This week was a short work week, but long fun week. Keira only had school on Monday and Tuesday, and then we headed up to Ohio for Thankgiving on Wednesday. We spent Thanksgiving day and Friday there, and returned to Kentucky Saturday morning to decorate the house for Christmas.
On Monday, it was a busy day. We started off at Keira's school for her "T is for Turkey" Thanksgiving play. It was very cute and Keira did a great job.
Then, I went to the gym for a free personal training session which left me pretty much exhausted, but I swam quickly after anyway. We grabbed a quick lunch out because I needed to do some last minute grocery shopping after my swim while Keira was at school. I got a call from Ryan while we were out that he was having trouble with Best Buy's website during their Siliver Premier early Black Friday event. I rushed home and tried my best, but was only able to get one item after trying online and being on hold for over an hour. Keira had ballet that evening, so it seemed like the day flew by!
On Tuesday, we had another full day. I woke up and our drying rack had colapsed, and I hadn't even started to wash my clothes yet for the trip. I took Soren to the gym again while Keira was at school. It was raining too hard for me to want to run outside with Soren. We went to Pottery Barn storytime, where Elf on a Shelf was read (and purchased).
We stopped at Target on the way back to get a new rack, and Channel 11 news was there conducting interviews on Black Friday shopping. With our failed attempt at purchasing online items, I was able to tell the interviewer our tentative plan for being at Best Buy before midnight on Thanksgiving night. I don't know if it aired or not, though. I did take a photo of the newscasters doing ab work on the balls outside, like on the Target commercials with my friend Mary's crazy lookalike.
Keira played with Gracie that evening, for a little bit, and then after the kids went to bed, I got my pies made.
On Wednesday, I took both kids to the gym so that they could play together and hopefully Soren would be happier. Then, we pretty much got packed up and hung out at home waiting for Ryan to get home so we could get on the road.
We stopped at IKEA so that we could check out table and chair sets, for both our kitchen and dining room. Our kitchen table is no longer practical, with the grout in between the tile, and we don't have enough dining room chairs and trying to match chairs with our antique set will be a nightmare. The dining room table will be relocated to the basement as a sofa table that we can use for entertaining. We got into my parents' house a bit late for the kids, but they were OK. My mom and I stayed up and did a bit of early Black Friday shopping online before heading to bed.
We woke up early on Thursday (but not as early as my dad who had to put the bird in the oven) to head to the Columbus Turkey Trot. Keira and Soren were running in the Tot Trot, and I was doing the 5 miler. I met up with my friend Amanda and her daughter Maddie, who were also running. The kids did great, and were very excited to get their medals!
My race went pretty well, all things considered. I had a PR, barely, but it has been YEARS since I ran a 5 mile race, so I actually thought I would have had a bigger PR. Checking my past results, it wasn't that huge, but since I had a personal training session on Monday that left me in some major pain, as well as just finished a month of insane half marathoning, I was happy with it. I was mostly happy with how excited the kids were about the whole thing.
We came home and got cleaned up and then waited for Kris and Linda to arrive, and snacked.
We had a fabulous Thanksgiving meal. It was hard to stop eating, even though I was so full! We had so much food. We had desserts, and then went to see Happy Feet 2 with everyone. It was OK, but the kids enjoyed it. We were also able to get some more of our Black Friday shopping completed online, and so we no longer needed to head to Best Buy this evening. That was great, because people had actually been camped out for days outside there.
We had a really fun Friday. We went to Inniswood Gardens to walk around and enjoy the nice weather. We took tons of pictures.
We went to the Columbus Zoo after lunch at Local Roots and really enjoyed the Polar Bear exhibit. They were very playful, and a lot of the animals were very active. There were so many pictures! Again, here are just a few:
Kris and Linda were driving back that evening, so we stayed at the Zoo through the first of the light shows. It was pretty fun, and it was so nice that it wasn't freezing this time around.
We headed back to my parents house, and then got the kids fed and put to bed, and then headed out just the two of us. We did stop at Best Buy to try to find the last remaining items, and they actually had all but one thing still. Then we headed to see Twilight: Breaking Dawn part 1. It has been such a long time since Ryan and I had gone out without the kids, it was nice for the break.
On Saturday morning, we woke up and got packed up. We had a very quick drive home with hardly any traffic, and Ryan was able to watch the UM vs OSU game. It was an exciting game, and UM won for the first time in a long time.
I went for a run during the game, and then worked on getting the fall decorations put away so we could get out the Christmas decorations. We spent the rest of the evening working on the decorations, and got just about everything finished up. The one main thing we aren't sure how to hang is our Annaberg Star. I think we need a scissor lift to hang it wear we want! We had so many boxes to bring up!
Soren was thrilled that the tree looked just like the picture.
We also brough out our "elf on a shelf". Keira completely bought into it. Soren on the other hand said, "that elf isn't real!". Hopefully he doesn't ruin Christmas for Keira before she is ready one of these years.
On Sunday, we had a nice breakfast, and Soren went ahead and picked out his own clothes and got dressed on his own. Ryan also got the xbox hooked up and made avatars for all of us, and the kids played around with it a bit while we got cleaned up for church. Church was pretty rough today. The elf pretty much had the opposite effect with Soren than it was intended. We had to run home during sacrament meeting because he had an accident when I put him on time out for making too much noise while the sacrament prayer was being said. I am not really sure if it was really an accident or more of an "on purpose". Thankfully, we live super close. His nursery teachers also informed us that he was having trouble being obedient. I am not sure of what that entails, but my sunbeam class was also in rare form today. Ryan had home teaching in the afternoon, and the kids continued to struggle with their behavior, and finally Ryan came home and things got a bit better, but we had several time outs while he was gone. We also had a visit from our home teachers, so it was a busy night. The kids did straighten out for our home teachers, but it was a tough day!
