Ah, the lovely holiday season

Anyone else notice I've been neglecting the blog lately? ;-) Things have been a bit hectic for us around here lately. The weekend after Halloween, the girls and I packed up the car and drove down to Iowa to visit Nana Mary and Papi Dave. This was the first time I drove anywhere with the girls on my own (well longer than driving to the beach from our condo in Glendale anyway). They did very well actually. I was quite pleasantly surprised. I loaded up the backseat with stuff to entertain them and bags of snacks to hand back and the four hours went by relatively quickly.

While in Cedar Rapids, we visited the Iowa Children's Museum where Ella and Lily had a blast. They pretended to grocery shop in a pint-sized store, Ella served us up some pizza at a play restaurant, there was an art studio, a motion room, an animal discovery area, as well as an awesome play house and farm (of course, it's Iowa!). They also had this very cool sand area where the sand was a special mixture of sand and some kind of wax or putty, so you could sculpt with it. Ella loved that!

We also went outlet shopping and enjoyed my mom's awesome home cooking (you know, real cooking, not what I normally do). I also visited with my friend Molly and got caught up with her which was fun. Oh, and Ella got her hair cut for only the second time by a real stylist! I usually trim it up for her. But my mom was getting her hair done and Ella was very intrigued so we asked her if she wanted to have her hair cut. She said, "All right." So she got in the chair and sat like a little princess while Kelly put the drape on her and trimmed her hair. She didn't move a muscle the whole time! Not exactly what she does when I try to cut her hair. So maybe my trimmin' days are over!

The drive back to MN went just about as well as the first so all in all it was a very successful trip. The girls were excited to be home with all their familiar toys and see Daddy and B-pa (Grandpa) again .

Andrew left for Los Angeles after just finishing up a trip to Miami. He was checking out the stadium in Miami for the Super Bowl. Hornet will be doing the Super Bowl graphics again this year. He worked in the office while in LA and packed up the rest of our stuff. Now we just need a moving date and we're all set. The date keeps getting pushed back a week for various reasons. Right now, we're hoping for the middle of December. The holidays are going to be really interesting for us this year!

But for now we are focusing on the Thanksgiving holiday this week! We are hosting my mom's family and Andrew's parents, brother and and his wife. There will be 13 of us! So our biggest Thanksgiving yet. And I can't wait to chow down on some yummy food! Oh, and of course be thankful for all we have! By the way, just want to throw kudos out to Erin and DJ (our guests of Thanksgivings past) because they are also hosting Thanksgiving this year. And we'll miss you guys a LOT!

Happy Turkey Day to everyone!

PS. I had planned to write a tirade about how commercial the holidays are and that I can't believe department stores had Christmas stuff out weeks before Halloween! (I'm not kidding, Halloween/Thanksgiving on one side of the aisle and Christmas on the other as you were walking in the store). But I'll save my thoughts for next year, probably when they start putting Christmas stuff out before Labor Day!

Oh and one more P.S. Just wanted to throw a congrats out there to my good friend Sarah (and a faithful blog reader) on the birth of her second baby, a beautiful little girl named Thea! Congrats Sarah, Shawn, and big brother Collin!!