Thanksgiving

We had another awesome visit to the coast. We headed up on Monday after Kevin's meetings The kids were fairly content so we decided to just drive the 2 1/2 hours straight through. We were making good time and actually headed towards getting there in 2 1/4 hours. When we were about 20 minutes away Morgan started to get pretty irritable. I figured she was hungry because it was dinner time. I tried to get her to eat something but she wouldn't. A few minutes later she started puking...all over everything. I felt so bad for her. We pulled over at a gas station and cleaned everything up the best we could. As Kevin said, thankfully we always travel w/ baby wipes. We made it the rest of the way and when we got to the house she was her normal self and chowed on some dinner. Unfortunately I think both kids may have inherited my tendency towards motion sickness. We had a similar incident with Ethan when he was about Morgan's age and again when he was 2. Thankfully car seats are washable. Needless to say we stopped for a nice break on our way home.

We headed down to the beach one night at sunset to get some family pics for our Christmas card. Here are a few of the 40 pictures we took. A 3 year-old and a 15 month old sure complicate things:)

Brother and sister discussing how far Ethan can throw that big rock.

I think both kids reserved their best smiles for the picture with Papa and Nana, either that or Mommy was a little more crazy than Papa.

Such a beautiful evening and a beautiful little girl.

How's that for a pose? The kids were helping us get our Thanksgiving dinner ready. We ate Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday afternoon because my parents headed out early Thursday morning for a family wedding in the Midwest. The meal was fabulous and way too much food for the 6 of us. Ethan ate a bun with butter on it and Morgan just had a few bites of turkey. Someday they'll help us polish off more food.

Working off our Thanksgiving meal with a walk at the beach.

We decided to go to the aquarium on Thanksgiving morning. My parents gave us a membership to the aquarium for Christmas last year so we've been taking advantage of that every time we're at the coast. Each time we go Ethan enjoys something different. This year Morgan really enjoyed it too. As members we can go a 1/2 hour before the doors open to the public so we were there at 9:00 and pretty much had the place to ourselves for a good hour. It was great because the kids actually got to enjoy the interactive kid's areas. Usually those sections are crazy full so it was nice to have some space to enjoy it all. They had a blast.

Morgan trying to catch fish.

Ethan pushing buttons to hear the different sounds whales make.

Touching the sea stars in the touch pools.

Yep, this is the best one we got. For some reason turning 3 means you must give your cheesiest smile any chance you get. And Morgan is copying me making silly noises trying to get them to give real smiles.

After the aquarium we walked around Canery Row for a while They already have their Christmas tree up so we stopped for a picture. It was fun to take the time to enjoy a different part of Monterey. We also had lunch outside at a restaurant and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine. It was a great day!

The kiddos cuddling with daddy after our fun day.