Thanksgiving and Chicago

I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving! We did, we started out by watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! I loved it! I haven't seen it in years and it was fun to see. The boys likes some of the baloons... like SpongeBob and Snoopy. While Jacob had a nap and mom made rolls I took Jackson outside to play, which was a treat because it was perfect weather! In the 60s! Then he watched Ice Age while I helped mom make dinner. Dave had made stuffing earlier, which was a change from what I am used to, but it was VERY good stuffing! We ate around 4 and had so much good food! The best part??? The cranberry jelly stuff! Love that! I had fun looking at the black friday ads and dreaming of all the things I wish I could buy :) On Friday morning Mom dropped us off at Enterprise and we rented a car and we were on our way to Chicago to visit Liz and Alan. The drive took us about 4 hrs 20 min... we made pretty good time. Thank goodness for the portable DVD player. It was a life saver! Both boys slept in the car, which was nice. We were very excited to see Liz and Alan and had a lot of fun. We hung out on Friday night, went grocery shopping, ate REAL CHICAGO STYLE PIZZA, and watched Rio! It was fun and the pizza was amazing! On Saturday we went to the Chicago Zoo, which was huge and so much fun. The boys loved the animals, but Jackson was frustrated that he had to stay near us. He wanted to run off and be free! It was raining pretty much the whole time, so we got wet, but we didn't mind, it was fun! Liz has pictures from the zoo so maybe I can get some later. We came home to dry off and so Jake could nap. We watched Cars 2 and Liz made a delicious dinner. We went to the mall and the boys played on the indoor tree-house, having lots of fun, until some kid had an accident and they closed it down! So we went to see Santa and they sat on his lap for a second. Then we went to a toy store and Jackson found about a million things that he wanted! It was fun to see what he was most interested in. Jacob too. After that we came home and had baths and got ready for bed. We skyped with Luis and had fun talking with him. Alan brought us Steak and Shake milkshakes, my first time trying those, and they were awesome. Then after the kids went to bed we watched Zookeeper, which was pretty funny. Sunday we went to church for Sacrament Meeting and then Liz drove me and the boys into the city. It was cool to see. I can't wait to go back when it isn't raining and hopefully we can walk around the city. Bottom line... I loved Chicago and spending time with Liz and Alan! So did the boys (Even though we kind of destroyed their apartment in 3 days, sorry!!!) Here are some pics from Thanksgiving and from Chicago!








And the story behind this??? This is a picture of the slipper I pulled out from under the couch cushion. Mom asked me to dig down there and get what she though was one of the boys' toys. Well, in the process I found this nasty slipper, which had never belonged to anyone in our family... meaning I pulled out with my bare hand a disgusting slipper from the previous owners of this couch... which dave bought YEARS ago!!! I could not wash my hands enough!!! YUCK!