I’m back to finish the rest of our Thanksgiving weekend. As I mentioned before, my parents were able to come up and celebrate Thanksgiving with us. They arrived Wednesday afternoon and stayed until Sunday morning. It was an absolute blast having them here. Since this trip was a bit longer than their last, we made sure to pack in a ton of fun into the 3.5 days they were here. I am positive this is no shocker, but there are tons of pictures to share so I’ll try and keep my jabbering to a minimum. Wednesday & Thursday were mainly spent at home prepping for Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day so I will be blogging about Friday & Saturday, here we go.
Friday:
Friday morning we were pretty slow at getting a start to our day since we were pretty pooped from a super busy & fun Thanksgiving. Once we all were dressed we decided to drive out to Parker, CO so I could show my parents where Brandon works. We walked the model homes and then we headed over to the park by his work to let the kids play.
And people always wonder why all the kids LOVE Pampo?!?! He is so active with kids. Even when my sis and I were younger, he always played with us, even Barbie's. I am so grateful to have the best father who is so involved in not only my life but my kids too. He is truly amazing and it absolutely melts my heart to see him play with his grandchildren.
Who am I kidding? I have TWO awesome parents. Autumn loved doing the see saw with Nana. My kids are beyond lucky!!!
Weeeeeeeeee….
After the park all of us were starving, so we stopped at Chili’s on the way home for lunch…
Waiting for our lunch. I am so proud of how well my kids behave at restaurants now. So nice to have an occasional meal out!
After lunch we headed home to let the kids nap. While they were napping my Dad & Mom finally taught me how to make the Lujan Families Red Chili. Brandon and I have been dying to learn to make Red Chili like my Dad & Mom do for quite some time now, but we figured since we aren’t close enough to drive over when my Dad makes a batch we better learn to make it on our own now rather than later. I am honored to finally have the Families Recipe. I will share a few pics of the process but I will not give a tutorial as I am holding this recipe near and dear to my heart!
We stopped the Chili making process there because nap time was over and we had plans. We finished the Chili once the kids were in bed and Brandon was home so he could learn too. Any who, once the kids got up, we bundled up and headed to downtown Littleton. Every Friday after Thanksgiving, Downtown Littleton has a big event to light all the Trees down Main Street and Santa comes down waving at all the kids. I have heard wonderful things of the event so I decided we HAD to go check it out. It was amazing to see but since the internet and paper had the times wrong, we ended up waiting about an hour longer than we should have. O well, it was a very fun thing to see and the time we got with my parents was well worth the wait, even though we were frozen by the end.
Being one of the first ones there should have been a clue we were a tad bit early, but in our defense we were just following the websites instructions. Hahaha
Waiting…
Waiting…
More Waiting…
And finally some action started. The tree’s lit up according to when Santa came driving by. It was a long wait since we were almost all the way at the opposite end. It was really neat to see them all light up and to see Santa and to hear all the wonderful Christmas Carols.
But when it finally got to us it was totally worth it :)
And the kids were completely overjoyed when they saw SANTA….
Jolly Ole St. Nick!!!!!
We had a blast but were so excited to get into a warm car at the end :)
Once the kids were off to bed, we finished up the Chili…
Cheers to two of my FAVORITE men.
Yum! Thanks again Mom & Dad for teaching us the Lujan Way!
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Saturday:
Once we were all up and ready to roll, my parents and I decided to take the kids Bowling for the 1st time. Owen was BEYOND excited to go “Bowling Balling” as he calls it. Lol. Mimi also met us there. It was so much fun and the kids had a blast. We were all shocked to watch Autumn carry the Ball ‘All by herself’ (a very popular phrase from Autumn) she is such a strong little girl. The kids played their own game on one lane with ‘bumpers’ and us 4 adults played our own game. My Mom won. She was quite competitive out there and it definitely paid off. Even though she was the only one to break 100 (sorry Dad I just sold you out) we still all had a great time.
Owen has so much fun and could’ve played all day if we let him!
Autumn needed a little extra ‘push’ for her ball or it would have taken hours to make it all the way down. But she is one determined little girl and kept on trying!
Once we got home the kids were off to nap. While they napped, Dad got to relax while my Mom and I were busy putting up Christmas decorations. Yay, my favorite time of year! Once the kids got up Pampo & Nana helped the kiddos decorate their tree while I was busy decorating my tree. Brandon’s Grandparents gave us a small 4 ft. tree last month so I put that one up along with our giant 10 ft. tree. Now the kids have their very own tree to decorate however they’d like with all their special & handmade ornaments. They were SO excited!
And once the decorations were put up and both tree were decoarted it was time to get the Beans and Red Chili ready. We were going to eat the deliciousness we made the day before. We also invited Papa Bruce & Ramona over to partake in our Mexican Feast. Yum!!!! After dinner, and left over pie for dessert of course, we all had a delicious glass of Walla Walla Wine that Papa Bruce brought over and played some games. It was a such fun ending to a super fun day!
Mexican Train FUN!
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Thanks again Dad & Mom for making the trip up to spend Thanksgiving with us and for all your help. Between Thanksgiving prep, clean up, teaching us to make Red Chili, and putting up Christmas decorations I have no clue how I could have done it all without you here. It was a super fun 3.5 days. The kids are still talking about how much fun they had with you guys. This trip was especially hard for me though because I really have no clue when we will see them again. Every other time we’ve seen each other since we moved we have already had our next visit all planned out. And with the cold snowy Colorado winters, I really have no clue when I am going to be able to go back to visit since I don’t want to chance driving in crazy weather :( Any who it was a GREAT weekend!!!!! Hope to see you guys soon, Love you SO SO SO SO much.
