The 'Ei's Have It: We Give Thanks

Hold onto your hats. We have a second post in one month...(clearly, it's an early Christmas miracle). Thanksgiving came quickly, but full of family, friends and fun. My parents came up to the wintery North the Sunday before Thanksgiving and were able to spend two full days of Allie-time while Chris and I finished out our work week. Allie's play and chatter-quota is quite large, so they earned their Thanksgiving second-helpings.

We ran some pre-Thanksgiving errands at the mall before the masses invaded on Thanksgiving and Black Friday. We walked in and found the Macy's mailbox standing right in front of us. At school, my advisory group is writing letters to Santa to raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation (Macy's partners with Make A Wish and donates $1 per letter) and Allie knows that she will be the official letter deliverer, so she knew exactly what to do when she saw the letter station staring her in the face.

And yes...the tiara is standard mall attire.

We had a pre-Thanksgiving pie-making playdate with Riley and her parents that afternoon, but somehow the only pies that we finished were the pizza pies for dinner. There was simply too much playing to be done.

Baking buddies. Hard at work...not baking.

Grandmom Wintrode made these two ladies matching turkey aprons.
As if there was any question who the real turkeys were around here.

Extra cheese, please.

These girls...

Pinterest Poultry! Thanks to Riley's mommy, Heather.

It's a toss-up whether Abby's or my dad's birthday falls on Thanksgiving, and this year it was our pup's turn. We sang happy birthday to our newest 8-year-old, and, since we unforgivably left Frosty Paws off the grocery list, Allie insisted that Abby get her Christmas gift early...and so she did.

Nothing says Happy Birthday! like a fuzzy penguin in a snowsuit. She loved it.

Allie and I turkey-trotted over to the town center (if you've ever trotted with a three-year-old, you'll know why we didn't go farther).

Here she is sharing her glory with a poka-dotted stuffed unicorn in front of the Christmas tree.

We swept the top three spots.

After our trot, it was time to start getting ready for the feast.

A parade, pies, and grandparents? By bedtime her head was spinning.

Ta-da!!!

Don't be fooled by the familiar attire, she made an emergency costume-change into a dance dress for the post-dinner Thanksgiving show while we were eating. She only kept it on for about 45 minutes that day, so we reduced, reused, and recycled it the next for our Friday Christmas decorating efforts.