Thanksgiving Part 2

Our Thanksgiving Day was certainly a day to be thankful for! The house was full of family, my mother-in-law was cooking a feast and the weather was warm and sunny!

We spent the morning being lazy, drinking up our Starbucks, and reading the Black Friday ads. After pulling ourselves together for the afternoon, the big kids begged to go back to Booth Park to slide down the hill -- and who could deny them when it was 67 degrees on Thanksgiving Day -- in Michigan!!

Who loves their Grammy!?!?!? {And who loves this light!?!?! I DO!!}

And since the mommies are never in the pictures... Carol and I were there, too! {Isn't Mike's sister gorgeous??}

And then it was time to give the tire swing some love.

It was just so gorgeous out that none of us were ready to go home so Charlie asked to go see the waterfall at Quarton Lake, so we did! At that point, my new DSLR was feeling a bit too heavy so I moved to instagram photos!

After all the fresh air, I tried to get my family dressed and out the door for a photo shoot for our holiday cards. We had to wake Henry up from his nap so he was a disaster. And then my husband dragged a baseball bat and balls out with us so you can imagine how interested they were in taking pictures... Luckily, I managed to bribe Henry to stop the tears and even convinced him to smile for a shot that was card worthy. But here's an outtake:

And then it was time for our family to come together and eat a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. My mother-in-law did it all, y'all. She's amazing. And a great cook! That being said, Henry still insisted on eating Cheerios...

Thanksgiving Part 1

You'll have to forgive me... it's been a long time since I've been "on vacation". I've worked and worked and worked all year and a five day trip to Michigan was my first break in months. And I actually didn't work for three whole days of it.

I took advantage of my time off and enjoyed my time with my family immensely. But just because I was taking a break from work, I certainly wasn't taking a break from my camera. {It's so shiny and new and full-framed and fabulous} Therefore, I have to break up the Thanksgiving pictures in THREE separate blogs... Eeek!

We spent our Thanksgiving at my husband's childhood home in Birmingham, MI which is a gorgeous suburb of Detroit. I absolutely love going "home" there. The houses are all older with lots of land and charming character and the downtown area of restaurants and shopping is adorable.

On Tuesday, we took the boys to lunch at my very favorite Coney Island in downtown Birmingham - Greek Islands - for a greek salad and chicken finger pitas. This picture of the boys has to be one of my top favorite instagrams!

After lunch, Charlie asked to go "back to that park where you can slide down the hill on cardboard", so we headed to Booth Park which has a turf covered hill - perfect for sliding - and is also in downtown Birmingham.

Charlie was thrilled to find a seven year old boy at the park who shared his love for Mario plush toys. Henry did NOT love that his brother was playing with someone else...


Apparently Henry was making quite the scene as he chased his brother and the new friend around the park while screaming that they "COME BACK HERE!!". Mike and I decided to distract the sad little man by putting him in the swings and the sandbox. That kind of helped...

And this tunnel just made for some cool pictures...

We felt that all the calorie-burning we did by playing at the park meant we were due for some Franklin Cider Mill donuts. Ahhhhhhh. The Franklin Cider Mill. A Robertson family fall Michigan tradition. It's so good, you guys. Cold cider and hot cinnamon donuts. Soooooooo good.

The only problem -- and really, this is only a MINOR problem since there is so little that could go wrong when you're talking donuts and apple cider -- but... the only problem is the ducks. Outside of the cider mill, there is a little stream FULL of big, fat, happy ducks who survive off the leftovers of the patrons. Seriously, they're really fat. I'm pretty sure every single one of the ducks has cardiovascular disease with a diet consisting solely of donuts.

So the problem with the ducks is that my kids LOVED them. Last year, they figured out that they could feed them and they'd all swarm around them and gobble up leftover donuts. While this is adorable, and I agree, totally fun, my kids WASTED all their donuts on the ducks!!!! That's just WRONG! These are PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS donuts that only exist for a small time during the fall season and are 500 miles away from our home in DC -- and they fed them TO THE DAMN, DIRTY DUCKS!!! Do kids value NOTHING these days!? One dozen doughy, fried, cinnamon donuts gobbled up by fat ducks. What are we teaching our children if not to value rare, seasonal and regional donuts!?