Thanksgiving 2010

Hard to believe another Thanksgiving has come and gone. This is truly one of my favorite holidays throughout the year. I took two days off of work and made my holiday weekend extra long. I took Wednesday and Monday off to extend my time with Brian and Hayden to an entire week! I loved my time at home and I think Hayden especially did and I might have gained about three pounds too, because while at home we ate out some, I fixed breakfast every morning, nothing fancy just a little something different for us. One morning we had struddles, one morning cinnamin rolls, and one morning eggs and bacon and grits. Yummy!

Here are some pictures from this year's Thanksgiving. We had such a great time together at my Mom & Dad's house. It is so nice to all be together as a family and really enjoy the time together. I think you can tell by the pictures that we all love each dearly! And check out the two littlest ones, they were adorable this year playing together. They kept giving each other hugs and holding hands and playing.

Early Thanksgiving

Weekend before last Brian's extended family had everyone over for an early Thanksgiving celebration. His uncle was scheduled to have surgery that week and wanted everyone to get together. Brian and I have been together for four years now and I had only met a handful of them, so it was nice to put some faces with names that I have heard over the years. We all had a great time and from talking with some of the cousins they are wanting to try and do this every year, how nice for all the little ones.

Here are a few pictures from the lunch!

The Twin Cities

Ok - well I didn't actually see both of the cities, but apparently they are one in the same. The National Recreation & Parks Association annual Congress and Trade Show was held in Minneapolis a couple of weeks back. It was late October and it was just beginning to get cold there. And by cold I mean, when I flew out of Montgomery it was in the 80's and when I landed in Minneapolis it was a dreary, rainy, windy 30 something.

Minneapolis is a really neat town because everything downtown is connected via a massive skywalk system. The skywalk system expands over 8 miles total. Every building, shopping center, restuarant, bar and hotel is bascially connected - so once we arrived we never even had to put our jackets back on, until the last night.

I had to work some of this trip, but during the times I didn't have meetings, my friend Erica and I, (she and I love to travel together)did lots of shopping and lots of eating.

We spent an entire day shopping at the Mall of America - this place is unbelievable and made the entire trip to Minneapolis worth it. I would love to have the opportunity to take Hayden back there some day. Did you know they have an aquarium and an amusement park inside this mall? It is amazing! And one little fact about that mall is if you were to spend 10 minutes browsing in every store it would take you 86 hours to finish, that's what I call shopping!

Here are a few pictures from our visit. Not very many, but honestly it was too cold and too rainy to get outside most of the trip. But we did have a great time. Thanks for always traveling with me Erica.

Each trip we try to make a visit to Hard Rock, our hotel was connected to this Hard Rock, it was neat.





Here is a shot of the amusement park inside the Mall of America. I know this picture doesn't really show it, but this park is huge. Crazy big for inside a mall. I really wanted to ride some of the rides, but maybe next time.



And these last two pictures were inside the Twins Stadium. I had a party to attend there and we were up in the Suites - very nice. It was freezing that night, so we only walked outside briefly. Not very good pictures, but you get the idea.

Pumpkin Patch

I am so behind in blogging, but I have been very busy lately with work and travels that I just haven't had much time to sit down and write anything, much less upload pictures. I will make this short and sweet, but I wanted to share a few photos from when we made our trip to the Pumpkin Patch a few weeks back. I had been looking forward to this since I found out we were going to have a baby or so it seems. We had a great time and Hayden really enjoyed the day too. The weather started off nice and pleasant and didn't really warm up until we were almost done for the day. We invited Nan and Papa to join us and we were so glad they came, of course, so was Hayden.





Look at my sweet girl below - she is riding of very first pony! I just hope she doesn't ask for one, one day. I don't know if her Daddy will be able to say no to those blue eyes!



And here they are coming down the slide, it might not look as though she was having fun, but she kept begging to climb back up to go down again. We finally talked Daddy into taking her one more time. I had no desire to climb way up that slide, it was a little too warm for me and I didn't want to take my shoes off. Not to mention there were about 100 other kids running up and down.







This was Hayden's pumpkin, she wouldn't let go of it once we found it! It is still proudly sitting on the server in our breakfast room. We didn't carve that one of course.

The Dash

Have you ever heard of "The Dash"? I don't think I had, if so I don't remember. But I was flipping through a magazine recently and ran across this poem and I have never heard of anything quite like it. I loved it so much I wanted you all to read it too.

"The Dash", a highly acclaimed poem by Linda Ellis, captures the "simple truths" of why we were put on this Earth. How we spend our dash is up to us!

The Dash
I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on her tombstone from the beginnning...to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her birth and spoke the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time that she spent alive on earth and now only those who loved her know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own, the cars...the house...the cash.

What matters is how we live and love an how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard; are there things you'd like to change? For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough to consider what's true and real and always try to understand the way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger and show appreciation more and love the people in our lives like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile...remembering that this special dash might only last a little while.

So when your eulogy's being read with your life's actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?