Thanksgiving Week

We started off Thanksgiving week in the best way possible, with my Birthday! I'm now 27!  We had 3 nights of celebration starting with a visit to Chuck-e Cheese for the wee ones, who enjoyed it very much.  The next day, Shelley and I met up with Tom, Cici, Nick and Paul and saw Slumdog Millionaire, which is an incredible movie.  We saw it at the ArcLight in Hollywood, which is a great place for seeing movies.  You get to pick out your seats if you buy them on line, and the chairs are super comfortable.  After that we went to a Thai/Chinese restaurant where we got a ton of really really good food, and stuffed ourselves.  On Sunday, my actual birthday, I got a great card from Ella

That's a picture of our family, including the baby in Shelley's tummy, on the far right,

 and a bunch of great presents as well, including a salad spinner that I've wanted forever, and a great vest, too.  That night we went to our Indian restaurant, and had a great big meal there.

We spent all of Wednesday night cooking and getting ready for Thanksgiving.  Ella helped Nancy make oreo turkeys, which were really cool, and we made fake chicken noodle soup, party potatoes and Nuts and Bolts.  I had to work in the morning on Thursday, but we were at Tom and Cici's by 3 where we saw Katie and Tebben for the first time in a long time, and had lots of fun playing games and helping cook everything for dinner.  After dinner Tom, Tebben and I played pool while everybody else talked.  Ella was full of energy, so I would give her our camera and have her go on photo-treasure hunts, which she did quite well at.  She also took a lot of pictures of us playing pool, and goofy other stuff.

Shelley and I both took Friday off to hang out with Katie and Tebben, and despite it being a crazy shopping day, we went to two different shopping centers.  The weren't actually that crowded though, so we got to walk along and look at some different stores, and eat some good food.  In between the Grove and the 3rd St. Promenade, we went to Nick and Paul's house and ate some more food and talked with them for a while.  Lot's of eating that week.  

These last few days we've been doing lot's of baby stuff, washing clothes and getting the room together.  The baby's room is almost done, Ella's room is now looking pretty good, we got her a new dresser and changed a few things around.  Our room is still a royal mess however, because anything that didn't have a place in Ella's room or the baby's room ended up in our room.  But we've got the day off today, so maybe we'll actually get it clean.  Or else we'll just go and get a Christmas tree, and create a whole new mess.  Who knows?

There's a bunch of new picture on our picasa site, including a video of Ella's proto-cartwheel.  It's pretty good for a four year old.  And the picture of her in bed with dolls and such is what she actually sleeps with every night.