Happy Belated Canadian Thanksgiving!
I'm still turning turkey leftovers into soup over here, and I hope you are too. Seriously what beats turkey leftovers? You're right- pumpkin pie leftovers... but those are long gone.
We spent our Thanksgiving weekend with family - SO MUCH of family - in Edmonton and it was wonderful. I snapped the photo of my grandmother and Emery on our first morning in the city after waking up in Grandma's house ("GG's house" to Emery, all the great grandkids call her GG) and to me its the scene that long weekend dreams are made of. We had breakfast, Emery ran wild and banged around on the piano and then snuggled up with GG to read her favourite bible stories book before we hit the town (Mountain Equipment Co-op was calling to us, of course).
My husband joined in the celebrations on Sunday (we had been there since Friday evening but he had to work) and we snapped this family photo in the club hall at my Grandma's place before the big dinner. No one kept track, but I was talking with family members during the evening and our best guess is that our family has shared approximately 30 large family dinners in this facility over the past years of Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters. Amazing!
This year's thanksgiving celebration was especially exciting because my Grandmother just celebrated her 85th birthday, and on that day she got ENGAGED! Her fiancé's family joined in the dinner festivities this year, and we had a bit of a program running throughout the evening where people shared stories of Grandma, welcomed her fiancé to the fam and such things. There was some poetry. There were some tears. It was truly wonderful. I sang the song "The Way I am" by Ingrid Michelson because I just can't not sing when something as exciting as my grandmother getting engaged happens, and the lyrics are so sweet.
We spent the rest of the weekend visiting family and showing Emery all that West Edmonton Mall has to offer. One morning my dad and Emery played all over the mall (she rode her first rides at Galaxy land!) while my mom and I shopped. On Monday morning before heading home the whole crew (my parents, husband, Emery and myself) hit the waterpark and that was so fun! Some of the kids stuff was still a little too big for Emery but she found a kiddie pool with 3 waterslides that she just LOVED to ride and rode those about a million times. It was cool to watch her confidence grow over our time there. She was ripping down the slide by the end (as you can see in the photo). I myself even rode a couple of slides that I was too nervous to ride last time I was there, so yay for growth and facing fears all around! ;)
^^ West Ed basically blew Emery's mind. It was awesome. ^^
xo.
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