Thrice as nice

So besides the fact that I haven’t posted in almost two weeks is that, worse yet, I have yet to take Sonora’s EIGHT MONTH photo. Holy moly. That is bad. Every day since the 16th I’ve been thinking “I really need to take that photo with her owl!” and every day I…don’t. So yeah. Yikes. Bad mom award for not keeping consistency. I’ve been behind by a few days but never a couple weeks.

But I’ll get to that at some point. Right now, I thought I’d first share some great photo strips with you as well as some pre-Thanksgiving photos of our new tradition of hiking up one of the Table Mountains in Golden on Thanksgiving weekend.

So please…just sit back, relax and enjoy the show. (plus a bit more blathering at the end)

The photo combo above is from our trip to the top of South Table Mountain. The views aren’t quite as nice as on North Table Mountain, but the hike is beautiful and Table Rock sits atop the butte, so it was a perfect spot for a little sunset snack.

We decided that we want to make this our family’s “Grand Haven Pier” tradition. See, every Thanksgiving Ryan’s family (his mom’s side) would take a trip to Lake Michigan to take a pier walk after the big Thanksgiving meal at his grandma’s. So we wanted to keep up the tradition of an annual walk, only ours has quite a bit more elevation gain, heh.

As you may recall from previous Thanksgivings, the weather is usually pretty spectacular around these parts and this day was no exception. We went pretty late in the day on Wednesday – just after Ryan got done with work – so in addition to having one of the warmest days of November that day (60s), we were also fortunate enough to catch the sunset over the mountains. This tradition is a keeper.

That was Wednesday. Then Thursday rolled around and we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving with two of our dear friends, Kristine and JB, and their son Grant. Last year we had a youth leader Thanksgiving with all the leaders but this year it was just us. And it was really, really nice. We ate and chatted the day away.

That night we headed up the mountain to stay with Laura and Jared and celebrate another Thanksgiving on Friday with them. But when we arrived that night, they had a special announcement for us:

Sonora is getting a new baby cousin in June! We are so happy for them and are excited for little cousin play dates in the near future.

Friday morning, Ryan, Jared and I all went skiing while Laura watched Sonora. It was the first time in over a year I’d been skiing and it was just like riding a bike. And wonder of all wonders, I didn’t fall down once! Wow. That is a first for such a rookie like me. Oh, and it was sunny! Normally it’s overcast and freezing but my new coat was excellent at keeping me warm and I was sweating by the end. Anyway, there were only a few runs open (and just blues and greens, whomp whomp) but with Jared’s free passes we didn’t feel bad about only skiing for a few hours before heading back to prepare our feast. Then Saturday we just spent the day lazing about and took a little trip into town to shop at Cooper Creek before we left for home.

On Sunday, believe it or not, we had yet another Thanksgiving with two other couple friends of ours you’ve read about before, Brad and Sarah and their son, Davis, as well as Danielle and Kevin. Three Thanksgivings is thrice as nice. And it was fun getting caught up on the last few months of each others’ lives. Good food, great friends, fun adventures.

That’s how we roll.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend, too.

Love,
Laura