Working up to Thanksgiving

Whew. That was a whole lot of turkey. In fact, we got so conked out on all that good stuff, we're weeks behind. So, let's start with the Thanksgiving ramp-up.

Aden's been around family since before we even touched down on American soil - Gramma Marjorie was there on our first trip to visit him in Guatemala, and Grammy Barbara met us at the airport on our triumphant return home (I think that if the airport officials had let her, she would have been in the control tower making sure that they brought us down safely). But Thanksgiving promised to be a veritable onlsaught of relatives, so we began warming up the weekend before.

First, we brought Aden to visit Grandpa Bob and Gramma Leslie. We all had a great time - Bob proved fluent in Aden's native tongue (gibberish) - whenever Aden would squak at him, Bob would squak right back, which Aden of course found hilarious. Both Bob and Leslie read this blog, so we they prepared for the visit from The Supreme Bananan Smasher by stocking up on extra cleaning supplies... which, astoundingly, they didn't have to break out once! Bob and Leslie's beagle, Twinkle, wasn't too excited to meet the new houseguest, but did very well under the circumstances, and we've got high hopes for a future Aden/Twinkle friendship.

After that, Aden got to meet Uncle Chris, Aunt Kim, Cousin Steven and Great-Aunt Carol. Again, many hikinks were had, and there were giggles all around. The kid's a charmer!

We also had a visit from our friend Jen and her kids Jalen and Isabelle (I have a hard time remembering exactly when in the weekend, given the haze of turkey and stuffing that clouds my memories of the last few weeks). Aden fell in love at first sight with Jalen, which makes us wonder if he might have had an older foster-brother in Guatemala. Jalen is 5, and Aden crawled right up to him and hugged him at first sight. That was pretty fantastically cute.

And then of course, there were all the visits from Bill, Tori, and Jessica (all of whom, of course, are Aunts or Uncles in their own way), not to mention Ben & Kate Hitmar. Oh, and Aden's first visit to Schwadesign, where he got a ride from Josh; Amy and Alyson stood around and made googly eyes at him; and Anna wanted to eat his ankles.

Given that Aden made it through all of this pre-Thanksgiving build-up without a hitch, his status as a charmer has officially been confirmed. As always, though, we'll let the pictures be the final proof of that.