thanksgiving with stephanie

we had a very relaxing thanksgiving week. while jon had to work, i had the week off. my cousin stephanie came to town and visited for the week. thanksgiving day was spent with paul, nadia and cole and about 25 other friends and family. despite the size of the group, it was a pretty low key celebration. the food was awesome... and paul made a turkey that was TO DIE FOR!!!! not much in the way of left overs on that one. we all ate ourselves silly, as is tradition.
this is jon's favorite picture of hana from this day. he says "it just shows her personality..." i think it's pretty cute too.

hana wore a bow in her hair and to my surprise, the bow lasted like 4 hours! usually, when we do a bow, like for daycare or something, she forgets it's there until one of her friends comments on it. then she yanks it out because she wants to see it too...

paul and nadia set up their downstairs for the kids where a "kung fu panda" marathon and a bowl of tortilla chips kept the children transfixed, and for the most part, out of trouble.

perhaps, the biggest turkey at thanksgiving...

this shot reminds me of the pictures my grandfather used to take at family parties. he especially liked to line up multiple generations in profile and take our pictures... you can almost see the halo in this picture.

the day after thanksgiving, jenny, nadia and i got up at "0-dark-30" to hit the black friday sales. it was CRAZY!!!! but we got some really good deals. we will do it differently next year, but we'll definately do it again. after we got done with the shopping, we met the kids and the rest of the family for lunch and a trip to the park. we were pushing nap time so we didn't expect the park to be more than about 30 minutes or so (plus i'd been up since 3:30 a.m.), but the kids had so much fun, that we were there for a couple hours.

stephanie and charlotte got to bond...

hana is getting faster and faster. i may run long distances, but i'm not known for my speed. this could spell trouble down the line...

stephanie left the saturday after thanksgiving. we were so used to having her around, it was sad to see her go. we escorted her to the airport on BART. this was hana's first trip on the "choo choo train"... she's seen them around when we've been driving and she's been very interested in them. this isn't her first train ride... she had that a year ago around her first birthday, when we took the (amtrak) train in oregon from portland to eugene. but this is the first mass transit ride that she's been on where she knows what's going on and is totally into it!

after we dropped stephanie off, we had lunch at the airport, which she thought was pretty neat. and then she napped the whole way home on the train back.