Thanksgiving Weekend or more importantly Christmas Begins

So Thanksgiving Weekend is drawing to a close, so I thought I'd write about it a bit and put up a few pics.

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to get off from work a few hours early so we decided to take Jade and Cody into the City (New York City) to see them blow up the balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was both Cody and Jade's first time in the city. We normally take the train in, but decided to drive in this time so that we could bring our stroller and stuff. Unfortunately we didn't think about the fact that we'd be driving into the City on the biggest travel day of the whole entire year. Needless to say we hit a lot of traffic. Once we did make it to New York we had a lot of fun though. Cody's favorite part was getting a pretzel and a hot dog from a street vendor. He thought that was the funniest thing that they sold pretzels right there on the street. Anybody who asks him about New York, that's the first thing he's going to tell you about. We also saw a lot of the balloons. We took pictures of a few of them. There were a ton of people though so it was hard to get great pictures. Cody was on my shoulders to see better. Maybe I should have had Cody take the pictures. They couldn't have turned out much worse than pictures I take. Anyway, here are a few of the pictures. See if you can figure out what all of the balloons I put up here are.

In order of appearance: Pikachu, Energizer Bunny, Ronald McDonald, Dora

On Thanksgiving Day we went to a great Chinese place for dinner called Elements of Asia and had Kung Pao Chicken and Mu Shu Pork.

Just Kidding. On Thanksgiving Day we ate the same thing as the majority of Americans, Turkey and Mashed Potatoes. We went over to Jack and Joans for Thanksgiving and ate all of the traditional foods. We all had a great time.

The day after Tanksgiving brings one of the most important days of the year: Black Friday, the official start of the Christmas Season. Now for those of you who don't know, I Love Christmas. No, that didn't come out quite right. I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!! It is definitely my favorite holiday. It makes you remember everything that's good in the world. I of course must start off the Christmas Season with the American Tradition of getting up at an insane hour in the morning to participate in the Black Friday shopping deals. The funny thing is, I didn't even have anything to buy. I just like being there to see everyone getting so worked up about the sales. Oh yeah, and I like the free stuff. Becs decided to be bold and go with me this year. She said she enjoyed it, although she did tell me that right as she was guzzling down a bottle of Nyquil to knock herself out after a morning of shopping. We woke up at 3:30 am and had been to 6 stores before 7 am. Did I mention I like the free stuff. We got free MP3 players from Old Navy, free gift cards from Sports Authority, and free snow globes from JC Penney. Oh yeah, and we also bought a few things. It was a very successful morning.

Later on that day brings another important part of Black Friday. The traditional decorating of the house for Christmas. It went fairly normal this year. I'll let the pictures do the talking for me. Although one funny thing you migh notice is that since we let Cody put up the majority of the ornaments on the tree, the bottom half of our tree is very decorated and the top half is rather sparse. I think it looks better that way. Another thing you might notice is our tree is leaning a bit. We ended up having to prop it up in the back with a broom so it didn't fall over. You can't really tell though. I guess it's time for a new tree. Anyway, here are some of the pics:

My parting shot is of Jade wearing her hotpants. Ok, they're not really hot pants, and no we don't think it's the latest fashion trend either. These are Jade's new pants she has to wear all day everyday. She even gets to wear them to church on Sundays. They are sewn together at the legs and we were told to get them by her physical therapist.