The Foster Family: Giving Thanks

Just thought you all would enjoy some pictures from our Thanksgiving celebration. My entire family flew in on Thanksgiving day for the holiday. It was so much fun to have my parents, my brother Philip, his wife Michelle, my other brother John and his girlfriend Sarah here. I had done all of the cooking, baking and even the turkey before Thursday so the only thing we had to do was drive home from the airport and throw all the food into the oven. It was so nice!

Saturday we took a day trip to downtown Chicago. It was obviously a cold day given where we live but it wasn't as cold as it could have been! Sarai was so funny...we had her all bundled up in her winter coat but she refused to wear her hat or gloves. Needless to say, after about an hour of walking around in the cold, her hands had found there way far up into her coat sleeves and all you could see out of the hood of her coat was her eyes. Maybe next time she will wear them :-) We walked from the train station to Millennium Park and enjoyed watching the ice skaters as well as seeing our funny reflections in "The Bean," which is a large reflective sculpture in the park. From there we caught the "L" and headed to Lou Malnati's Pizzaria for dinner. Yummy! The city was so beautiful at night and all decked out for Christmas!

We also had our first snow of the year Sunday night. My sister-in-law, Michelle, was super excited because she had never experienced that much snow. I do have to admit that even though I'm not ready for the cold, winter months to be here, the snow was quite beautiful. And it was fun to see Sarai enjoy her first snow. Initially she wasn't too sure about it but Michelle showed her how fun it was and pretty soon Sarai was helping with the snowman. They even got my dad to make a snow angel!

The only crummy part of the whole visit was Sunday night Sarai came down with a 24 hour flu bug and over the next four days, 7 of the 9 of us got sick. Not fun! I felt so bad that everyone caught it. Hopefully my family will still be willing to come see us again :-)

Oh, and what better way to end a visit with Nana then by making chocolate chip cookies! It makes my heart smile to see my mother and my daughter baking together...and Papa helped too!