Thanksgiving Holiday in Rochester

As I posted earlier, once we escaped the snow in KC, it was smooth sailing to Rochester.  Overall, the long weekend was mostly a relaxing vacation.  It was the first time Miriam’s family had all been together for Thanksgiving since Miriam was in high school.

Wednesday
I posted about Wednesday night in the arrival post below.  But there is one thing I’d forgotten about.  Mikaela was already in her pajamas when we arrived at Steve and Sali’s.  But she managed to slip away and climb into the bathtub and start playing with her duckies.  The bathtub was still wet, so we had to change jammies before putting her to bed.

Thursday
Pretty typical Thanksgiving Day.  Watched some football.  Ate a huge Thanksgiving feast between games.  Tried to fight the effects of the tryptophan while watching the second game.  Everthing was great.  I can confirm that Mikaela still loves cranberries – she ate two large helpings.

Friday
I was up early, so I decided to brave Black Friday and check out the after-Thanksgiving sales at Best Buy and Staples.  Afterwards, I realized that I probably missed some opportunities to make some extra cash on E-Bay, as the crowd in Rochester was a bit smaller than it probably was elsewhere, and I could’ve taken advantage of some great deals.  The snow chased us from Kansas City – the morning’s rain became big, fat, snowflakes.

Saturday
Mikaela spent the morning playing in the snow with Miriam and Pakka Steve.  The built snowmen and he pulled her around on a sled.  Saturday afternoon we headed to the mall.  Since the Holmes clan hadn’t all been together in one place in quite a while, this was a good opportunity to get pictures taken.  Thanks to Miriam’s luck at buying the Super Picture Club card during the two weeks or so that they were available (before the marketing guy who came up with it was strangled by JC Penney’s accountants), the whole picture package cost about 13% of what it would have been at regular prices.  We took a break from Turkey and had Chinese for dinner.  Mikaela enjoyed the fish in the tank and the noodles on her plate.  She like the baby corn from the dish that Uncle Eli ordered, so we made the incorrect assumption that she’d also like the broccoli from the same dish.  It seems that the broccoli absorbs more of the spicy sauce than the baby corn.  Boy was she mad!  Luckily, that was near the end of dinner.  She was calmed down by the time we got back to the house.

Sunday
Everybody headed out pretty early.  Steve and Eli had planes to catch.  Sali took them to the airport and we hit the road.  The fog between Rochester and I-35 was amazingly thick, but traffic was light.  We made good time until we decided to stop for lunch at a Perkin’s near Des Moines.  Apparently, the entire state of Iowa was having lunch there.  Luckily, part of the idea with stopping was to give Mikaela some time to walk around, and she took full advantage of that.  Mikaela had pancakes with sprinkles – and proceeded to do her best to pick out the sprinkles.  Mikaela fell asleep right on cue for a 2:00 p.m nap (well, 2:20), and woke up after an hour and a half as we were entering K.C.