Full Circle: November 2012

The highlight of November for me was Thanksgiving break. We had Wednesday through Sunday off of school. It was the first break in a long time and was much needed. The boys were home with me and we had fun relaxing and hanging out at home. The weather was really nice, so we spent our first day off by hanging out outside with the neighbors and taking the dogs for a long walk to the park.

Of course, we had our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving feast while watching the show. The boys really like doing this. The love having popcorn, pretzels, toast and jelly beans for dinner.

My parents came over the day of Thanksgiving. It was nice and relaxing and quiet. Of course, I forgot to take pictures. Ugh.

The day after Thanksgiving is probably my favorite tradition of ours. We hang out and watch football. We then head downtown around 3:30 to get to the Durham to see Santa, the trains and see the tree lighting. There are a few arts and crafts activities there too. This has been the third or fourth year we've done this and they boys really look forward to it. This is the first year we have actually stayed for the tree lighting. It took forever, but when the tree was lit and the confetti fell, the boys loved it.
We then headed out to go for a carriage ride around downtown to see the lights. Next we hit the candy store and Christmas shop to pick out candy and ornaments. This year we stopped in a new toy store downtown called Le Wonderment, which was a lot of fun. We had dinner at Old Chicago and finally made it home by 10pm. It was a long afternoon and evening, but a ton of fun.
While at the Durham we looked at the Christmas tree exhibit with trees from around the world. Our favorite was the German tree and they have a tradition of hiding a pickle ornament somewhere in the tree for the children to find. So, we picked up a pickle ornament and started that this year, too. The boys have had a lot of fun with it.