Giving of Thanks

We landed in Chicago this past Monday, and rode with Mandy's dad back to GR. Other than a 30 minute weather delay in Minnesota, the trip over over was uneventful. Tuesday Mandy and I went out shopping. I needed to pick some mini-toiletries and jeans for my impending trip to Norway, and Mandy needed some garb for working with the doggies back in the mountains. Tuesday we went north to visit my Grandma in a rehabilitation center in Alma, MI. She's looking good, and seems to be making a pretty speedy recovery from her heat attack/sroke/falling episode a few weeks back. We saw my cousin, her daughter, and my aunt, which was especially cool because we haven't seen them in going on three years now. It was good to see everyone. Afterwards, we drove back to Grand Rapids and spent the evening with Angie and Mark. We went out to get some good Mexican food at Little Mexico Cafe, a Grand Rapids landmark restaurant that serves, possibly, the best Tex-Mex in the state of Michigan. After dinner we went back to Mandy's parent's place and played with the Wii while Mandy cooked bread for Thanksgiving. On Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving with Mandy's family. Our friends Dean and Erin showed up and, again, Wii was played and movies were watched. Tomorrow, we're going to do lunch and spend the afternoon with my dad and step-mom, then head out on the town with some friends. Saturday we're doing Thanksgiving, yet again, with the Forton clan and mom, where we will partake in the traditions of eating good fun, engaging in fellowship, and making virtual similes of people who have died in the previous year with a wrestling simulator and have them fight each other.

All-in-all, it's been an insanely busy visiting schedule. It's been good to see everyone, but there's never enough time to spend catching up and seeing everyone. Alas, one of the drawbacks of living 18 hours away from family. But, honestly, with weather like what we've been having, I already miss Denver... :)

Also, we added a new slideshow page element to the right-hand navigation bar that shows some of the most recent pictures we've posted to our flicker stream. You can pause, rewind, and play the pics. If you click on any of the images, it will pop open a new page taking you to a higher-rez copy of the picture. It's really neato. Check it out!