Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving this year was a very low-key celebration, but we had a good time and ate good food. We spent the day at my in-laws. They fried a turkey and made most of the side dishes, I brought a broccoli casserole and some other veggies as well as rolls and a pie. Keith's Grandpa has been in poor health for a long while now, but he came up for 30 minutes so he could see Garrett. (They live next door to Keith's parents so it wasn't far for them to go.) They said he's special to them because he's currently their only grandchild sharing their last name. And a boy at that. Garrett is basically it as far as the name lineage goes. Keith's dad has one brother who only had one daughter and Keith only has a sister, so Garrett will carry on this branch of the family name. Of course if I'm having another boy, then they will share in that responsibility.

Garrett is a very friendly kid for the most part, so he enjoyed having a captive audience in the way of Keith's grandparents. They hung on his every word and ooh'ed and aahh'ed at the appropriate moments as Garrett was showing off all his toys. At one point Keith's grandma looked at me and asked where he got the chatty gene because Keith was not a talkative child. (Is anyone surprised by that?) Apparently I haven't shown my true colors to most of Keith's family because they all acted surprised when I told them I was a pretty chatty kid. (Hence one of my nicknames being Gabby Abby.) My mom got a good kick out of that when I told her about it later.

(Garrett and one set of his great-grandparents)

After eating the yummy food (of which Garrett ate exactly one bite) we all watched Garrett work off that piece of turkey. Keith's parents have a pull-up bar in the doorway of one of their bedrooms. His mom has back problems and this helps her to be able to stretch out her back as well as do a little working out. Garrett was completely enthralled with it and would have spent the entire day doing pull ups if he had a willing participant to help him. This product has an infomercial that we've seen many times. So often, in fact, that Garrett has it basically memorized. One of the lines in the infomercial is "Wanna get ripped" which Garrett loves repeating. So he said this multiple times while "working out". I never got him saying it in its entirety on video, but here's an idea of what he was doing.

Later in the afternoon, Keith and I went to his sister's house to see her new baby. Michael Brayden was born a couple of weeks ago and Melanie didn't feel up to getting out of the house with her 3 kids, so they stayed home that day. The baby looks a lot like her other 2 kids.

After that visit we went back to Keith's parents to pick up Garrett and head on home. We live about an hour from them, so we wanted to get home before it got too late. On the way home, Garrett sang to us in order to keep himself awake. The whole time at Keith's parents I kept trying to get Garrett to sing his days of the week song, but he refused, instead he decided to sing it over and over in the car on the way home. I apologize for most of this being dark. I thought the camera would pick up a little light from outside, but it obviously didn't. Keith doesn't like having the interior lights on while he was driving so that's why I turned them off and on a few times.

Once we got home, we ate leftovers from lunch and then watched "The Incredibles" which was on TV.

We had a great day. The weather was perfect and the food was delicious. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Now it's time to start checking people off my Christmas list. I have bought exactly nothing for Keith, but I'm almost done with everyone else. I attempted to do a little "Black Friday" shopping yesterday morning, but our local Walmart was a joke. Nothing was labeled with their sale prices and more than half of the items that I was interested in buying weren't even there and I didn't see a place where they had been there earlier. It makes me wonder if they were even available at our Walmart. Oh the joys of attempting to find a great deal. It usually backfires on you.

I have to add that Target totally came through and gave me a $25 e-giftcard for their mistake with the mispricing of the carseat that I tried to buy from them a few weeks ago. So I've cancelled my Target boycott. Good thing, since I love that store.