Minnesota Thanksgiving

For the first time in more than five years I was able to get the Thanksgiving holiday off so we decided to pack up the kids and head to Minnesota. We drove up on a Wednesday, it was a long day in the car. The kids weren't impressed with the 10 hour car ride or the rush hour traffic we hit once we were near St. Paul. We stayed at Bobo's place with Gabby the cat. The kids stayed true to their routine waking up on Thanksgiving morning at 4am! Bobo even woke up with us to entertain the kiddos before the sun was up.

 Thanksgiving morning Jon and Anna came over and we headed to Ihop for  brunch. The kiddos loved the pancakes, afterwards we hung out at Bobo's letting the kids burn off some energy.

Laughing it up with Aunt Anna.

 There was a small pile of snow outside of Bobo's place, just enough to make one small snowman.

 Thanksgiving evening we headed over to Gram's house to eat with Jon and Anna, my Aunt Heather and her twins Alanis and Shelby. We had a wonderful time, after dinner us "kids" took the kids to the local park. I think it was the first Minnesota Thanksgiving I remember heading to a park not to sled but play on the playground.

 Running for the slides!

 Slides, slides and more slides!

 Uncle Jon teaching Noah to do the rings, while daddy played on the zipline.

On the swings!

 Daddy telling Abby all about how he proposed to Mommy on a digger... so many years ago.

 When we got back to the house it was time for pie, and Grams had even picked up candles to celebrate Abby's 3rd birthday. Abby loved it.

 Look how happy she is.

 Enjoying her own pie...

 On Friday we were very low key in the morning, working on a few things at Bobo's house but mostly just hanging out enjoying each others company. Friday afternoon we headed back to Grams for Christmas! Abby helped Grams decorate her Christmas Tree.

Thoughtfully picking out her next ornament to hang.

 The many faces of Noah

 While we were eating dinner, Grams put all the presents under the tree. Abby was very excited by the gifts. She loves her new dolly.

 Vogue-ing in her new princess dress.

 On Saturday we were up early and headed out to the Mall of America to check out Sea Life. One of Abby's favorite places to visit on our trips north.

Noah loved it was just smiling the whole day.

 Touch tank

Checking out the jellyfish.

 Christmas trees at the mall!

And this is the project that kept Bobo and Dave busy during our visit... turning this into...

Bobo calls it "headlights"

Learning too young....

At the store tonight, Noah was getting a little fussy at checkout, so I gave him my credit card to play with while waiting.  He immediately put it up to the card reader and tried to swipe it.

Apparently he's an observant little dude!

All Boy....

As Noah gets older, his personality is starting to show more.  We are increasingly seeing the differences between him and Abby at his age.  To sum it up, he's all boy.

At this age, we started telling Abby "no" when she would get in to things.  She would almost always listen the first time.  She would cry, but she would stop doing it.  Noah could care less.  He is getting in to EVERYTHING!  We were wayyyy spoiled with Abby, and just didn't know it.  Since she never really went through the crawling phase, she didn't get in to much stuff.  Noah is all over the house, and getting in everything, smashing his fingers in cabinets, putting his face in the toilet and dog food, pulling on wires, etc.  It's crazy.  I know it's typical kid stuff, but we're just not used to it.

When you tell him "no" he stops for a second, stares at you like "you talkin' to me??" and then keeps doing it.  So, you tell him no again, and again, and again.  This goes on for a couple minutes then we start pulling his hand away.  We do that another couple minutes and then we just have to move him away from it.

He also eat constantly!  He's always up for eating, and boy does he get cranky when he's hungry.

Noah is much more rugged than Abby ever was.  He'll bump his head, fall over, whatever, and just keep going.  This isn't to say he doesn't cry when he gets hurt, but it seems like his threshold is a lot higher than Abby's ever was.

He's definitely not as chatty as Abby was.  Abby already had quite a few words by this point.  Noah's kind of saying mama and dada when looking at us.  And I swear the other day he said "hi" but he doesn't say nearly as much as Abby did.

He's more independent than Abby was.  At this age, Abby had separation anxiety like crazy!  Noah likes to be around us, but he'll just follow you from room to room.  Abby would just sit there and cry.

He's also much more interested in the "inner workings" of toys.  Instead of playing with the toy as it's meant to be, he likes to flip them over and check out their wheels and such.  He's constantly knocking things over when trying to "investigate."

I'm sure as time goes on, we'll continue to see the differences in our kids!