Thanksgiving

I don't know why, but I have been terrible at taking pictures lately!  I only have a couple of Thanksgiving pictures this year.  We had such a great and memorable Thanksgiving this year in St. Louis, Missouri.  My cousin Becca and her husband Ben live there and it is about 5 hours from Indianapolis.  So we left Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday. On our drive out Hayden watched from start to finish her first motion picture film.  Can you guess which one? Shrek!  I tried to get her into movies like Beauty and the Beast but she loves Shrek. The Munsons were great hosts and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with them.  Hayden loved playing with their cute dog Khloe and loved the attention she got from all the new family members.  She is usually shy around new men, but absolutely loved my uncle Brooke.  He is a big kid at heart. 

We ate dinner around 2:30 pm with Becca, Ben, and her parents Brooke and Judee.  Hayden was taking her nap, so I actually got to eat in peace!  Becca did such a great job putting the dinner together, everything tasted great!  That night we went over to Ben's parents home and ate lots of yummy pies.  Hayden loved playing with their niece Aubrey who is in first grade, she was so good with her. 

The next day we headed out and went to downtown St. Louis.  It was freezing cold so we toured a lot from the car (while Hayden took a nap).  We saw the Arch, River Front, Cardinals Stadium, the LDS temple and much much  more.  We ate delicious pizza at Dewey's and then had root beer floats at Fritz's.  We seriously ate so much yummy food the entire weekend.  Then we walked around the Delmar loop and shopped.

Saturday we headed to the zoo which was FREE!  It is free year round which is crazy to me.  This was Hayden's 2nd zoo trip and she got a lot more out of it this time around.  She would get so mad when we left an animal until she realized we were on our way to see another one!  It got pretty cold near the end of our time at the zoo. That night we tried out Imo's pizza which has special St. Louis cheese on it! The Munson's were very good at introducing us to the St. Louis culture. 

All the monkeys were very active and Hayden was so fascinated by them.

Hayden is angry in this picture because Paul turned her away from the bear.  She was so upset!

 They were feeding the penguins fish so they got so close to us and Hayden thought it was great!

At night we played lots of games, our favorite game was speed scrabble, we literally played for hours.  We also had great talks.  Becca and I are the same age and were so close as kids.  In fact we were pen pals for a long time and I still have her mom and dads address memorized.  So it was so good to reconnect with her and to spend quality time with her husband Ben.  Wish I had more pictures to share! 

This is the only picture I took of Hayden at the Munson's home.  She always enjoys exploring new environments and their house was no different.  She had such a great time there.



Hayden slept almost the entire way home.  She was so tired.  She never sleeps as well when she is not in her own crib.  As always she was excited to be home and see her crib was still waiting their for her.  Wish we lived closer to family because it was so much fun for everyone.