Best Thanksgiving Ever

This year brought our entire family (minus Cole, who had to work) to Colorado for Thanksgiving.  We had the absolute best time, and I don’t even know where to begin describing all the fun. 

Everyone arrived on Wed evening and we had pizza, had fun running around with cousins and participating in our annual Banks family tradition of breaking bread for the stuffing.

Bright and early the next morning brought one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions—the Turkey Day 5k. Or 10k, if you are Kami.  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny morning.  I was determined to win back the Champion Title that Michael took last year.  And he didn’t make it easy on me.  He was right on my shoulder the entire race. Every time I thought I lost him I’d catch a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye.  But I edged him out in the last few tenths and beat him by 3 seconds. I’m going to have to train all year long if I want to defend my title again next year ;)  Kami ran the 10k and took 2nd overall.  Cory and Rusty had a great run together.  Halle, Bridger, Brynn and Aubrey ran on their own this year and had a great race.  Aubrey killed it and was the Banks/Cornell family kid winner.  Josh walked/ran his first 5k with Alan and Lindsey ran with Bode and Brayden.   Jack and Kali did the 1/2 mile kids race.  Blake was supposed to run with them, but he was being ornery and refused to run when the time came.  Such a fun morning!

Now on to the main event—Dinner!  Everything came together really quickly and easily this year and in no time we were feasting away.
 

We ended the day with another favorite tradition—Thanksgiving evening movie.  This year we saw Big Hero 6.  We all loved it.  Leo was especially enthralled.  It was so cute to watch him. 

The next day we decided to be ambitious and head down to the North Pole in Colorado Springs.  Turns out that it was the busiest day of the year.  The line to get in was terrifyingly long and I wondered if we were in for an insane day.  But once we got inside the park things weren’t too bad.  I thought the North Pole was adorable.  The rides were darling and the perfect mix of bigger, more thrilling rides, and cute little rides for the little ones.  The older kids thought it was so cool that they got to go explore the park on their own.  We’d run into them every now and again and catch up on all the fun they’d been having.  Getting out of the park was kind of a pain—they have a totally archaic system of paying for things.  Then we hit major traffic on the way home.  Sigh. Poor Alan and Sharon got stuck with the 3 kindergarteners in the worst of the traffic.  But, we rolled into Denver just in time to see the lights turn on on the City and County Building.  It was really beautiful!

It was certainly a jam-packed, fun-filled day!