Thankful Thursday, Thanksgiving Day 2009

With Mama and the big fire truck!

Enjoying the scenery with Uncle Dean

Playing in the snow with Daddy

Out on a hike with Mama

Goofing around with Uncle Rick

Enjoying Uncle Rick's "Mount-tan house"

Beautiful Estes Park

Making friends with Mr. Piggy

Having fun with Daddy

Daycare Halloween party

Monkeying around

Carving my pupkin, getting the seeds out so I can roast them.

Are you sure people eat pumpkin seeds?

Happy girl!

Cotton candy at the Fair

We've had a great late summer/fall! Danika has learned many new fun things and has had lots of fun experiences these past few months. We attended our neighborhood "Nite to Unite" block party and Danika loved meeting our neighborhood kids and borrowing a trike or two to ride on. She also loved the visits from the firefighters who brought their big fire trucks. We also attended our city "touch a truck" event where Danika was able to view the fire trucks, ambulances, lawn mowers, tractors, utility vehicles, and school busses close up. She mainly stuck close to the lawnmowers since they were more her size. At the end of August we went to the Minnesota State Fair with Uncle Dean and Danika LOVED the experience. She discovered that she likes cotton candy! She got lots of quality time sitting on Uncle Dean's lap on the John Deere tractors but didn't want him to touch "her" tractors! He got his hand slapped away on several occasions! Many of our summer and fall nights were spent in our very own driveway! Danika loves the outdoors and enjoyed playing with her cozy coupe car, trike and a beautiful bike our generous neighbors gave her. Add in bubbles and sidewalk chalk and she's been a happy camper! Convincing her to come in at bedtime has been a trick but it is great to see her enjoy the outdoors so much. Our vacation this year was spent at "Uncle Rick's Mount-tan-house" as Danika calls it. Other than severe colds, we had a wonderful week in a half enjoying the beauty of Rocky Mountain National Park, hiking, driving through the park, enjoying the town of Estes Park watching the elk, and most of all time spent with precious family. We were blessed to have Uncle Dean travel with us and he was a great help with Danika...it doesn't hurt that she adores him! Danika also loved time hiking around Bear Lake with Uncle Rick and having Aunt Sue blow dry her hair after her bath...she still talks about it. Thanks to Rick and Sue for the very generous use of their home and for house calls and rides to the airport. We are blessed with a wonderful and generous family. We've been under the weather much of October and all of November but are now on the mend and are looking to a restful and relaxing Thanksgiving Holiday with Dan's family here in town. For one of the first years ever Karen will NOT be hitting the stores at 4:00 a.m. for all the "Black Friday" shopping deals...sleep is more important this year! (a sure sign of age!). Danika is learning new words faster than ever, she knows the "ABC" song (complete with her version of sign language), she can repeat ANYTHING that is said to her. We are working on sharing with others, making our wishes known politely and patience...all typical problems for any two year old. We laugh every day at something new she's said or done. The other night Dan told her on one of their "dates" he would take her to a place that had an inflatible "jumpy" room. She immediately looked at Mama and said, "bye bye Mama". One day while we were drawing Danika tried to stick her fingers in the pencil sharpener. Mama told her "no fingers in the pencil sharpener", she immediately held out her thumb and put it in the sharpener and said "No fingers, THUMB!" We are already out of our league in the battle of wits with her. Another of Danika's loves includes baby animals and a tv show that features pretending - (pretend baking, pretend sledding, pretend school). She'll watch by the hours if we let her (we don't). On October 22, Danika turned two and we had a special day with a party at daycare and Mama brought cupcakes and then we had dinner out at a local pizza restaurant. That weekend we had our family and friends over for her official party. Danika loved her giant cupcake and sharing her special day with her friends. Now when she gets a cupcake or a muffin she immediately sings "Happy Birthday to me"...hearing her sing is precious! Every day we are reminded what a precious gift God has given us. Sometimes in the middle of the night we have to repeat to ourselves that she is a gift from God (at midnight, 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 6 a.m)...but we are so blessed to have Danika in our lives. Her wit, laughter, sweet nature, sassy pants, are all blessings and we are so Thankful to have her in our lives. Blessings to all of you on this Thanksgiving holiday weekend!