Turkeys, Horses, and Babies

Ahh, November. For our little family the month means two things - turkey and travel. This year we headed to California to celebrate with the Sacramento and Santa Cruz families. Sarah and Callie actually spent a full week out there, while John had a shorter four day trip. That may explain why John doesn't appear in a single picture below. Not a single one - seriously. But you'll have to trust us, he was there.

There were so many people to see and so little time, so on the first full day in California, Sarah and Callie started the rounds. The first stop was a big hug and squeeze for Great Grandma Lucas. At 87 years young, Hazel is definitely a match for Callie in the squeezing department.



The two of them make such a cute couple. And Callie was lucky enough to get to spend even more time with Great Grandma later in the week when we all went out to lunch.

But there was more than just Great Grandma to squeeze. Callie also got to meet her brand new cousin Skyler, who was born on November 12. This fine picture shows cute little Skyler, Skyler's cousin Brady, and their proud grandmother, Teri. We have a feeling that these two will certainly be spoiled in a good way by grandma and grandpa.


Now here's a picture of Hazel and all of her great grandchildren. It is hard to believe that in the last three years the youngest generation has quadrupled in size. It won't be too long before they are going to be running the show.



it's important to point out that Keith, the oldest, is very fond of all of his cousins and never has a problem with the ongoing need for these kinds of pictures. Indeed, he is far more cooperative than the younger members of this crew.


And now we present, for the first time on this blog, a picture of the Pedone family. If you all remember, it was only two short years ago that Callie at the age of three weeks traveled to watch these two lovebirds get married. Boy how time flies. Haley and Ryan are so very much in love with little Skyler and they are a very cute family.



Our last picture from the family gathering on that first Sunday shows Sarah's cousin Tyler with his son Brady. Brady is now about a year and a half and it was fun to see him and Callie playing together. We can only imagine how much trouble Brady, Callie, and Skyler will get into in the years to come. Yep, John's hair just got a little bit grayer. And at this stage of the game, that's kind of hard to do.


As the week began to build momentum, it was time for Grammy Gayle and Callie to hit all the Sacramento hot spots. The first stop was Grammy's office, where she got to show off her granddaughter. People literally came up and said, "Oh, we have heard so much about Callie." They never said they had heard Sarah's name even mentioned. It was pretty funny. Next stop was the Sacramento Zoo. Here we see Grammy Gayle and Callie observing the natural beauty of the flamingos. We definitely had a fun time following Callie around and Callie really enjoyed seeing all of the animals.



Callie loves to spend time with Grammy. And that adoration is more than just the fact that Grammy lets her play with the Blackberry. They got to hang out quite a bit and now that we are back in Kentucky Callie still picks up the phone at all hours of the day and wants to call her.


There are two rules in life. Number one, always wear slip on shoes to the airport to make the security checkpoint easier. Number two, any time you have an opportunity to stick your head through a painted piece of plywood and take a picture, you cannot pass it up. If nothing else, this picture should convince you of the necessity of rule number two. What would we do without such an awesome picture of mother and daughter posing as kangaroos? It's a keeper.

As a reward for making it this far into our post, we now give you a brief musical interlude. See if you can name the tune Callie is singing.



We must admit, we are pretty impressed with this as well. If you are big fans of the letters t, u, v, or w, you may be disappointed. But such is life. Who really needs those letter anyway?


As the title of this post notes, babies were a big part of this trip. Heck, babies were a big part of November. Not pictured here, but always in our thoughts, is little Ashlyn Perrone, the second daughter of Lauren and JP. She was born the day we flew out to California. We can't wait to meet her! In the meantime, however, our social schedule was packed with other little ones. Including Chase Asher Gardner, pictured here with his mom, Wendy, Callie, and Sarah. Wendy and Sarah went to high school together. Who knew that twenty years later we would be introducing our kids to each other. Kind of crazy. Wendy is such a great mother and it is fun to enter this chapter of our lives together.

Although we didn't get to see everyone we wanted to see, we got quite a bit of quality time with Great Grandma. In fact we took her out for lunch the day before Thanksgiving. We had a lot of fun. Callie not only shared her lunch with Great Grandma but also shared an ice cream sundae.



This lunch was also memorable because Callie learned to say "uno mas", her first official Spanish phrase. She also used it properly, going for one last bite of ice cream as her parents tried to take it away from her. Quite impressive.


Believe it or not, all of the above happened before Thanksgiving Day. But now we reach to big festivities. This year we decided to do something a little different and we took the meal on the road. More specifically, we brought Thanksgiving to Golden Gate Fields, the horse track located right outside of Berkeley in the Bay area. In the background of this great picture of Keith and Callie you can see the distinctive cypress trees and the Bay itself. It was a pleasant surprise to find out just how scenic the parking lot at Golden Gate Fields could be.


As you can see here, we laid out all of the proper holiday fixings and everyone lined up to make bountiful turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sandwiches. Pictured here are Isabel and Sophia as they demonstrate just how fun and easy the tailgate Thanksgiving can be. After eating our sandwiches, we each threw a pumpkin pie snack bar into our pockets and headed in to catch the afternoon races.


Some of us came very prepared for a day at the track. One look at Zac's hat will tell you he meant business. Unfortunately, too many of us relied on Callie to pick our horses for us that day. Although none of us walked away "winners" in a monetary sense, everyone enjoyed the day. Thanksgiving in two years could be even more fun, we'll just have to wait and see.


Our final picture for this post highlights one of Callie's favorite parts of the trip. She would stand on the stool in Grammy Gayle's kitchen and help prepare Cheyenne's dog food in the morning and the evening. Cheyenne is just one of many reasons why Callie loved the whole week in Sacramento. The visit went by too quickly, that's for sure.



It is a testament to Callie that we can write this entire post without having to mention anything about the actual travel part of this journey. She remains an expert traveler. In fact, this time when she got to the security line in the airport, she looked up at Sarah and said, "Mommy...shoes off?" It's only going to be a year or two before she can do the entire inflight safety presentation given by flight attendants as you taxi from the gate. And of course, Callie has another chance to demonstrate her skills when three weeks from today we fly to Connecticut for Christmas. Hope all is well with all of you.