 Parker is doing sign language saying that the goat is hungry.

So we grabbed a wheel barrow and headed out to pick out our pumpkins.  Parker LOVED riding in the wheel barrow!  For real, it was her favorite thing...besides the tractors.  She would point and yell "WHOOOOAAAAAAA!!!".

 She's signing "more" when we stopped.

The next day we carved them up.  At first Parker was not into it...the insides freaked her out a little.  But then she got into it and even started eating the lids of the pumpkins!  When we finished we did the typical thing and took a family photo...

Last Days of Summer

I can't believe it's already Fall...where did Summer go?!  Well, here are our final pictures of Summer 2011...it was a great one!

Parker loves to paint...so I bought some washable fingers paints earlier in the summer and let her go to town in our dishwasher.  She loved it!!

 We had to move outside eventually...but brought the paints, a swimsuit and the pool with.

 And finally ended the day at the pool the last day it was open.  We took advantage of the beautiful 85 degree weather!

Aaron graduated from NDSU and so did a few other of our good friends.  Annie got it hooked up to have a bar in town show the NDSU vs U of M game...she even got NDSU to sent a bunch of swag!  It was a great time...the bartender and her boyfriend were from Moorhead, MN even!

Some good friends of ours have a beautiful house out in wine country with a few horses.  They had a big BBQ the other day and needless to say Parker loves it out there!!

I think she thought the horses were cows...she kept "mooing" at them

Aaron being funny and putting her in one of the feeding buckets in the stalls

This last picture is just of Parker's curls...which we just love!