We nearly had a traditional Thanksgiving this year. We did not host, we did not gather huge numbers of family (we just don't have a huge family) but we did have a normal turkey dinner! I did not cook it.
This year we stayed close to home and spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Colorado Spring at the Broadmoor resort.
We arrived on Wednesday with plenty of time to check out the resort and walk around the lake. Travis was craving pizza so we skipped eating on site and found a great local place nearby.
Thursday the boys got up early and hit the pool, letting me sleep for an extra hour. By then my tummy was growling for some brekkie so I headed out to grab a snack and check out the pool. Turkey dinner was midday, a good choice for our family who seems to do best when we eat at regular times. FFM donned his tie (his request) and we had a lovely Thanksgiving buffet.
Friday dawned COLD but we persevered and visited the zoo and various other local attractions until we were too cold to go on. Back to the pool and hot tub! Saturday was train day. Back in July we bought tickets to the Santa Train. However, we arrived to learn that our ticket seller had made a mistake, the Santa Train didn't start until Sunday so our tickets were for a full cog rail train ride to the top of Pike's Peak. Was anyone disappointed? Nope. I don't think FFM even noticed he was so excited.
It's a cog train because it's steep...the cog helps pull the train up grades of about 25%. Your normal steep road grade = 7-8%. The trip up takes about an hour and FFM sat stock still the entire time. Since we bought our tickets early we had great seats right at the front of the train.
At the top of the peak it was 9F and windy. We made a dash into the visitor center for hot chocolate and donuts and beat a hasty retreat back to the warm train.
It was a lovely day, coming down we watched the other train leaving the peak.
Saturday night was fondue and tree lighting, the Broadmoor lit all it's trees and when we returned from dinner to see all the Christmas lights twinkling and reflecting in the lake we started to feel a little more Christmasy. FFM immediately started wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and hasn't stopped yet.
Right before our Fall break the Kindergarten classes at Lois Lenski Elementary put on a combo Thanksgiving / Grandparents Day show. It was AWESOME. Just like a little kid show should be. They all concentrated so hard they didn't quite smile enough, they had cute homemade (by themselves) costumes, and there was great singing and a little dancing.
There are 2 morning K classes and 2 afternoon classes which in aggregate makes for a fair number of students. They all needed their costumes packaged and their pilgrim buckles rubber banded onto their shoes. F's teacher asked me the morning of the show if I could come help out beforehand since her expected help, the reading teacher, had fallen ill. Sure!
Oh My. I have never fully understood the phrase herding cats until that evening. It's late in the day for these kids, they are hyped up to perform, and they all need a construction paper buckle attached to each shoe. Not any buckle, THEIR buckle that they made and then wrote their name on in Kindergarten style handwriting. And while they were all neatly lined up so the kids could easily find them the first three kids to walk in the door rototilled the piles and no one can find anything and everyone is getting anxious and that makes them more hyped up and LOUD LOUD LOUD. And for some reason very eager to pinch each other.
Now, I am not a rookie when it comes to wrangling 5 and 6 year olds. I've worked with kids for years and have been volunteering in the classroom every week since school started so know the drill. I know where to find extra binder clips and rubber bands, I know what spoon in the bowl means, and I know the right words to say to the pinchers. I'm not sure how it all happened, but we got every Kindergartener outfitted, some more than once after they rolled around on the floor and tore their buckles, lined up in the order they were supposed to be in, their additional costume parts neatly clipped with a binder clip, and out the door right on time. I give massive credit to the two amazing Kindergarten teachers (who even managed a lesson on what it means when we say "Break a leg").
Me stopping F for a personal break a leg + photo op on his way to the stage.
F's in the back row, roughly in the center of each photo.
Act 1 - The Turkey Act piles of costumes in front of the kids
Act 2 - The Indian Act
Getting ready for Act 3 - the Pilgrim Act
All four classes doing a costume change. The little piles on the floor are their clipped together paper hats and props that I helped wrangle beforehand.
Sadly it's been so long since I made a video I neglected to check the setting on the camera. No HD video, we'll have to make do with the blurry stuff. I'm also trying some new video uploaders so check the volume, one seems a bit low.
Albuquerque Turkey. I have had this song stuck in my head for weeks.
Take a Turkey Out to Lunch. Don't say a word! I love how they all whisper together and then all are loud together.
Like all parents it hits me every once in a while how fast my child is growing up. I do the math and figure out we're nearly 1/3 of the way through what will likely be his life here at home with us. After I gasp at that I give him a big hug and enjoy our fleeting moment.
We had some spare time a couple nights ago and FFM put on a puppet show for us. It was the "GrandMax Puppet Show" in the Grandest Puppet Show Theater. It started out great and then got really, really, really repetitive. Travis requested some new dialogue and perhaps a plot twist.
I suggested that perhaps F could draw from a story he knows for some inspiration. He thought for a while and then said, "I know, someone could get in trouble!" Perhaps we need to change up our book selection.
After some more repeating...Travis suggested perhaps the animals could DO something. Abruptly, instead of the kangaroos just making friends, the Mama Kangaroo took action and politely told the baby kangaroo, "You can't go outside right now I didn't put sunscreen on you!"
You just never know what twists and turns will take place in fine theater.
Sometimes slaving away on a costume pays off. You know all those hours (ha ha) that I spent cutting and gluing foamy bits for FFM's penguin costume last year? Well, THIS year it won the 1st grade best class costume! That's not a typo, last year's penguin costume got recycled by the lovely Miss Emma whose favorite animals of the moment are tigers and penguins.
Halloween party
Click HERE to remind yourself of last year... they've gotten SO MUCH BIGGER! I had to let out all 4" of the penguin pants and they were barely long enough.
Trick or Treating
Jake the Pirate was popular with other kiddos who recognized him right away. Most adults just thought it was a regular old pirate costume which unfortunately kind of annoyed F. Here's a picture of Jake for reference, Jake's a Disney cartoon character and the show is a Peter Pan/Captain Hook spinoff.
And, a random reminder of how incredibly warm it's been. It's been so balmy the bugs are still out, mid 70s on Halloween day. Last week we found this giant katydid hanging out on one of the tires while the car was parked in the garage.
I will admit, the Jake costume wasn't nearly as easy as the penguin costume. Not having a pattern to piece from made it tricky for me. I managed OK until it was time to come up with the fancy oversized collar for the vest, then I ended up cutting and throwing away a whole lot of blue fleece.
The yellow trim was a lesson in frustration, too. FFM picked out lovely yellow shiny ribbon that I was not able to sew on without puckering or glue on without the glue making the ribbon so translucent it looked like blue fleece. After a lengthy discussion I convinced him that perhaps we really, really, really needed to go another route and simple edge binding worked just fine. By then I was in a bit of a rush and some of the edges aren't up to snuff, but it held together through more than a week of festivities and is now safe and sound in the dress up trunk. Whew. Until next Halloween...
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