Happy Thanksgiving!

Shannon and I (and Ashlynn) had an especially fun Thanksgiving! Hope it was for all of you, too. We had Cari (Shannon's sister) with us as well as a good friend here in New Jersey, Nan Wei. He moved here from his home in Taiwan about 3 months ago so it was fun sharing this holiday with him for his first time, explaining why we celebrate it, what we do, and all these foods he's never seen before. He went home with a long list of new words in his notebook: important ones like mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, touchdown, sack, and the like. And we were so happy to have family here with us. Well, at least a piece of the family. Thank you, Cari, for coming out! We loved having you with us! (And thanks for the excuse to see Harry Connick Jr. in the city on Friday ;)!)

After putting up our Christmas decorations the day ended with a very nice surprise. Shannon had Ashlynn on the floor and was playing with her when she started smiling and giving her usual little pseudo-laughs. So she pulled out the camera and shortly after got Ashlynn's first real laughs on video! This camera-shy girl was caught in the act - the act of being cute, that is - not once but twice this week! This, the second, time being right after we finally got another video of her smiling and talking last weekend. We've been trying for weeks to catch her talking. We should have kept track of how many times we've pulled out the camera in attempt to capture her just being happy. But our previously failed attempts always resulted in 2 things; silence succeeded by spitting up. She can do that on cue like a pro. One day I might just post the pile of videos in which she spit up so you can appreciate how exciting this week was for us.

We wanted to post the first video on here but had not done so before we got the video of her new laughs on Thanksgiving. So I'm posting them both. But they're both so big I had to crop them a lot and then split the cropped portions into halves in order to get them on our blog. So I'm posting 4 videos. The first two are just her being really cute and talking after her nap on Saturday (I tried to keep these kinda long for the family). The third & fourth were taken Thanksgiving night when she started laughing. Nevermind the almost naked baby. Sorry this is all coming a little delayed. I've been trying for days to get these posted. Promise!

We've got a little more coming soon. We got some 3 month pictures of Ashlynn over the weekend that I'll get up here soon, too (maybe when she starts talking. Just kidding. I'm not that bad... I hope).