Thanksgiving

We just finished up an exhausting but awesome Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving has always been the biggest holiday of the year for my family. Lots of crazy traditions that I LOVE. The entire Madding side of the family, or as many can make it that year, get together. This year we gathered at Amy's. We enjoyed the standard Turkey Tree, Chinese Auction, and Turkey Hold-em poker tournament. It all started when Daddy and his sisters started getting married off. Grandma didn't want to fight over Christmas, so she said "give me Thanksgiving, and do what you want for Christmas". When we were kids, Grandma and Pop started putting up the Christmas tree while everyone was together. It expanded to giving small gifts and was then called "Turkey Tree". Later we added crowning someone the Turkey and telling the story of Thanksgiving. Maybe my order is a bit skewed, since it all started when I was very young, but that's the gist of it. We also used to have a talent show and hilarity ensued, but we've taken a small break from that. Anyway, I look forward to Thansgiving every year and it was so great to spend time with family. John and Eve (especially John) LOVED playing with Bella and Marco. They played constantly, and all day long...way past John and Eve's bed time. One night we let John sleep over and he had a blast. I really can't describe how much they enjoyed their time together. It was really fun to watch. I was a little worried with John doing his first Chinese auction (white elephant exchange, whatever you want to call it...the one where you can steal gifts). I wasn't sure he'd get the point. We played carefully with him, and he actually did really well, even when his gift was stolen, and when Marco got a gift he really wanted but we suggested he not take it from him. It did help that Eve slept through it, so John got to pick for both of them. The coolest thing we did, though, was go to Hollywild. It's a drive-through zoo that has tons of lights at Christmas and lets you pet the animals...well, some of them. We took carrots and put the top of the jeep down when we got there. In the deer forest there were deer, buffalo, cows and ostriches. John got to feed a deer straight from his hand! It was so cool! We also had a cow come up to the jeep and spend quite some time. It has fairly large horns and was right next to Eve. Everyone thought she'd be a little scared, but she just laughed and laughed. After driving through, there's a walk-through where you can feed and pet all sorts of animals. Llamas, goats, pigs, zebras, camels, donkeys, zedonks (probably not the right name, but it's a cross between a zebra and donkey), the hugest cow I've ever seen, yaks (at least I think that's what they were), and ostriches. Unbelievable! The kids absolutely loved every minute of it! The only problem was the cold, so John wanted me to carry him wrapped in a blanket the whole time, but other than that, they loved every minute. Eve just laughed and laughed when the animals came near and she got to pet and feed them. We'll definitely have to do that more regularly. The kids were so tired from all of the Thanksgiving festivities (and the really late nights) that they both napped about 4 hours yesterday and were still ready for bed early.
Today we planned on putting lights up on the trees outside. We ended up napping quite a bit, but got a good start. John has been talking about it for a while, and I think he actually remembers it a little bit from last year. Today he was so excited and was talking about it on the way to church. He said we'd have to put up lots and lots of lights...THOUSANDS of lights. I chuckled knowing that he can barely count to 20 and has no concept of thousands, but he's probably right with his number anyway. It was really cute. He was so excited all day to help Daddy put up the lights. He helped for a good 2 minutes, then lost interest and went to play with Scotty next door. I guess it wasn't as exciting as he remembered.