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You wouldn't know by the pics that we had 20 people at Susan's on Thanksgiving - it was a blessed day full of fabulous food and family.
In an attempt to keep all ages and generations engaged, the C'ville crew created the "Thanksgiving Throwdown" that Andrew happily administered. There were individual games and group activities complete with a scoreboard, hand drawn turkey decorations, and wrapped prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.
Friday afternoon, we went to the Maryland State Fairground for the Festival of the Trees to see Maddie perform with her Irish Dancing group. Before the show, we viewed the Christmas Trees and Gingerbread Houses throughout----the pictures are overkill, but some of the displays were absolutely incredible and pictures do not do them justice.
The North Pole was carved into the tree.
The "I Can Read" dinosaur was growing out of the tree in all directions.
Every character you can imagine made out of pipe cleaners.
The Polar Express
Whoville
Barn
Manger scene
Cliff dwelling
34th Street Lights in Baltimore
Log cabin
Santa's Boat
The Big Bird Christmas Tree!
Santa's Naughty List does NOT get Starbucks
Superman and Batman!
Hot Wheels jetting out from all directions
Alice in Wonderland
The sneaky little Grinch
Emojis - how clever!
The active chair lift---amazing engineering.
Maddie (16 - purple dress) has been Irish Dancing since she was 4, but this was the first time we'd seen her perform. What a treat! Impressive, indeed.
Unexpected, but welcome snooze.
The cutest conductors. Matthew took his steering quite seriously.
Legos, legos, legos!
The trains at Kenilworth----for 24 years, there's been a 7 man crew devoting 7 weeks to putting together this masterpiece with new scenes every year. Their creativity is always astounding.
Little man was in Heaven, to say the least.
Another first time treat was seeing Ellie in a musical! Grandma and Margaret enjoyed the "Tea Party" with characters beforehand (no pics of the actual show though, of course).
